I’m Luis Von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo, and This Is How I Work
Duolingo is a popular language learning platform that has helped thousands of people develop multilingual skills for free. Its playful lessons emphasize fast learning, so you can memorize a few new words effortlessly while you wait for the bus.
Louis von Ahn co-founded Duolingo in 2011 to offer free education to the world. But this is not his only achievement; In fact, the project was originally sponsored in part by a MacArthur Fellowship that Louis won. He’s also the co-author of CAPTCHAs, a series of complex letters and numbers that you sometimes have to type in to prove you’re human, and has sold several companies to Google. We spoke with Luis to find out a little about how he works, that is, as we found out, along with his dog.
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Current talk: I am the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo , a platform providing free language education to over 150 million people around the world. One word that best describes how you work: focus. Current mobile device: iPhone 7 Current computer: MacBook
First of all, tell me a little about your past and how you became who you are today.
I was born and raised in Guatemala and came to the United States in 1996 to attend university, first at Duke for my bachelor’s degree in mathematics and then at Carnegie Mellon for my doctorate.
While at Carnegie Mellon as a graduate student and then professor of computer science, I worked on a number of projects that have been used by millions of people and that have also served as the inspiration for what we now call crowdsourcing. Together with my consultant, Manuel Blum, I invented CAPTCHAs, or computer tests that people can usually pass, but which computers have not mastered (these are wavy computer letters common on the Internet). My other projects included the invention of the ESP Game (also known as The Google Image Labeler) for image recognition and reCAPTCHA to help digitize the books of the world, both of which were acquired by Google.
In 2011, after a couple of years at Google, I decided I wanted to devote myself to helping transform education. I was especially inspired by my upbringing in Guatemala, a poor country where quality education opportunities are limited to those with money. Since education is such a vast field, I decided to focus on language learning. By comparison, 1.2 billion people around the world are learning a foreign language, and about 800 million of them are learning English to get out of poverty.
So I co-founded Duolingo with a mission to provide the world with free language education. Duolingo is the most popular way to learn languages on the Internet today, with over 150 million users worldwide. We are especially proud that there are more people in the United States learning languages using Duolingo than there are people learning languages across the entire US public school system. Duolingo is available for iOS, Android, and Windows devices, and on the web.
What apps, software or tools can’t you live without?
It would be an oversight not to make a shameless plug for Duolingo as I am currently using an app to learn Portuguese! I also use Slack all the time, which is one of my main ways of communicating with the Duolingo team throughout the day. Some of the other apps on my phone’s home screen include Lyft, Sonos, Google Hangouts, and Tinycards (a cards app launched by the Duolingo team last year).
How is your workplace arranged?
What’s your best time-saving shortcut or life hack?
It sounds strange to many, but I train for exactly 16 minutes every day and do it at maximum speed, running 2.5 miles. It keeps me healthy without taking too much time so I can focus on other things. This is one of the most effective things I do every day.
What’s your favorite to-do list manager?
I usually make to-do lists with graphs and pen and paper help me.
What device, besides a phone and a computer, can you not live without and why?
If my Tesla can be considered a gadget, that’s it. Without him, I would not have been able to get around Pittsburgh!
What are some of your best everyday activities? What’s your secret?
I can always focus on one thing without being distracted. What helps me is that I try to break everything I do into small, doable tasks that don’t take more than a few hours to complete, so it’s much easier to stay focused and motivated that way.
What do you listen to while you work?
Lately I have been listening to CHVRCHES quite a lot – it is a British synth-pop group.
What are you reading now?
I recently finished reading High Output Management by Andrew Grove, which had such valuable leadership insights that I was getting Duolingo managers to read the book now.
How do you replenish? What do you do when you want to forget about work?
It’s hard to remember when I’m not working, but then I enjoy traveling and eating good food. In fact, I just went to Peru for a food tour and it definitely did not disappoint!
What is your sleep pattern?
I get up early and always wake up between 5 and 6 in the morning.
Fill in the blank: I would like ____ to answer these same questions.
Neil de Grasse Tyson.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
If you are asked to do something that will happen in the future (say, you are asked to speak at a conference in a year from now), and you would not want to do it if it happened next week, then do not do it. This advice helped me appreciate the opportunities that I really want to devote my time to and the ones that I don’t.
What else would you like to add that might be of interest to readers and fans?
Every day I bring my dog Bunny to work without fail. She Vesti, she is now 15 years old, so I have to carry her almost all the way to get to the office. Here’s a photo of her recently in my car on the way to work!