For many years Duolingo offered a free app, the company running on investor money. After they raised an 100M VC round from Google they realised they have to start making money:<ul><li>Their first iteration was a user generated translation service they offered to CNN & Buzzfeed. It made them so little money it was shut down.</li><li>They finally landed on ads as a way to incentivise people to get a pro subscription.</li></ul>The ads were chosen because offering the app for free was a key value proposition. The challenging part was convincing the team to go with it, as most of Duolingo thought ads were inherently evil.

Duolingo's Journey to Monetization

Duolingo has a userbase split between:<ul><li>Professionals who want to learn English. Because knowing English is the universal booster to your career.</li><li>Hobbyists who think playing language games are better than scrolling Instagram.</li></ul>Considering the split, phone apps like Insta or Tiktok are Duolingo's biggest competitors.

Duolingo's Userbase

Duolingo is the biggest learning app in the world and the founder was cool to share some honest insights.

Luis von Ahn, Co-Founder and CEO of Duolingo — How to Be (Truly) Mission-Driven, Monetization Experiments, 10x Growth, Org Chart Iterations for Impacting Metrics, The Intricate Path to an IPO, Best Hiring Practices, Catching Exam Cheaters, The Allure of Toto Toilets, The Future of Duolingo, and How to Stand Out in Your Career | Brought to you by Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement, Helix Sleep premium mattresses, and LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 800M+ users. More on all three below.Luis von Ahn (@LuisvonAhn) is an entrepreneur and consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who is considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is known for co-inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur fellow, and selling two companies to Google in his twenties.He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With more than 500 million users, it is now the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded education app in the world.Luis has been named one of the Brilliant 10 by Popular Science, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company. Luis also won the 2018 Lemelson-MIT prize, the largest cash prize for invention in the U.S.This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer.Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 800 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim.*This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 by Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.*This episode is also brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk-free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.*For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsorsSign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissYouTube: youtube.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Strategy

The Co-Founder of Duolingo on Tim Ferriss

There were no words to describe the iPhone, or Notion or Snapchat. No categories fit, no features do them justice. The early adopters can only say things like “Just try it, it’s the future.”While the inability to describe a product is considered a problem, it may also signal something truly remarkable. If the words already exist to describe something new then maybe it is not truly that novel after all.

Cool Products can't really be explained

Maybe clear explanations are not the mark of great products. Much Zen...

From the iPhone to Snapchat and Notion—when words escape us

Products & Innovation 

"Disregard the Words": How to describe innovation

We are going through a digital revolution. Startups are coming up with amazing ideas to change what was normal recently by making it different and easy. It was expected that delivery can be easy but apps like dunzo made it time bound and from your neighbourhood stores. It was difficult but they achieved it and many things will be achieved in future.

Digital World

What about if i tell you a neabuy store in your locality can deliver your favourite things to your home in a given timeline and that even efforlessly. Online businesses like Dunzo, E-samudaay are doing this now in India. These platforms are taking digital revolution too far and making things go gala.

Easy Access

Now this onboardong of retail businesses is so fierce that most of the online platforms have onboarded similar businesses. But then on board different delivery options as well. This is a good step towards making these retail business accessible, visible and reachable.

Retail

Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is expected to spread the retail business presence throughout the plateforms. The commerce ministry is spearheading the initiative and the entity i.e. ONDC is structured as a non-profit organization with about 150 crores in funding.

What Is Yet To Come

This is all being done for the benefits of consumers as well retailers. Consumers will have more choice and retailer will have more customers only if they can be in competition to others. This will benefit both parties and government ad well. This ONDC is really looking like the future of business in India.This system will also have its list of unanswered Questions but let it be atleast we are moving beyond limits and that is what is needed. Answers can be searched only when Questions are raised...

Final Words

Future has many surprises and we should be ready

An explainer on ONDC - open network for digital commerce

When you do unusual things, you lead somewhere which is better, smarter and innovative. 

Innovation 

Understanding ONDC - the next UPI?

Buyers don’t make rational decisions; rather, they make emotional decisions and then justify those by rationalizing them after the fact. This is true even for business customers, who have to use spreadsheets and numbers to support their decisions.

Man Is Not A Rational Animal; He Is A Rationalizing Animal

In the 1950s, Dr. Eric Berne developed the theory of transactional analysis to better understand how people communicate. According to the theory, people have three ego states that influence their behavior during social interactions: the adult, the child, and the parent.

The Adult, The Child And The Parent

The salesman David H. Sandler, together with a psychologist colleague, used some of the theory of transactional analysis to develop Sandler Training. According to the Sandler Selling System, a buying prospect must be emotionally involved in the sale; the “pain” of not having the product has to affect them on an emotional level.

The Pain Of Not Having The Product

When we make buying decisions, we like to think that our ego’s “adult” state is the one that’s working the hardest, that the logical, analytical, rational part of our behavioral framework weighs both sides of the argument and comes back with a solution. However, Sandler recognized that neither the “adult” nor the “parent” state is at work until the “child” wants the product. Many of our buying decisions originate in the ego’s child state, where our inner 6-year-old tells us they want something without delay.

It’s Always The Child That Asks For Things

There are more sales techniques, methodologies, and frameworks than one could count. Most of them probably work when they are correctly applied, and then there are some that might even hurt the business rather than help it. In the end, they are like exercise—the best approach is the one that works for you.

Trial And Error

Everything in life is sales. Parents sell their kids on going to bed. Spouses sell their partners on mowing the lawn or putting the cat out. Appealing to a “consumer's” inner child and applying a trial-by-error approach are two ways to make sales more effectively.

Businesses aren’t rational customers—they just look like it.

Sales as Art and as Science

<ol><li>Classical conditioning</li><li>Operant conditioning </li><li>Shaping</li></ol>

 3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior

Classical conditioning is a subconscious association technique that pairs a neutral stimulus with a desirable stimulus to create an associated trigger. After many successive pairings throughout time, the neutral stimulus can elicit a positive response without the desirable stimulus present.Example:A user’s mobile device vibrates each time they order takeout from a food delivery app, eventually leading to an increase in orders.

Classical Conditioning

Operant conditioning is an associative learning process that guides an individual to desired behavior through the use of positive and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something that rewards or punishes an action. Negative reinforcement is the subtraction of something that rewards or punishes an action.Example:A social media app wants users to post more content.

Operant conditioning

Shaping is the reinforcement of different and successive approximations towards a targeted behavior. Employ a shaping strategy when a targeted behavior is complex or a difficult sell.Example:A VR editing app wants users to buy pre-built components.

Shaping

3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior. These methods are widespread and employed in almost every successful app

This article covers 3 conditioning techniques designers use to influence behavior. These methods are widespread and employed in almost every successful app. Use with caution.

The Co-Founder of Duolingo on Tim Ferriss

"Disregard the Words": How to describe innovation

Understanding ONDC - the next UPI?

Sales as Art and as Science

3 techniques to influence user behavior

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!