YouSaid · the spoken record

Luis Von Ahn

lines on the record: 152
first: 2016-01-26
most recent: 2016-01-26
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

“On Twitter, it's Luis Fonan at L-U-I-S-V-O-N-A-H-N. That's where I'm on Twitter. I should tweet more. I just did a quora thing yesterday, so I'm pretty, they have their own version of an AMA on Quora now. And I just did that yesterday. So I'm recently active on Quora. You can just search for my name there. I guess on Facebook too slash Luis Vonan on Facebook.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh boy. I don't know if I do. There's the shameless plug of using Duolingo, but other than that, I don't have anything great.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is the thing that you search for, like it was like in the New York Times and everything. It's just the thing that you just searched for seven minute workout where it's like some pushups and some sit-up.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start working out. I did not start working out until I was like 3132 and that was between ages 25 and 30 I gained 40 pounds and then I lost them again at around age 31 and that was not good.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Derailed. It's over, and you always usually don't have as much information as they do. And so you're not getting all the details right. And it's usually much better to just get it over with and then explain or whatever. So I've gotten much better at that. So yeah, classes on how to manage would have been great.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was terrible. I've learned, and really the trick is to start the conversation by saying I'm going to have to let you go. Like you just start that. And if you do that, then there's no, see, working up to it is bad. Because if you start by trying to build up an argument so that at the end you say, and that's why I'm going to have to let you go, the problem is they start arguing midway. Like you say, well, you know, last week when you did that, they're like, no, that's not what happened. And then after they argue three or four of your points, your whole thing is gone and you cannot be.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that I've had to learn over the years kind of through the hard way how to be a manager. I think it's been... Giving somebody feedback, especially when it's not positive, is tricky. Firing somebody is really, I now know how to do this pretty well, but I sucked the first few times I had to fire somebody. In fact, there was somebody that I had to fire like three times because they did not understand that I was trying to fire.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, let's see, what would I have said to my 20-year-old self, I probably would have said Learn more about How to run a business in college? There's probably some good classes. I mean, when I was in college, I was just, all I took was like, you know, kind of. Either computer science classes or English classes for writing. I really liked writing. But everything else, I just did not want to take any classes. And I should have taken advantage of, I'm sure there were some great classes on how to run a business. That's advice I would have given to my 20-year-old self-specific.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I just have to get into something else. It's the type of thing. I've gotten more into podcasts. I've gotten more into learning about different things. I'm just trying to learn all kinds of different things. And I think that's something I actually want to start a separate project that is not a company of any form that just to occupy myself more so during the weekends. So that I'm really spending less time on being on top of every single little thing at Duolingo.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Personality and users that I know. No, no, no. Activities. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So you can't just say like, I'm going to just not, I'm just going to go home now. You can't quite do that. That won't.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've really gotten much better at this over the last year. And I think I still have, this is kind of one of the things I want to do this year. Really be better at not working all the time. I actually think I am more effective, not just efficient, obviously more efficient, but also more effective in general if I don't work all the time. And it's for a couple of reasons. One is personally I just, I feel more rested, et cetera. But actually, I've realized that this is, you know, this is one of the things that is really helping me scale the company. It used to be the case that I really was on top of everything. And it actually helps when I'm not on top of things. Because other people really rise up. And I think that that is actually a good thing for Duolingo that I'm not working all the time. And I think that that's probably, I should have probably done that earlier. I probably would have had a more enjoyable life too.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's crazy. I mean, we're, you know, that was the last step we made. So we started, well, not technically, I mean, we didn't make a Windows app after, but we started with a website, then an iPhone app, then an Android app. Today, 55% of our traffic is Android. So we should have done Android sooner. I guess one piece of advice. I probably would tell myself to work less, to be honest. I think that I would tell myself to do that.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you do start Duolingo, make an Android app sooner rather than later, that would have been good advice for us to have.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it would be. This I can answer because I've thought about this. It would be a billboard right across the street from the Google Office here in Pittsburgh that says we at Duolingo are hiring and yes, we can match your salary.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is something that I believe to be true even? I'll say this. I believe that it was a good choice to start duoling coherence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I can't prove that, but I believe it was a pretty good choice.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is amazing for somebody who has never had to design an organization. It is amazing how hard that is. It's not easy.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that one was good. And also our board members, I mean, we have really good board members for Duolingo, and I've basically, I've asked them a lot of questions. I mean, the latest one, our board member from Google Capital, Layla, she's amazing. She basically, I sat with her and were like, okay, we're going to reorganize the company. Let's do it. And we basically just sat there for a few hours and came up with a reorg of the whole company. And that was pretty useful.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is one of the ones where the hard thing about hard things was helpful. He talks a lot about building organization and how to do that. I found, let's see, in some cases, I found A few blogs, well, oh, well, Fred Wilson's blog is great.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This sounds great. This really sounds great. We are a flat company, et cetera. Unfortunately, this just does not work after a certain number of employees. And you get to chaos at about 25 employees. It starts becoming chaotic. And so you have to start coming up with some sort of structure and some sort of hierarchy. And out of every startup that I've heard, there is an allergy against that. Because it's like, oh man, now we're going to have managers. Yeah, what's next? Are we going to have to start filling out TPS reports and like what is going on here? But it takes a little bit of time to really convince people that this is actually worthwhile. But fortunately, we've gone through this now and we're fine. But this was much harder than I thought it would be.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's just, you know, when you're just here, we have 60 employees and already we see just all kinds of issues. One of the standard things that people that startups go through, and fortunately we went through it and it worked out well. But at the beginning, it's flat. Everybody has, you know, there's no management. Nobody really has a boss. It's kind of flat.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, that's a good question. You know, probably... I don't know exactly how to phrase it, but it is way harder to build a good organization than I thought before. You know, before I kind of worked that, I always worked at a company or something that somebody else had made the culture or the organization or something. And it's so easy to find. Bad things about things about company culture It's so easy. Yeah, nothing's perfect. And you're just like, always, but now that I'm the one in charge of building an organization, it is really hard. And I am now even more impressed at the people who have built companies with 10,000 employees. It's just impressive how the culture at Google still remains. It's just impressive.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I don't know if they're bad luck, but certainly in China, people are like, why an owl? And no, actually in China, because it's green, they're like, why are you using a parrot?”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny because now when we started, we were here and knowledge, wisdom makes sense. But now that we're expanding or we've expanded to the whole world, this is not true in every other country, right?”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so this is a great company. We love working with them. And in one of our first meetings about the branding of the company, my co-founder Severin, he said, you know, I don't know much about design and I don't particularly care, but I'll tell you this. I hate the color green. I hate it. And we all thought it would be hilarious. If our mascot was a green thing, and so that's why it's green. We are playing a joke on our co-founder. Ever since then, every day of his life, he has to see this. He shouldn't have said that.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so that was, there's a story behind that. We were just getting started with Duolingo, and we had hired a Canadian company to help.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I put that on for the last hour of the day that I'm awake. You know, I hate to admit it because I made a lot of fun of this before until this person in my office gave me the glasses as a gift. I kind of made fun of this, but it really does seem to work. After I started putting those on for one hour before I go to sleep, I really can sleep a lot better.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there are these big orange glasses because I wear glasses, so they're going to go on top of my glasses. So I look like I'm like, you know, 90 years old.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I bought it. Well, no, I didn't buy them. Somebody gave them to me in the office. Somebody from the office heard that I was having some trouble sleeping. And they gave me these glasses that block out blue light.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now he is supposedly the next Justin Beaver, but he's clean, you see. Like a shtick. He does have a pretty catchy song. It's called Stitches. I actually had heard the song, but I didn't really know who he was. But then there were some people in the office who were, let's say they were female and they were younger. They all knew who he was and they were like, oh my God, I cannot believe. So he started using Dueling. When he started tweeting about it a lot, he started basically saying, you know, tweeting a lot about how he was using Duolingo and how he is learning Spanish, et cetera. And that was an interesting source of users. We got, I don't know how many users we got, but we got a good number of them from him just tweeting a lot that he was learning Spanish. You know, those are the ones that come to mind.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Outside, usually outside. I mean, some in the US, but that one you can usually find on Twitter. We get a lot of users on St. Patrick's Day Learning Irish. For one day, they don't stick around. So it's funny, we do see that type of thing where this is another one which was interesting when the Paris attacks happened, our French course got a bump of users in the week after that. Yeah, so that type of thing happens. What are others that are interesting? Well, we've been this one's just interesting. We've been in fashion advice magazines. Sometimes we're there for some reason and we get a bunch of users. Oh, another one was also interesting. Sean Mendes.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have had, well, let's see, what are good ones? Surprising sources of users. We've had... You know, sometimes we get users that we get huge spikes that we cannot explain and later we figure out that it's TV. It's very funny that we cannot even see tweets about it. We see nothing and somehow there's just a huge spike. We had a vision.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by active, I mean, they didn't just look at the website. I mean, they completed a lesson on Duolingo. So I look at that.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we pay a lot of attention to two right now. One is how well people are learning, the way we measure that. Basically, some of the exercises we're giving you are not there for teaching. We're just testing you. And we're testing previous things just so that how well we're teaching you. And we do make changes to try to make it so that you will answer these test questions. Correctly more often. So we pay attention to this. We have a kind of composite score of how well our users are learning. I pay attention to that. That one doesn't change that much per day. That one really only changes whenever we do an experiment. And we do multiple experiments a week, but it doesn't change that per day. The one that is a little less outside of our control is the number of active users that we had the previous day.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have our own dashboard that we made. It runs on top of this thing called mix panel. And we have our, you know, so I usually open it to see the previous day how we performed, et cetera. I don't know if this is a smart move or not. I do it, but I don't know if it's a smart move because it really determines my mood for the first several hours in terms of if we did well the previous day. It's like I'm a happy camper. If we did not do well the previous day for some reason, like, you know, somehow traffic is a little lower than the day before that or something. I'm not in a great mood. So I think I'm going to stop doing that. I don't think this is healthy. I do that. And then I go work out for 16 minutes. And then I eat a yogurt. That's my morning routine.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wake up, I check my email. Let's see. Basically, I open my laptop. I check my email. I check some sort of Duolingo metrics.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do not have it within Arm's reach, but it really is very nice that you can easily take it out and put it back in. That just makes, you know, I don't know what it is. It's not like it saves that much time, but it just makes your life a little better”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, man, you know, I don't buy much. I really just don't buy much for myself. Do I have under 100, but it was close. I bought a Tumi backpack. really has changed my life in terms of travel. I just need it a lot.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like, you know, the one I saw relatively recent, a lot of people have seen it. I saw it's Giro Dreams of Sushi. I like that a lot.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, my favorite movie is still The Matrix. It's old school by now, but it's just my favorite movie. My mind was blown when I watched that.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not saying that this is recommended, this is just what I do. And it has worked. I lost 40 pounds. Yeah, yeah. And so from then I stuck with it and I just go. Mainly I'm trying to be optimal with time that I spend. Well, I don't know if it's optimal, but I'm trying to save time.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's a crazy, some people say I'm going to have a heart attack. I basically run at absolute maximum speed that I can, which is about 9.8 miles an hour for about 16 minutes. That's it”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I used to really like Borges. Yeah. Bor Yes, I used to really like it. But I have just not, really over the last like three years, I just have not. I've really only listened to, you know what I do is I listen to books while I'm working out in the mornings. That is, the sole time when I listen to books and it's always just some sort of non-fiction thing.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do not as much. I mainly kind of read, well, not read, listen to nonfiction books. I have listened to fiction just not as often.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's see, what do I gift? My gifts are usually pretty lame to people. I give gifts cards because I don't have to think much about them. And I compensate by giving higher amounts of money. I compensate by that. I'm like, that's easier. I just hear.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, because I don't read very much, I really just listen, I haven't really gifted books. I mean, I really do recommend zero to one to people. I say you should really read zero to one.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who would my second choice be? Successful. I mean, it's the usual ones. I'm so into the mainstream culture of success in startups that it's the usual people that everybody, I think, thinks of. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg. When you say the word success, that's kind of what I think.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably Larry Page. Well, I am a huge fan of Google. I just think everything they do, they don't always succeed, but usually the approach they take, I'm like, yeah, they're smart. So yeah, I'm a huge fan.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they just speak. And I think that if you're able to get yourself to just say stuff and speak it, I think that that makes a huge difference because those people are just getting way more practice. So what happens is when they start, they're going to sound kooky, of course, but over time they're just going to get way more practice than the quiet person who is waiting until they're perfect to speak. And that's just going to take a really long time. I say it's hard because that really depends a lot on your personality. And there's just some people that just can't do that. But if you can, just get yourself to speak. I mean, this is, for example, Benny Lewis. This is, I think that's one of the reasons he's so good. He just starts speaking.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So this is a recommendation, but it's really hard. I'll tell you what it is. It's really hard. And we've really noticed this. The people that we've noticed are best at learning a language. Are usually not because they're smarter, not because they're anything. It's really just that they have no trouble sounding stupid”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's pretty good. I mean, and we hear of people doing that a lot, of some sort of strategy with movie subtitles.”
2016-01-26 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #135: Luis Von Ahn on Learning Languages, Building Companies, and Changing the World · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT