Hideki Shima

Over the past five years, @Duolingo has been on an unprecedented tear. They 6x'd their daily active users (from 5 million to nearly 30 million), and in just the past two years the stock has nearly 3x’d. For a company that’s over a decade old and that's gone through a multi-year growth deceleration—this is not something you see. @SeanColombo (VP of Engineering) has been there through it all, and in today's newsletter, Sean shares his five biggest lessons about what has been driving Duolingo's exponential growth. “How Duolingo reignited user growth,” by @jorgemazal, is my #1 most popular post of all time, and this is a post continuation of that story. Key lessons: 1. 📈 Maintain a sense of urgency to drive compound growth 2. ♟️ Identify your strategic advantage 3. 🫢 Copy first, then innovate 4. 🦢 Notifications are the goose that lays the golden eggs—don’t kill the goose 5. 🍕 Consider the whole pie (total impact) when prioritizing work Link in thread below.

A glimpse into the inner workings of how @duolingo builds product—including their unique org structure, design review process, OKR cadence, resource allocation system, team rituals, tool stack, goals, and more: