Gina Gotthilf, Duolingo - Latitud | Marketing and Growth Lessons: Going from 3 to 200 Million Users [Ep. 63]

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Duolingo is one of the most iconic Edtech companies in the world. Today, hundreds of millions of people learn languages for free thanks to Duolingo. However, few people know that Duolingo reached hundreds of millions of users, almost without a marketing budget, and one of the people responsible for that feat was Gina Gotthilf, today’s guest.

Gina was Vice President of Marketing and Growth at Duolingo between 2013 and 2018, and she helped the company scale from 3 to 200 million users. Today, Gina is cofounder and COO of Latitud, a community that is building technology to solve the challenges that startups face in Latin America.

To date, Latitud has raised more than US $11 million from venture capital funds such as Andreeseen Horowitz and NFX.

Gina told us what her growth initiatives were and the most important lessons she took from her experience at Duolingo. We also talked about when to start investing in marketing and how to measure efficiency and prioritize marketing efforts.

What You Can Learn Today

• Lessons from Duolingo’s growth
• Marketing and growth strategies
• How to choose metrics and how often to measure them

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Youtube Timestamps*

History of Duolingo

• [1:28] - How did Gina arrive in the world of startups?
  • She studied philosophy and neuroscience
  • She started working in marketing in New York
  • She returned to Brazil to work in growth at Tumblr
  • She worked at Duolingo for 5 years
• [4:17] - Successful Growth initiatives at Duolingo
  • Duolingo did not have a budget for marketing
  • Focus on Public Relations (PR)
  • Events and interviews worldwide
  • Application of growth strategies
  • A/B testing in the app
• [8:47] - Duolingo’s business model
  • At the start, Duolingo was completely free for users
  • Duolingo started monetizing by doing translations for CNN and Buzzfeed
  • Later, they launched the Duolingo English Test, which is paid
  • The focus shifted entirely to acquiring users
• [15:03] - Recommendations for having a Free business model
  • Focus on Public Relations
  • Take advantage of network effects
  • Test the product with users
  • Make decisions based on the startup’s mission
• [18:59] - Lessons from Duolingo’s growth
  • The team was committed to Duolingo’s mission
  • Validate every feature with A/B tests
  • Give importance to the data
  • Hire the right people at the right time
  • People have more things in common than is believed

Duolingo’s Growth in the Early Stage

• [24:12] - Growth vs. Marketing
  • Growth focuses on the startup’s exponential growth
  • Growth is usually supported by data and metrics
  • Marketing shows the background of a brand
  • Although marketing has metrics, it is not 100% centered on that
• [29:43] - Choosing and prioritizing growth initiatives
  • Take Return on Investment (ROI) into account
  • Test features with A/B tests
  • Define an important metric (in Duolingo’s case it was active users)
  • Determine how long the initiative could take
  • Identify the necessary roles
• [34:50] - When to start investing in marketing?
  • When the startup reaches Product-Market Fit
  • Use paid tools to run tests
  • Create more organic marketing strategies
• [39:36] - How to choose the right metrics and when to check them
  • If possible, review the metrics daily
  • Measuring every day helps optimize time and make fast decisions
  • The frequency of measurement depends on the business model
  • Align the metrics with user behaviors
• [43:47] - How to create a culture of rapid experimentation
  • Take data, math, and statistics seriously
  • Constantly check the results of the tests
  • Learn from mistakes and failed tests
  • Reward employee performance
• [48:56] - Mistakes when growing organically
  • Not prioritizing in terms of return on investment (ROI)
  • Organic growth entails a great risk
  • Not paying attention to the power that Public Relations (PR) have
  • Not clearly communicating the startup’s mission

Tweet Round

• [56:22] -
  • Recommended book: Los 7 Hábitos de la Gente Altamente Efectiva, by Stephen Covey
  • Changes in Latin America’s startup ecosystem: that there be greater diversity and greater access to information to start a startup
  • Investor to interview: Mariana Donangelo of Kaszek Ventures

Episode Mentions

You can find Gina on LinkedIn and Twitter

Recommended book: Los 7 Hábitos de la Gente Altamente Efectiva, by Stephen Covey

Founders to interview: Mariana Donangelo of Kaszek Ventures

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