YouSaid · the spoken record

Gina Gotthilf

lines on the record: 109
first: 2023-10-19
most recent: 2023-10-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But now that's what it is, and it's grown a ton. So get in touch, join the fellowship, join our community. We're particularly useful, by the way, to US people who are interested in getting plugged into Latin America because if you get in, you just meet all the top people in one fell swoop. And that helps you make friends, relationships, find clients, find your business partners, and understand the ecosystem in a hacky way.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See my amazing contact on TikTok. I will definitely start posting it soon, and you can influence what kind of content will be there because I'm listening to my followers right now. And then how you can be useful. Look, if you If you know of an amazing founder in Latin America, if you are an amazing founder in Latin America, or if you are in touch with VCs who are interested in this, then definitely tell them about latitude. You go to latitude.com. Do not misspell latitude. It doesn't have an E at the end. That's because latitude in Spanish is latitude. However, it's also because we couldn't buy latitude.com with an E.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know. I'm Gina G on Twitter, and that's probably, you know what? I did a Harry Stebbings podcast, and then that got me 600 followers on TikTok. But I've never posted. But maybe at some point, I'm just, I feel self-conscious. But I think I could be a good TikToker because I think I'm amusing.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's super impressive. You won't even find it when you look for me because you'll see all these other genus, but it's just Gina, that's me. I do share some professional things as well there too, but I think it's my more entertaining channel. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm a little more serious on LinkedIn. I have a photo with Obama, which will certainly impress you. So find me, Gina Godthill von LinkedIn.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, okay, thanks, Lenny. So people can find me online. If you want to see just ridiculous posts, that's where my Instagram is. And my Instagram is impressive because I'm Gina on Instagram. Yes, I am just Gina.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think I still am because I'm consider myself to be very existential. I'm an atheist, so I like to find meaning. It's not like it doesn't exist so much for me. And I think about the big questions and I am interested in philosophy. I'm just not interested enough to make time and effort for it in my life right now.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I would say at this point, I embarrassingly have very cursory knowledge of philosophy. I could probably remember a lot of it if I went back to it, but I don't use it in my day-to-day. And I would love to take time off at some point and go study. But I'm also embarrassed to admit that I'm not a person who just finishes work is completely depleted and then wants to bury my face in the philosophy book. I would like to I would like to acquire all of this philosophy knowledge, but I want to watch White Lotus, or if I'm going to force myself to work out, I'll listen to an audiobook. That makes me feel good about myself. And it's a fiction one.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Theseus is on this journey. I think he leaves Crete and he's going somewhere else, and he's on a boat. And then over the course of the trip, like so many things happen. They've hit so many waves and they have storms that they have to replace planks and re sow the sail. And by the time they arrive at the next port, nothing on the ship is the same as it was before. Like they replaced every single plank, they'd replaced every all the masts they've replaced all the sails. And so the question is, is this the same boat that left the dock? And to me, that's a really interesting concept around transformation and what it means to have an identity that exists over time, even when so much of us or so much of a company or so much of a country changes. And what is that core identity? And to me, that shapes, I think a lot of ideas because it's a cool allegory and it resonates a lot.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I use a lot of philosophy in my day to day, but it's not because I have deep knowledge, it's because I have light knowledge that I draw on that helps people like think I'm smart and relates to ideas. I often talk about thesis as ship to me, like that allegory is like one of the most interesting ones because it's about identity and building and whether you know, I don't know if the allegory is like, you know, the shiplet.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fake until I make it from the point of view of not saying no to things when companies were saying to me, being like, hey, can you help us grow without a budget like Tumblr? Right? I was 25, 26. I was like, yeah, and then go figure it out, you know. And when Duolingo turned to me and said, hey, can you be head of growth? And I didn't know what growth was. And I had to Google and find Andrew Chen's blog. I read it and I found out. And I just said yes. And then kept going with that. Fake it till you make it is kind of that for me. But even today, I have a lot of imposters syndrome. which I actually think is not imposter syndrome is just acknowledging that I don't know a lot. My team says I have too much self-deprecating humor that actually puts, you know, puts the company down. It puts me down. So fake it till you make it to me means like standing, knowing how to stand in front of your team or reporter or Lenny.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is this who shall pass, and I will tell you this one right now is particularly meaningful to me right now because I'm going through a really tough moment because I have long COVID and lost my taste and smell. And it might be long term. But I think it applies to the A-B thing that I was talking about, you know, when like everything in life is moments, except for a couple of diagnoses. And so this too shall pass as something I'd say to myself a lot. The second one is also not particularly motivational, but I really believe in it, which is fake it till you make it. That's something I've held on to for a long time. And even today, I don't mean lie. I don't mean pretend to be something that you're not. But I mean, it's almost like a way to overcome imposter syndrome. And by opening room for yourself to be who you want to become so that you enable opportunities to become that. And I'm not saying lying, but early in my career, this.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That can give you great information about your body so that you understand your nutrition and very core things about ourselves that we don't today are becoming accessible to a lot of people, just to the population. It's still expensive while we're getting there. And I think that will be magical. So I will call out the company levels by my friend Sam Korkos because I think that what they're doing is awesome.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have not been trying any products, I would say. So nothing to recommend. I would say though that I am very curious to try these gut health tests that are out there now, you know, or like microbiome ones. Like I'm really interested in how little we know about our body and how tech can actually help democratize this information. And going on a tiny rant, I'm also feeling very resentful of doctors right now because we've always lived in a world in which doctors are sort of like these authorities and we must just believe whatever it is that they tell us and we rely on them for information that is crucial to our survival. But we're now in a world where we can Google things and that's even more scary because you have to know how to filter that information really well and you don't find explanations to things, but doctors don't like you googling because they say it's scary, but also because they don't like being questioned. I think we're finally coming to a place where a lot of these devices”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm great at it or whatever. But the second part is important because it tells me if people actually care about metrics. And I don't care what the metrics are, but just how do you know this to be true? It has to be more than like, oh, because my boss loves me or because my mom told me because, you know, I gave a talk and or whatnot or whatever I want to hear because, you know, I'm proud of having accomplished this. And maybe if you have some numbers to show, that's also really important.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why do you want to work here is what I really like to ask because it tells me a lot. Of course, everyone wants a job. Like people could just be like, because I want a job and it seems like you guys pay well and, you know, whatever. I think this is a good next step in my career. But I want to know if this person knows what it is that we do, if they did a minimum level of research and if they actually and if they connect with our mission because we're going to talk about mission a lot and I don't want them to gloss over it and to make decisions that are short-term thinking that go against our mission because of the reasons I mentioned with Duolingo. So I think that's one, it's not very unique, but I think gives you a lot of information. And then I would say what are you world class at? And how do you know that you're world class at that? And the second part is almost more important. What are you world class at? Like it's okay if someone says like, look, I'm working on becoming world class at whatever. And this is like why I think I'm better, you know, like I'm.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shorter episodes where he films in New York and he just goes, How to find a parking spot? And then it takes him down a rabbit hole of like how cars are made or like parking in the city, but it's also very good. But I prefer the rehearsal.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god. You're right. So he has two shows, and one of them is called How To, and the other one is called The Rehearsal. And you're right. I am recommending the rehearsal. I have also seen How-To, which are”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if that's a movie, but I just am in love with Boburnum. My husband knows about this. I know all of the songs and white, what is it, white girls Instagram? White woman's white woman's Instagram. Such a good song. That's what I'm talking about.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We humans are a lot more similar than we'd like to think. You know what's amazing, Lenny? It's just my realization more and more of how much this is true because I like to think of myself as unique, much like everybody else. And then I start seeing that like all of these really creative decisions I made are what all of the other millennial white girls did, you know. It's just fascinating. Like, oh, I like, you know, whatever, mid-century modern furniture. And if you, oh, you know what? Actually, I'll tell you what movie is my favorite one. Beau Burnham's Inside. I love.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's kind of a documentary, but it's not, it's awkward, it's weird, but it's so good. And then I would say White Lotus, just like, you know. So good”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, first of all, I love succession, but I don't think we have to go into that. One that was recommended to me by a friend who I very much admire was Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, is how to withdraw John Wilson. It's a really weird TV show that I would have never found if it wasn't for him, but it's the premise is basically this guy is, I think he's just a filmmaker. And he's awkward and it's cool that he's awkward. It's just his style. And he decides to make a TV show about creating help people who are really worried or scared of doing something and helping them prepare for that moment in their lives. So for example, like, you know, someone is really scared of telling their friends that they lied about how many college degrees they had or whatever. Like that they said they had a master's degree, but they didn't. And it's now been five years. And it was like, it's like they're, it's not the debate club, but I forget what it is, but something that requires some sort of intellect.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How to live a good one, and no matter what profession we choose, that continues to be important. So those are my recommendations.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The one book I recommend because I truly changed the way I think about things, it taught me a lot about a discipline. I had never really thought much about, but also because I think it makes me sound smart. And it's a really short book, so it's easy to get through, is the design of everyday things. For me, that was the first time that I realized that design wasn't just a sort of like cool thing that some people were into and they had to get and it made things beautiful. It was about understanding how everything is designed and how to think about design and usability. So for someone like me who didn't have any experience in product before, I think it could be transformative. And then the second book, it has nothing to do with what we do. I recommend Victor Frankl's man search for meaning because at heart I'm a philosopher and I tend to think a lot about life, the meaning of life and what differentiates from the next and how to.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That would be my advice. It's a little broad, but other than that, if not, I would just now sit here and tell you like 15 companies that we love at latitude and I won't.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the way that others couldn't. So they have access to the best talent in the world, not just in the region, that will actually join them and build the best thing possible. And yeah, like what's the TAM? And not just what they put on the slide, but what you actually believe the TAM to be. That's what I would say. I think everyone's looking at fintech in Latin America right now. It's hot, it's profitable. Money is where the money is, but I'm super excited about what happens with health and education in particular because I think that that has the power to truly transform the region in a massive way. At latitude, like I think I mentioned, in addition to fintech, we tend to invest a lot in B2B, SMB platforms that are helping businesses scale and work more effectively because there is a huge need for that and there's an opportunity to build. And I think that that can have an impact on the region.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Financial services, et cetera. But we actually have a lot of money flowing into the region in terms of venture capital. We have the best talent we've ever had because now we've had, I forget how many, but like a lot of IPOs that came from Latin America, like an end and unicorn companies, people who have worked at those companies or who have worked at places like Duolinguan are coming back to build now know what they're doing. And so there's a number of things that have come together that make now a really exciting time to build a startup in Latin America and to scale it. So from an investment perspective, I just think that there's a lot of hot opportunities. Now, in terms of like, you know, knowing what's a good opportunity versus not, I think the same rules probably apply to those anywhere else, which is, you know, most importantly the entrepreneur, does this person know what they're talking about? Do they have an unfair advantage in terms of knowing what a problem that exists and knowing how to solve it?”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lenny, the truth is, I would love to call out all of our portfolio companies because I believe in all of them and there are some of them that are growing incredibly impressively. One of them is Pomello, which is like a fintech platform for fintechs that has just grown incredibly. To me, it's more about paying attention to Latin America. I think for the US, that's already a lot. I don't think people know what's going on below the border. I have no idea what Brazil is like. But paying attention because it's not just a place that's behind in trying to catch up. It's a place where the opportunity to make a lot of money exists. It's a higher risk region because of all the political and economic instability. But given the scenario that we're in right now, which is that we're still quote unquote behind in terms of like all the solutions that we know will be built to give people access to health, to education, to”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And still, and now there's things being built on top of WhatsApp. Like, we just invested in a company called Lead Sales, and they basically turn your WhatsApp into a CRM, which is amazing because so much business is being done on WhatsApp. And that's not the case here in the US. So you wouldn't understand that you can build something for that. And there are other markets that are using WhatsApp for which that's also going to be useful. And the other thing is I think that emerging or developing markets tend to sometimes skip over things because we're so quote unquote behind. So for example, there's examples of these like in India and in some countries in Africa where like I don't know the desktop was skipped. You know, people just went straight to mobile. I think we can see these catapult opportunities because then when you start building something and you already and you didn't even build for the previous version of whatever it is that was being used because you know in the US or more developed markets you had access to them, then you are in a way at an advantage. So I'm excited to see how that plays out in the next few years.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or that our emerging market specific, which means that if they work in an emerging market in Latin America, they could work in another emerging markets. And you know what? Most of the world is not developed markets. And understanding what it's like to not have access to amazing Wi-Fi and like iPhones and all the things that we have access to, that can be a huge advantage because that's the reality that most of the population lives in and that's a huge TAM.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To make payments and so on and so forth. So there's just huge opportunity there trying to think what else I would like to highlight. Ah, Blenny, you talked about B2C. I think, again, because there's so much open field, there's so much opportunity when it comes to B2B, especially when you're talking about SMBs. There's a lot of like small and medium businesses doing things on paper. So figure out what they are and how you can make them not on paper and deploy them effectively. So I think that's an advantage we have. Other than that, I wouldn't highlight.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In general terms Sardum founders have to be really scrappy and resourceful and resilient. Latin Americans tend to be very scrappy, resourceful and resilient because of just the realities in which we were brought up in. We have words for that that we don't have in English in Portuguese and Spanish, which is like dancing around things and figuring out things when you don't have other solutions. So I think that's something that we see a lot. In terms of what we're really good at, I would say First of all, there's opportunity in every single vertical in Latin America because it's such a wide open field. So there's opportunity everywhere. It's not that we're particularly good at fintech, for example, but if you look at the fintech opportunity in Latin America right now, it's so hot and there's like so much money and there's so much happening because of the huge problem of people not having access to bank accounts or access to credit or just like all of the bureaucracy that exists in trying to get those things or”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't. Joining the program is free. You just have to be able to get in. We don't for a number of reasons. We just don't want to deter anyone who's amazing from being part of this community. And so that's why we made that decision. If we invest, we take equity. If you choose to use our products, that's a paid thing. So, you know, you can choose what makes sense for you.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Founders in Latin America, but we also have a lot of US based founders who are building for Latin America because they understand that the opportunity there is huge.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As an entrepreneur, because you're trying to solve a problem and build a team and build a product. You're not trying to figure out what's the best incorporation method and how to open a bank account in the US and how to figure out the foreign exchange prices and bring the money down and how to manage that money or how to stay compliant in your country. And then in two other jurisdictions, if you have a Delaware and a Cayman. So we do all of that for you and make it easy through like a dashboard we built, a bank that we built and so on and so forth. So it's not an easy to describe business because it's kind of an ecosystem play. We're trying to elevate the tech ecosystem in Latin America. And it's a lot of moving parts.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's really hard to do things like incorporate and bring your money down, et cetera. So that's what we do. First, we have a fellowship program. We have $1,500 entrepreneurs who got in. We run four cohorts a year, about 600 applicants per and so you get in and you get access to all of these resources we put together you get to find out what everyone thinks about other investors in the region because I think it's important to disseminate that information you get access to introductions to investors through each other and advice and events in addition we have a fund so we've invested in 100 startups and we were raising our second fund now it's going to be around 25 million dollars with a 30 million dollar cap so that's another thing so we invest you figure out your investment game but we might you might become one of our investments as well and then addition we have products that make it a lot easier to navigate the super in my opinion boring and frustrating stuff behind starting a company that you don't want to think about it”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three percent of people in Brazil only varies in Latin America speak English. So the likelihood of you being taken seriously is low. Your chances of success are low. But at the same time, Latin America has so much in common as a region, but we don't actually see that if we're Latin Americans. We just think we're countries. Especially Brazilians don't think that they're part of the arrest. And Mexicans don't think about Brazil. Like, it's so far. Look at it on the map. In the US, you're like, oh yeah, Latin America. But if you're there, it's just not at all connected with the opportunities of growth are huge and dependent on whether you meet the right people are able to open doors and understand that our problems are so similar that a solution for one part of this region could potentially be great for another part of the region. I'm not doing a great job of pitching, but in addition to it being lonely and it being difficult to find the right resources and really trustworthy knowledge, it's really hard to raise capital.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will, and I still do a pretty bad job with pitching it. But the pitch is basically, we're building the operating system for Latin American early sage tech startups. And what that means is that building a startup is hard anywhere, but it's extra hard in Latin America for some of the reasons that I outlined. Some of the things that we decided solve for are one, it's super lonely to be a founder. And if you're able to meet great founders who are just a step ahead of you in anything, be it in product or growth or marketing or incorporation or finances, you can save yourself so much time from trying to read books and Google if they can just tell you what to do or connect you with the right person, that if we were able to connect these people meaningfully, we could make a huge impact. So that's number one. It's lonely. And number two, you build a startup in Brazil and you're like, wow, this is working. I'm going to go to Silicon Valley. I've seen this happen a lot in the past decade. And Silicon Valley is a completely different place. The US is a different place. The competition is different.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because we think we can have a huge impact on the GDP of the whole region, developments, job opportunities, and so on and so forth. So to me, that's what motivates me. It's like figuring out how I can use my time to as leverage to make the biggest impact possible in terms of social economic mobility for people in the world and focusing on a part of the world that I came from made the most sense.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love their socks, and I just had a conversation. I just had a conversation with them yesterday. I really love, I'm a big fan of what they built. I met Brian doing on deck. I actually was thinking of starting a completely different company, but also focused on community as we were talking about, like people want to find connection. And I think that there's a lot of business opportunity there. But I met my Michael founder and he was working with our third co-founder, Yuri, who was actually the guy, we joke he's the guy who builds things. He's the CTO. He actually knows how to build and started talking about what it is that we can do to make an impact in the speed at which tech startups succeed in Latin America.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm Brazilian, I'm Latin American, and I know that I had all of the opportunities in the world. I went to an American school. I got to go to school in the US. I got to work with some of the best tech companies in the world.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to get investment, you probably can get investment in your Brazil entity because investors are like, I don't know anything about Brazil. And sounds like a lot of people, employers get sued by their employees and lose, which is totally true. And there's all this liability. I feel much more comfortable investing in a Delaware company. So then entrepreneurs are like, oh man, like now I have to create this entity in Delaware. I don't even know where that is. And like what's a Core, you know, what's this other thing? So there's just stuff that needs to happen for Latin Americans that we don't think about here until like quote unquote Silicon Valley talking about it as in the cloud in the US in developed markets, but also like, okay, then you're able to raise money. How you get money down to your country? That's not simple at all. Like, how do you think about like the FX transactions and not get screwed in the process and who's going to do it? And so anyway, there's like a number of these things that make it super hard. And so that's some of the problems that we wanted to solve. Why it matters to me?”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Succeed like maybe it's a little bit of advice, but it's like, and not only that, but I had a lot of experiences where I would mention something about growth that I had learned and that would blow the entrepreneur's mind. And I would think, why do I know this but not this entrepreneur who honestly is smarter and more ambitious than me? Oh, it's because I've had a career in Silicon Valley. It's because I've gotten to work with some of the best people in the world and I have access to this information just free flowing in my way all the time. And that's we take it for granted. So how can we make this more accessible to Latin America's entrepreneurs so that they can have access to that? What else is hard to get access to that could really get in the way? Oh, like access to capital. Okay, so what's the VC in the angel ecosystem looking like and what can we do that can actually impact that at scale? And then there's other pieces of the ecosystem that are missing. Like if you're going to start a company, you have to incorporate it. Sounds super boring. But like in Brazil is one of the countries that takes the longest time to incorporate a company in the world. But then if”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Opportunity for growth in tech is huge all over the world, meaning there's just more and more to do. There's more pieces of our lives that can become more efficient or better or cheaper by making them digital in some way, shape, or form because digital products scale. We are behind when it comes to that in terms of Latin America and our economy is also not doing super great right now. There's a number of things that make it tougher to succeed in Latin America, but make the outcome of potential success much higher. And simply put, there's a lot of low hanging fruit because a lot of what has already been digitized and productized in the US and more developed markets just hasn't in Latin America. And every time I took these calls, I would think like, well, you know, this is not very efficient for me to be doing this one-to-one call. I feel very good about myself. Like I feel great and this entrepreneur learned a lot, but I wish I could do this more at scale. And also, it doesn't seem like this is what's going to help the entrepreneur.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Lenny, I don't see it as a pivot because, as we were joking at the beginning, I've been an employee, I was an operator at early stage startups, and now I'm a founder and I'm a VC, so I'm still kind of like in this little like stack of roles that we have in our little tech ecosystem. And in my time working with Tumblr and my agency in Duolingo, I had the pleasure of speaking with entrepreneurs all over the world, in part because I started getting some media because of the work that I've been doing at starting at Tumblr. So a lot of entrepreneurs reached out to me, but also because I became a mentor for an organization called Endeavour, which is global. So I started working with entrepreneurs in Japan. And Brazil on my free time, just mentoring. And I know that the opportunity for growth in terms of tech in Latin America is huge because, first of all,”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an 80 20, so you know, like just focus on what will get you the 80 and not the 20. And then when you have the luxury of focusing on the 20, then you can.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is almost more important than money when you're a startup. So it's important to keep things super simple. And this was something that we did that actually ended up paying off with few exceptions like India and China.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are different and like highlight those because it makes them feel special, unique. We're all special and unique in all of our amazing ways, but this is not necessarily it. And when you're trying to be super cautious of your resources, you have to ignore some of that because then you're able to roll out things once, which is important. But in addition to that, every new A-B test you want to run or every new hypothesis you have, if you now have a version of your app that's different in Mexico and China, in India, whatever, you're going to have to run that test and whatever change you have in all of those versions and then users start having all of these different versions of the app everywhere. And good luck managing that in terms of code, in terms of processes, in terms of personnel, in terms of costs, and most importantly, in terms of time. Because now every single experiment or hypothesis is going to take you way longer to be able to deploy.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know like 5% of getting people of understanding people. And if as a startup, whether it be early Treating the world as one, and whenever we deployed an A test or tried something new in terms of marketing, we would just look at it as, okay, will this, if this worked here, it will work there and we should just try it out everywhere, which meant like, you know, every time I went and launched Duolingo New Market, I got the same feedback, whatever country it was, here it's different. People are different, you don't understand. And what you're doing is not going to work. And here's why you need to change. And if we had actually listened to that, it would cause all kinds of problems. Like in our country, we think that green is a negative color. Like owls are poorly seen as an animal. Or here people think that free things are actually of low value. They like things that are expensive. Oh, people here really like free things. And I'm like, everyone likes free things. They're like, oh, in this country, whatever. So yes, I think that countries are different, but it's more important to realize that people like to think they're different and people like to think they're country.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that this is very controversial because Not only is it the case that when you're working in regulated industries, maybe in more B2B situations, like looking at specific countries is important. Looking at specific countries and elements of these countries are important, especially when you're looking at like, I don't know, laws. And if you need legal differences, there's a lot of things that make countries different is where I'm trying to get. However, humans are very similar. And we think we're very different. I don't think we're that different. I think that maybe we were brought up differently. And like, so for example, in Brazil, we like to dance for Mexico, we like to dance salsa. In some places, it's okay to hug, in other places not okay to hug. Yes, there are cultural differences and it's important to love everyone and to adapt, et cetera. But a lot of these differences when it comes to core human behavior are fine.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every single text that was published and whether or not it wasn't the right voice or not, it has to do with having those conversations with the executive team where you talk about who is duo and what are they like and how do they talk and what do they sound like? And is this a duo thing to say? Is this not a dual thing to say and committing to this idea that you're going to be remembered, that you're going to do things that are sometimes going to rub people the wrong way and you're not just going to sit squarely in one place? I think that opens the possibility for a TikTok like the one that DuLingo has today to exist. But again, whoever's running the TikTok, you're amazing.”
2023-10-19 · Lenny's Podcast · Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf (Latitud, Duolingo) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source