Over 100 million users are on the platform. You can measure the app’s success by its ubiquity: educational institutions have adopted it for language learning in classrooms. It is one of the world's leading apps for language learning, and its gamified format has gotten individual language enthusiasts hooked.
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| Image source: play.google.com |
Duolingo is a lesson on venture capital’s foresight. But its success and capitalization could be a chicken and egg question.
For an app to succeed, there must be an initial venture capitalist who made a winning bet on it. And now that it is riding high, more investors are getting into the party: In June, the app managed to raise another $45 million, with initial investors like Ashton Kutcher, Union Square Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers willingly putting additional stake.
The investment round was led by Google Capital, which was impressed by the numbers the app was bringing in.
Meanwhile, Duolingo’s own associate product manager attributes the app’s success to its gamified format, which puts language learners at ease and benchmarks their progress through gaming motivations. The app, at its core, essentially addressed the problems of motivation in language learning for most people.
This, perhaps, neatly sums up the most bankable feature of tech launches that attracts venture capitalists: providing solutions to a need, then imbuing the technology with features for sustaining the fulfillment of that need.
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| Image source: pinterest.com |
Gregory Lindae has built an impressive track record and influence in venture capital and private equity markets. He has worked with prestigious companies like BlackRock, Salomon Brothers, and FMO. For more updates on this industry, visit this blog.
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