Scaling Duolingo, embracing failure, and insight into Latin America’s tech scene | Gina Gotthilf

Communication is constantly underrated and communication isn't about being able to convey a message it's about being able to convey a message in a way that the listener receives it and understands it and like remembers it and that's really hard to do one of the things I've helped employ at dual lingo that I think is still there today it's definitely not just me it was an amazing team is a unique voice and what that means is like Not just another language learning app where we give you instructions and you follow directions there is always a quirk

like it's unexpected the way we talk to you is little bit funny it doesn't take ourselves too seriously and it makes the person receiving this message feel something again it's about how you make people feeling it you feel like either you giggle or you're like wait what they just did what you know and using that to your to your Benefit today my guest is Gina godil Gina is most known for leading growth and marketing at dualingo helping take them from 3 million to over 200 million users primarily through organic and non-paid growth channels which we

explore in depth she also worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign where she oversaw a historic digital ad budget and she shares learnings from that experience she also LED growth in community for Tumblr in Latin America Currently she is the co-founder and COO of latitude which is a company dedicated to helping build the next generation of iconic Tech startups in Latin America in our wide- ranging conversation Gina shares a ton of new insights and tactics on how dualingo grew early on how they grow today and most interesting in ly what they did to become one

of the very rare successful consumer subscription businesses we also talk about how every life and career has an aside and a bside Also why PR and brand are way underappreciated by most startups she shares a bunch of stories of failed experiments and also some of her biggest wins also why Latin America is so interesting right now as a hub for startups and for Innovation also there's a bit of philosophy sprinkled in and a bunch of real talk this was such a fun conversation Gina is delightful I am excited for you to learn from her with

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hex Tech / Lenny Gina thank you so much for being here welcome to the podcast Lenny I'm so excited to be here it's been awesome to see how you've built this and just how far it's gone thank you for inviting me really appreciate that I'm more excited to have you on the podcast and I know you just came off hosting a massive event somewhere in Latin America I think You had 5,000 something people he had Ben harwitz keynoting and I wanted to start with uh the talk you gave I think you described it as people

having this aside and bside to their life kind of like a record has an aside and bide so could you just share there what it was this conference and then to kind of just briefly share this concept as much as you can for sure and thank thanks for that Lenny look I think for us for those of us here in the US I became an American last year I love the US I've been here for 19 years it's hard to imagine just how much is going on South of the Border there's actually you know 60

million people living across Latin America and it's an economy of6 trillion dollars um and Brazil is a huge Market just in terms of sheer size over 200 million people and also in terms of where the ecosystem is I am Brazilian so I am Latin American even though sometimes Brazilians are not sure if They are Latin American because we speak Portuguese and so the the future of the region really matters to me and helping people get the opportunities that I've had in terms of access to information and resources that could help them build scalable very successful

startups can really change the economy across the board I believe in that much more than I believe in government and like whether we're going to vote this guy or that guy next and so that's sort of you know the Impetus for the company the conference was a conference put together by my company I'm a co-founder we're three Brian Yuri and I we put this conference together to bring together the top entrepreneurs operators and investors across Latin America but also people are interested in investing in the region of which there are more and more here in

the US and abroad more than 5,000 people came we had over 70 speakers it was across two days we had amazing people Like you know Ben Horowitz who never gave like a talk or like did a Fireside specifically for and about Latin America and the opportunity but we also had incredible Founders who you you know in terms of like us operators may not be as as familiar with but if you've ever heard of rappie it's a really important delivery company in Latin America so the founder of flew down from Miami for that and then we

had you know VCS from like a lot of the top names that you've heard Here in the region as well and then a lot of unicorns we've had a lot of unicorns in so they were all there and the idea was to share learnings along the way um successes and failure so that people can Skip by not making the same mistakes as others and I was asked to to open both days and then the first day the the opening talk that I ended up giving was this concept that I really like which is the a

side and the B side of a story Which is that if you are old like me and maybe you Lenny I think we're similar age you remember what a CD or like or what a what a what a mixtape was like and we had the A and the B side we are very encouraged in our lives especially professionally to talk about our as sides all the time because that's what impresses people that that's what opens doors that's what allows us to keep growing and it's so important so it means that a lot of what you

hear in Podcast and on on stage ends up being the Instagram version of someone or a company or a country's trajectory it's just the highlights you know and when I talk about my a side it's very impressive you know I did things like we'll talk about I met President Obama I worked on the Mike Bloom presid Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign I helped do lingo skill from 3 to 200 million users I worked with Tumblr helping them scale Latin America andreon horo invested in my company Etc but between all of those highlights there were so many

B moments that get sort of like shoved under the rug because it's just easier for me and it's more impressive for others but I really like to highlight those because I think that most of us have a lot of be moments every day every week every month and every period of our lives and it's easy to think that things are just not going to work out for us because we're In one of those be moments if we don't recognize them as moments and the story I ended up telling was how you know much like I

have this these A and B sides that I don't talk about my B Sid so much Latin America also has a and b sides because it's really easy to focus on like it's dangerous like we're behind um you know the governments are a mess there's like Financial uh insecurity but there's a lot of aside in there and a lot of the aside is the opportunity we Have in terms of tech because in terms of G percentage of GDP that Tech occupies compared to other markets it's very promising we're at like onethird of India on10th of

China 13th of the United States meaning that like tech companies can grow a lot so that they occupy that space in the GDP in terms of the GDP which is believable so that was the concept of the talk and the reason for this conference I love this concept we're Going to talk as you expected about a lot of your aside stuff is there any example of a B-side story of your life that would be interesting to share look I think those are the most interesting because they're they're they're funny or ridiculous you know but I'll

just say that I had a lot of bsides and I still do for example I you know I had I had no idea what I wanted to do I actually wanted to be I thought I wanted to be an actress I either wanted to be that Person in SeaWorld who goes like this with the dolphin this is before SeaWorld was cancelled or I wanted to be an actress but then my parents convinced me that it was I was probably not not going to succeed because the odds weren't in my favor I applied to schools I

didn't get into any ivy league I didn't get into any of the top schools I wanted to go to when I got to college I actually ended up dropping out because I got so depressed like incredibly depressed Couldn't get out of bed depressed ironically I dropped out of Reed College which is the same College that's jobs dropped out of so you know I was just destined for greatness I knew it at that moment it all makes sense looking backwards as he said totally I was dropping out being like yes this is exactly the path no

I was I was miserable I thought there was no path forward and when I and I finally went back and graduated the the college Counselor looked at my curriculum and said what have you even done with your life there's nothing to show for and it was shocking because I was always like the overachiever who wanted to do the maximum curriculum and like Ace all of my classes and do whatever you know like I I did three diplomas in high school the international the American the Brazilian my one learning there that has stuck with me and

I think can can work for Other people too is that it's not just about doing things that actually matter and like and and learning it's about being able to tell a story and it's about understanding what other people perceive as valuable I'm not talking about net value but I'm talking about if you want to grow in the world it's understanding that psychology of how humans react to what you're showing them so that was one lesson but then I went on to you know I I went I applied to 100 Companies I didn't hear back from

most of them I finally got an internship at kind of like a tier BC digital marketing agency in New York City because I wanted to live in New York so badly um and they forgot to apply for my Visa on time so I lost my Visa and had to go back to Brazil and then I ended up leaving that organization to go work for another one and like I won't even go into the details of the the shadiness of that company that I worked for but then they Ended up laying me off so I lost

my Visa again had to go back home found another opportunity got fired that time so there was just a lot of rockiness in my start that I don't think you would imagine when you see someone up on stage like leading a conference for 5,000 people um that I think is important and even when I started working for Tumblr I was like this is it like I made it this is a really interesting company this is going to work out that was super Rocky because It was an early stage startup so for example you know they

couldn't figure out how to wire money to Brazil so I was not paid for six months and at one point me and like my colleagues were trying to get money out of the teller to pay contractors because we had no money to pay them and like we borrowed money from people and and finally they also laid me off because they decided to sell to Yahoo and then I had to figure out like what am I going to do no one's going to Hire me I've been fired and laid off so many times so this is

all before I started like an agency to help us-based tech companies and startups grow in Latin America because I figured I was in like this really great place to make that happen and it eventually worked for well-known companies such as dualingo at the time they weren't well known they were a tiny little startup they didn't have an Android app and that's how I started working with dualingo because Their head of marketing connected with someone they had worked with at Flickr and said I noticed Tumblr grew a lot in Brazil last year can you recommend like

a company or an agency to help and they said this girl and I was 26 and so they connect that's how they connected me with dualingo and I started helping them grow in Brazil as a consultant they were like this is great can you help us grow in Chile Argentina and I was like yes they were like how about Mexico and I Was like yes you know I I did I know anything about these places Lenny did I know people there no but like you can figure it out and then they ended up asking me

to come on full-time do that across the world Japan China Korea turkey Spain France Etc and then to own growth which ended up meaning communication social media government Partnerships anything to grow and then a lot of and then eventually became an AB testing growth Engine with engineers and PMs and designers of which I knew nothing about and you know even after that like I left dualingo five years later didn't know what to do with my life you'd think oh wow you have it figured out now you left to a lingo you have the world in

front of you and I'm like maybe I can finally go work for nonprofits which is what I actually wanted to do in the first place try to hand at that like had a couple of experiences before going to work for the Mike Bloomberg campaign working for the Mike Bloomberg campaign is impressive but you know what Mike Bloomberg didn't win he's not the president so that was not a successful campaign you know if you really look at it um and and and yeah latitude seems like it's a really promising path but there's a days and B

days um so it's just a lot of that and just staying resilient and and believing in yourself and getting back on the horse when you Fall in your face amazing that's such an important message I think one of the threads from what you're describing something that I think about a lot is people kind of underestimate how long their career is there's just so much time to do stuff and for things to start to work that's going to sound really fancy but I think Marcus aelius has this quote about how our life is actually very long

we just use it really badly and we just waste a lot of our time I Think you're so right Lenny and I love that because people are going around being like life is short life is short but that's so true we waste so much time but also I think we don't we don't recognize how much opportunity we have in front of us and as a 26-year-old I definitely thought my career was over you know I was like I blew it and like looking back it's funny you know yeah I know exactly what you mean like

I spent nine years at my first job at a random Company in San Diego and a startup I was like what am I doing here so long and then and it turned out that was really useful for the thing I did next and then eventually wow things started to really take off so I think that's a really good lesson for people just for a long time like this is my fourth career I was like I've switched careers many times I was a engineer then I was a Founder then I was a product manager now whatever

this is whatever you call this thing um okay so Yeah yeah I guess me too I was I was an operator I was a consultant well I was an employee I was a consultant then I was an operator which is a fancy way of saying employee at a startup and then now I'm a founder and a VC and an angel and whatever this is awesome awesome so I think I think that's a really important takeway just there's a lot of time to do stuff and don't stress if things aren't moving as fast as you want

I want to try to B Around between aside and bside in this conversation that'd be a cool framework and so we're going to definitely talk about dualingo and a little bit more about Latin America I wanted to touch on this Mike Mike Bloomberg story so what I understand from your experience there is you deployed a historic amount of money into paid ads as a part of that campaign I'm just curious what you learn from running paid ads at that scale uh for a campaign or just broadly so I you know We deployed historic amounts of

money in the campaign it was Gina personally think that's important to share so so my the M Bloomer presidential campaign was spending roughly a million dollar a day which is crazy um and you can do a lot with a million dollars a day it's good to be Google it's good to be Google but yes it's got to be Facebook I I'll share you know what I think is most useful here and also what my experience ended up Being which is you know they they brought together a lot of great talent from across the US in

especially in terms of tech this was this organization called Hogfish that he started working with the Mike wiberg basically he created it I don't know it was like embedded in there there were a lot of us who had large Eagles and and had been like sharks in our previous organizations who had to figure out how to come together and work and in a very Short amount of time that was a very interesting experience because it's hard to do that it's not just important to be great and smart but it's also important to understand how to

most effective effectively deploy your resources and talent across an organization and that sort of takes a little bit of time to to happen and for a presidential campaign that's you know I I find that very hard to do from that one experience that said it also meant that when you're looking At the paid ads and the fact that we were deploying this massive amount of money there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it came to figuring out exactly what we were going to do with those ads and like how we were going

to Target them and what are the campaigns we're going to run and what's the copy and what's the design and after you know maybe a few days there I realized that my my my best bet in terms of actually adding value was Not to be another cook in the kitchen trying to figure that out but to move into the next step of the journey which nobody was paying attention to which is once you click on an ad you land somewhere and then whatever happens there is super important because if people then take the action you

want them to take on that landing page or don't is definitive but everyone spends all of their effort and money money on the ads and I think that this is true of Almost everything we forget to think about the step by step in growth and what that experience looks like and even just the second or third screen after in an experience are as if not more important than the first one because that's where your quote unquote leaky buckets can happen so if you're able to twox the effectiveness of a landing page you are able to

like actually in a compounded way increase the effectiveness of that first ad so I Spent a lot of time kind of going rogue and figuring out how to make landing pages because like the designers and the copywriters were all allocated to the the actual ad so I was just there being like I'm going to do copyrighting and design and figure out you know how we can how we can increase these conversion rates and the cool thing about that level of dollar deployment is that you're able to reach statistical significance very quickly whereas like In a

company like dualingo where you already have a lot of users and you can reach statistical significance on an AB test within two weeks at the mik lumer presidential campaign on a landing page we could see that three times a day you know so like four times a day so I would be able to like do something and be like oh wow this has has 3% conversion rate and then like get approval for like a new version and deploy it and then be like okay we're at 6% now and then Actually improve three to I there

was one day where like I brought one page from 3 to 12% conversion rate with statistical significance so that's I think the the biggest benefit of having those dollar amounts I think the the drawback and that's the same for startups that have a lot of money to spend is you start going a little wild in terms of like oh like the money's are the the world's our oyster we can do whatever we want and you lose sight a Little bit about Effectiveness which is where growth is so magical what was that change in the landing

page you did that increased conversion so much you remember none of this is going to blow anyone's minds I think because it's very best practices but it's easy to overlook when you're so focused on so many different steps of a process the first one is making it mobile optimized so people really like people who are working are working on their computers On desktop computers even today we forget that most people are looking at pages on our phones and that has been the case for a while and I think it's just increasing so you need to

make sure that that experience of looking at something on your phone whatever your phone is is great and what that means is like from a landing page perspective super simple like first it has like you know the the core copy the message and button need to be above the fold or if You're not going to keep the button above the fold which I still recommend but if you're if you're not going to do that for whatever reason then you need to have a very clear indicator that like it's that there's something to scroll towards on

your page the second thing applies to both desktop and mobile is people skim and copywriters don't like to believe that much like journalists don't like to believe that people just read headlines it's just how it is People are busy and lazy uh myself included so you can write all of this beautiful messaging that you've thought through but if people are not going to read it it doesn't matter so you have to approach a landing page with that perspective in as much as possible and so for me what makes something particularly skimmable is first you know

restricting copy a lot and even even copy that seems short is probably not short enough second so people normally Like to have like a title some sort of like subtitle and then like an image and a button those are kind of like core pieces of like some sort of landing page experience having the title and the button speak to each other is really cool because if people only read the title on the butt and they got it like it can't be like wouldn't you like the next president of the United States so blah blah blah

and then like a whole explanation of what and then the button Is like um I don't know apply whatever right like it's like apply for what now I have to go read the thing and I didn't get it so just keeping those two things super speaking to each other and then of course making sure that that landing page speaks to the ad experience and that's something that I think people do pay some attention to finally there's a there's an element of emotion to it which I didn't get super deep in but just very basic right

like my job was to Create a landing page that made people so it was actually funnily enough before Co hit the US and then and then Co hit the US half the people in that campaign got coid on on our like sad like goodbye Mike Bloomberg party and I had already bounced and I left New York because I was scared I was like the city is going to be a petri dish and I spent months trying to convince the whole United States as much as I could that coid was going to hit the United States

and there Were going to be a lot of deaths unless we had a different president and so I of course convinced myself very effectively that like we were in grave danger and so to do that like we had images in the background of different sorts like Mike Bloomberg and like whatever like but what is fear you know fear really inspires people and and that's just a a truth about human psychology especially when it comes to like a presidential campaign so having dark colors like Black like having Trump in sort of like a black um scenario

kind of looking down and looking a little menacing is more powerful than having Trump looking ridiculous for example in the context of we we need to take action otherwise there will be deaths because of this right so it depends on the concept but don't underplay the the importance of understanding how people are going to feel when they see something and whether that's going to lead them to take action Keeping it super super simple because also the other thing I see is like a lot of images you know it's like no the image can't distract from

your core message it just has to be a background thing that aids in the digestion of that message feel like all these uh startups are going to start adding Trump menacing Trump to their landing pages because it works for you guys they're going to alienate 50% of the American population true there's a few other things I wanted To dig into one is obviously dueling ghost so let's just spend some time here so it's really interesting I've written with my newsletter I've written over 200 posts the number one most popular post of all time did not

expect this was about the story of duelingo and the way that the team reignited growth after it started to Plateau this was by Jorge mazal Ma ma okay cool yes okay there's the the right pronunciation and so clearly there's a lot of interest in d The dualingo story and you were there before Jorge you were there really early I think you were there from 3 million users to 200 200 million that's kind of the what I hear you describe that's my claim to okay great that's a that's a large large growth trajectory so one thing

I wanted to ask broadly is it feels like B Toc subscription app like never work they never last there's so few success stories of consumer subscription apps there's like dualingo Like calm maybe but it's I don't know feels like it's slowing down head space grammarly sort of like there's there's like always they're like okay and there's a few that are okay that most die I guess I'm mostly curious what is it that you think ding good did right to make it basically and continue to thrive even these days very few people really believe that we

were going to make it not surprisingly right even though we had like this amazing team Etc and now It looks almost obvious it's like yeah B Toc language learning just like seems so Niche and plus education there's no money in education like you know it's been stuck for so long so you know and what I I kept hearing you guys did you hear about Rosetta Stone like this solution already exists um so I I think that there are a couple things that really made dueling was success which are very hard to replicate number one an

up for the mission that sounds cliche I Think a lot of Founders and and start of people like to talk about the mission and I get it and I think it's it's real but I really mean it because this Obsession for solving a problem for hundreds of millions of people and the problem wasn't just a vitamin it was a problem in the sense that if you don't know English in today's world your opportunities to get out of your socioeconomic zone are very diminished more specific specifically You can double or triple your income potential by learning

English in a developing market like Latin America and there are lots of those around the world that belief that education should be free and that people should have access to that opportunity not just in developing countries but of course also in the US really drove the organization in a way that drove how we built our marketing how we spoke to our users how we designed the experience how we put Barriers in front of taking decisions that would actually impact that mission it helped our users rally around the business it helped us hire the best people

even if we were based in Pittsburgh and couldn't necessarily pay the Google dollars so it's it's really hard to measure the importance of just really being obsessed about that mission but I speak to a lot of Education Founders you know edtech Founders and I'm very bias probably because of this Experience I will say that I had one of those what's it called the experiment where they had like they looked at all of the shots that some plane got when it came back from war and then started fixing the plane there's a name for this right

and then they realized name the pictures yeah the picture the red fix those spots because if they got back they survived they were like missing the plane that like fell right so I I got to ride in a plane that survived so I have A oh it's called um Survivor bias maybe that sounds that sounds right yeah I have Survivor bias but that I really believe in this survivorship bias so if I if I speak to a founder and I can tell that they're they're building an Tech because they believe that they will be able

to make money from it there's nothing wrong with making money nothing I want to make money you know I think it's a capitalist world that we live in and it's fine but just that drive and is What brings people to you and it's what leads you to make long-term thinking decisions that really end up mattering and it's what allowed us in many ways to grow organically versus with payx ads which I think is crucial for an early stage Tech startup it's not the only thing but I think it's one of them is super important just

to follow that thread that's something that I actually found I wrote a post about this looking into of the ones that made it what did They do consistently across them all and one is just stay very lean and Scrappy for a long time because to your point it's so hard to build a big business and you can't afford like you said the best people you can't pay them as much as everyone else so essentially it's just like a long time of just being very lean and Scrappy that was the most consistent pattern across all these

b2c subscription apps agree that's number two when I was hired by dualingo as a Consultant and as um an employee my mandate was make dualingo grow here is no budget I had no budget and people are shocked like they're like oh but when did you start when did you turn on the ads we're like we just didn't because I I know like this is between you and me Lenny I actually quite bad at paid ads it's just not like a musle that I ever developed I'm only good huh we won't tell anyone okay please please

keep this a secret I'm only I've only been good I Think I could develop that muscle if I you know if one day I need it but I'm particularly good at thinking about organic growth because I've had to because that's what Tumblr and dualingo required of me and the and the logic behind it was listen we with dualingo you know we we started monetizing the platform very late and it was a luxury because we had so much Venture Capital money to sustain us for a while but we had some bets that we went that we

made In the early days that we thought were going to help really sustain the company like translations that didn't end up panning out and then we you know the dualingo English test that we started developing really early with bur settles um an amazing guy who basically was you know developing this test we realized that was going to be super longterm we didn't start really Char like charging for subscriptions or having ads and I don't know exactly but something like Year three so we didn't have an LTV which meant that having a CAC made no sense

so that's number one like having like you need that CA to LTV ratio that everyone you know talks about that's an important thing but it's more than that first I think there's the cacil TV racial thing the second thing is that even if you have a low CAC I was just talking to an entrepreneur this morning he was like oh we were able to hit a 10-cent CAC and I'm like yeah but that Grows like as you start like targeting more people the loow hanging fruit kind of dry out and you end up having to

pay more money and then once you have those users coming in because of those paid ads you can't cut it off because you still need that growth because you're trying to prove to your investors that you're growing or you need those users in order to continue AB testing or whatever like then you become completely dependent and it's really hard to turn It off so it's almost like an addiction that as much as you're able to like limit in the beginning the better and the third thing is that I really believe that I don't believe I

think we all know by at this point that the most important thing for the growth of anything Tech maybe in general is retention of course you need acquisition but retention is important and I simplify it a little bit because I don't think retention is like I don't think it in of it in terms of Like oh I must retain this user it's like is this thing valuable or not like that's what retention is to me like either it's actually providing real value or it's not if it's providing real value people stick around it's as simple

as that and if you don't force yourself to pay attention to retention and finding the users to whom this is the most useful really early on you risk convincing yourself of metrics and kind of like glossing over some of this other Important stuff which means that even if you succeed at acquisition you're just not going to succeed long term because those users fall through and you won't really understand why because you were building retention based on acquired users that weren't the ones who were necessarily gonna you know and and I don't mean to say that

I don't believe in paid at all I think paid has its value I think especially when it comes to testing sometimes you don't have as Many users as you need to run statistically significant test but with paid users you could or you could just use paid ads to understand like messaging and images and even value prop on a landing page like that's super valuable or you find an amazing Niche and you know exactly who your target users are and you figure out a way that makes sense but then again I would I would argue that

if you found your perfect user and and where they are you Should go figure out a way to get them organically because if you can really provide them value they would come and they would stay so far I've heard be really focused around a mission be very clear about what you're trying to achieve two is just very low spend try not essentially don't expect to grow this into Venture scale business focus on a sustainable profitable business for as long as you can and like constrain your spend basically and then third is This focus on retention

which I think is a really important point just like and this is true for any app you're building but I think especially true for Consumer business where people just like n this is cool okay what's next okay let's check out Snapchat totally and and I you know I was gonna have a different three but I think it's related so maybe we can add it as 3B or four 3B let's do it an obsession for the product again sounds obvious but isn't When we look back to products that existed you know before the internet before the

that the App Store you built this thing you made it and then you tried to convince people to buy it that was like kind of it right so like look I make I made a chair this is beautiful chair and then you spend all this money trying to like get it out into the world and people buy the chair and you like hire all these sales people and you hire an amazing marketing agency and they try To sell the chair it's no longer at all that because products are constantly in motion and evolving and unless

you're able to own that data and understand what it can tell you you're never going to win so I I hear a lot of people come to me and say Gina Gina we built dualingo for this and I'm like okay cool and then they show it to me and it looks exactly like dualingo and I'm like okay cool and then I'm like how did you get to this design they're like oh yeah we Use duing something like great so like but then as I started talking to them I understand they didn't actually they don't have

the engineers and PMs there looking at mix panel or whatever it is that they're using every day understanding how every single change is leading to other changes that enables them to ask the questions and come up with the hypotheses that allow them to get to the next step so it's almost like they just like copy pasted something It's you know how I think it it of that it's like those students who are able to copy their like the the best students um answer on the math test and then they get frustrated that they didn't get

an A because the work wasn't there but they copied the answer but if you don't know how to do the work you get another math question and you're not going to get it right and so so that I think still misses in a in I would venture to say most early stage Tech startups out there It's certainly the case in Latin America where people think they can Outsource like the code or Outsource the growth and they're not just like looking like Hawks at like the the quality of the data and statistical significance and like running

hypotheses and like questioning them and that rigor is a culture at dualingo that was there from day one before me and continues to be there today amazing so I think if a listener is Trying to build a subscription consumer app I would suggest just rewind and listen to that again I think there's so much gold there and in my experience I get a lot of decks because I do a bunch of Angel Investing I just I kind of just discount consumer subscription apps because they never work except when they do once in a while and

so my advice is if you're building something in the space just like listen to exactly what you just said there's a lot of important Stuff and like actually internalize it like stay really lean stay really focused obsessed with retention obsessed with making sure the product is solving the problem you're going after so I'm so glad that you agree Lenny you know I really admire you so it makes me very happy well we're both happy then I wanted to switch to the BS side and I'm curious what's like a mess up or a big mistake maybe

that you made or your team made that was like Oh wow that was a big waste of time yeah look a lot of things didn't work out more than 50% of our of our AB tests didn't work out we made bets that didn't make sense I will say though that like in the spirit of A and B sides I and I think in general we are really good at forgetting the B stuff like I I talk so much about all the stuff that worked that it's hard to remember like all of those moments that didn't

actually work and and the moment and the Thing that I I tend to talk about which is like this mistake that we made as the growth team is almost like one of those like when you get asked in an interview like what's your what's like your biggest weakness and you're like I'm a perfectionist you know it's like one of those things that actually makes you sound good because it's the story about how my team really wanted to implement badges we spend a lot of time playing all the games that were popular at the Time trying

to understand how those gamification growth hacks that we could find in in those apps would potentially overlay onto dualingo and how you know we would do that and badges was just pervasive in all of the top games and so it seemed like a a no-brainer but since we ranked all of our experiments in terms of Roi and return being like how many users we think we're going to get from this daus and in time investment it was never it never made sense to focus On this because we thought that the time sync would be too

high so I actually ended up not letting the team run this experiment for like six months so that we focus on Lower hanging fruit so that's like a mistake on my end then we decided to we decided to run this experiment in the most lean way possible we're like you know what like there's MVPs there's like minimum viable experiments we don't have to run a whole badges thing we can just do something More simple and actually see if that like leads to growth in an interesting way and then we'll know and we ran this very

simple experiment that was like you signed up and then you get a badge and it was like this girl with a balloon I don't know she was like happy or whatever and of course of course in retrospect it led to no results because no one is proud of signing up it's not an exciting moment and you don't even have badges to collect you can't show it To other people like none of the things that make badges compelling were there but we were like okay well we test that it didn't work and then we moved on

so we moved on for like another I don't know eight months and we didn't look back and then when we did look back first of all at that point we we discovered that we hadn't been dog fooding okay which also was embarrassing looking back we hadn't been dog fooding in the growth team we just come up with Hypothesis we like we were super careful about prioritizing them and making sure that we were doing the best possible like writeups and all these things but like the dog fooding piece it just I didn't come from a a

product background I was a marketer and I hadn't even I didn't really understand the term dog fooding but when I when we thought with had a conversation we were like you know what if we had just tested that we would have all known that this was a super Lame badge and I was like why are we not testing our experiments and so like that became part of our of our practice it's still relevant I I just had a conversation yesterday with engineers at Latitude I I haven't explained what we built yet where we're building yet

maybe we'll get there but I was talking yesterday to years at latitude and they're awesome like in terms of product team we have like the number eight employee at new bank you might have Heard of new bank but it's this like massive banking like fintech in Latin America and and we have people from like other fintechs and then we have this guy who was a lead PM ATO and I was explaining to them why we should be dog fooding and they were all like oh yeah we should dog food it's just like easy to forget

stuff like that so so that was a mistake that you know we could have probably gotten to the growth that we got to with badges much early earlier on And not only did we get to growth with badges but it became like this amazing Treasure Trove of opportunity because once you have badges and people want them you can now ask people to do anything like go find friends go buy things like you know whatever it is and so like we we had we impacted almost all metrics across the company positively including some we hadn't expected

but it's like easy to talk about a mistake that ended up being a win so that's why I compared it to the interview thing in the beginning but you know we we tried making dualingo a social app really early on and failed um it was called D duels Duo duels like you could duel you know very clever yeah I know know we were we were clever but people didn't use it and we didn't figure out why we we tried making a dualingo for schools platform like we couldn't get it to pick up I went and

launched dualingo in China and got downloaded by a million people In the first day and then the app got blocked and I we you know because of the government and then we couldn't figure out what to do and then everyone rated the app like one star because it didn't work and so then we had a really like a lot of trouble actually recovering from that we launched dualingo in India and didn't realize because we couldn't have unless we went there which we finally did that most people set their phones phone UI in India to English

because Typing in Hindi is hard and of course there's a lot of languages throughout India and we were making it so that when you downloaded dualingo whatever UI you open your app your your phone was set to we offered not that language for you to learn that was your base language so we were telling people learn French Spanish German from English and they were all trying to learn English so they didn't find what they were looking for they left um there were so many mistakes you Know and luckily I think we were able to to

bounce back from most of them in terms of how dueling was doing today man there's so much there that was awesome I like you're like oh I don't remember any of my failures and then like oh here's all these awesome stories that was great just one thread there that comes up again and again in this podcast is the dog fooding piece especially I think people don't trust their gut and personal Instinct enough I think a lot Of times PMS are just like I need to do use a research to understand what we should be doing

versus just use the thing see what feels wrong and keeps you from being excited and really trust that I find that more and more like I don't know when I read a thing when I'm writing I'm just like oh I don't like that I should change that I don't need to like run this by three people so I think that's a really good lesson there just don't underestimate the power of You just using it and relying on instincts and feelings you have when you're trying to use it totally and that's so hard to do especially

when you're young and I think you know I will add that especially when you're female as well or may you know you know maybe other minorities it's just really hard to trust your instinct because you're constantly telling yourself like what but do I really do I really know anything or like am I just being lucky But you you have to and I think that forcing yourself to pretend that you know answers and just finding out what this like pretend person who would know all the answers would think like is really helpful because it helps you

develop your point of view your voice and to trust yourself even when you're working on something that you don't fully understand uh you know as an you know we're we're building a banking platform at at l I was looking at it and I was like they they were having trouble understanding why people were having problems with wires and I told them all about how I'm an idiot when it comes to wires and I make these mistakes ABC because like I don't match like the line it's like whatever there's like all this information you're supposed to

input and sometimes the information you get is not in the same order and they're like wow you know and I'm like this is just me as like a user making dumb mistakes but That is our Forte when you're able to understand that when you don't get something probably other people don't get it too at scale absolutely it's like the uh if you're if you're thinking about asking a question in class many people are thinking of that same question and they will appreciate you asking that the other thing I stood out there so the Hindi uh

mistake you made I actually made the same mistake with my podcast recently I Was noticing that the second biggest Market of listeners is in India so I'm like how do I lean into that and help people in India find this podcast even better so I added subtitles in Hindi to a number of the episodes and tweeted it being oh look at me go I'm make this so great for people in India and everyone's like we don't need this we prefer English people in Tech in India we know English this is even harder they're like I

can read a lot faster in English so Please don't do this so that was a really good and there's so many languages in India like that too really it's it's it's crazy how many like how people don't speak the same languages across the whole country but also it means that people in India are very are FL are fluent in so many different languages we live we learn I want to go back to the as side and just a couple more questions about duelingo you said that most of the growth was organic and You basically had

to grow it organically is there anything that you can share that work really well because everybody wants to grow organically through their mouth is there anything tactical you did that really helped lingo that other startups can can do and try absolutely so first of all I would actually say that AB testing and product L growth is organic growth because you're not spending money on it um and so first thing that you can do no matter what Stage your startup is is make sure that you are not overlooking the importance of people in your product team

who really know how to evaluate data and how to use that and learn and if you're too early stage you're not looking at 5% growth you're looking at 20 30% growth opportunities but I think that's number one number two actually this is something I might have said as like something that dualingo did really well but I think it It goes hand in hand with Mission but you know throwing the mission thing aside brand and PR so uh the importance of building a lovable brand that really resonates with people and makes people feel something and and

want to stand behind an idea that's bigger than than themselves is not easy to do but possible and core to being able to to increase word of mouth so at the bottom of this is the mission which is we you know du lingo mission was always doing For originally to bring free language education to the world then you know to build the best education to make it accessible to everyone I don't know how they're wording it today but that's something most people can get behind doesn't matter if you think Bloomberg or Trump should be president

do you think everyone should have access to Great education like most people would say yes and so that's much more powerful than do you want to download an app and learn a New language you know so if you're able to have that and and things that you really believe in about what you're building that's changing lives or impacting the world even even if it is just helping business people do their jobs better in a way that's going to improve their lives and their ability to make a light like a living or a comp it's going

to improve company's ability whatever it is like the bigger the bigger idea behind it and focusing on on Creating something that people like whichever your audience is it might be a more serious audience than something like dualingo but for dualingo it meant like we have this owl the colors and then the way that the owl talks and the notifications and the emails that you get and and the product experience all of that ties back into how people feel about your brand which makes it so that people are more likely to talk about it which makes

it so that you are much more Likely to get a reporter to write a story about you if you have something that's meaningful outside of like hey like Tech crunch did you know that my app grew by 20% last month they're like I don't care you know but if you're able to tell a story about people whose lives are completely transformed or or something like that that's much more interesting and has played an important role in honestly my work at Tumblr at dual lingo not the Mike Bloomberg Presidential campaign but definitely latitude as well okay

that's amazing I was going to ask what is that actually mean and how do you build a lovable brand and so what I've heard so far is there's this like personality and voice that was really fun that you all lead into to make it like not just a generic translation app it's like oh this is really fun and interesting and then this other piece is these stories of transformation yeah there's more there's More so I think brand that stands for something that but truly stands for something that's where the mission piece comes in how do

you uh communicate that to like how do people even know that the brand stands for that so that has to be integral part of your communication like in the early days like we tested a lot of stuff on social media we made again mistakes like at one point we were we were posting photos of our team on Facebook being like check out the behind the scenes guess what no one cares but like but making the Miss we we had like a calendar this is very tactical but like a social media calendar where like one post

a week is about Effectiveness because we knew that like proving that dual lingual was an effective way to learn a language and actually having data behind that moved the needle so making sure that was part of our communication in terms of our social Media calendar in terms of like PR pitches that we were making in terms of you know whatever we were able to like communicate out into the world and then make sure that one post a week was something about the mission and what we were actually trying to accomplish but it also got embedded

into a lot of things like for example when we were testing screens to get people to convert into paid users on dualingo we found that including something like by paying For dual lingo you're making language learning accessible to millions of people that actually improved the metric people cared enough to make the payment you know so it really can can be anywhere in addition to that I I love copywriting and I believe that communication is constantly underrated and communication isn't about being able to convey a message it's about being able to convey a message in a

way that the listener receives it and understands It and like remembers it that's really hard to do and one of the things I've helped employ at dual lingo that I think is still there today it's definitely not just me it was an amazing team but I've helped employee that I've used at uh latitude and in other places is a unique voice and what that means is exactly what you said Lenny like not just another language learning app where we give you instructions and you follow directions there is always a quirk like It's unexpected the way

we talk to you is a little bit funny it doesn't take ourselves too seriously and it makes the person receiving this message feel something it's about how you make people feel and you feel like either you giggle or you're like wait what they just did what you know um and like and using that to your to your benefit we we use that a lot uh at Latitude today as well in terms of especially our newsletter just self-deprecating humor and that's what's Helped us grow so quickly in Latin America in such a short amount of time

people identify with it they see themselves as part of that again much like the commission versus like you're a company and I'm a consumer this episode is brought to you by Mercury who I also happen to use for my business checking account I've tried a lot of business Banks and there is nothing even close to the experience you get with Mercury I moved cash over from Another bank and it literally took less than half an hour to set up the account and wire money over at no cost they kind of make you want to use

the site more often which I've never felt with another banking site Mercury is banking engineered for the startup Journey a modern solution to help your company become the best version of itself and Mercury isn't just a place to hold and send money it's software built to help you scale with safety and stability Whether your team of two or team of a thousand Mercury also goes beyond banking to provide you with access to the foremost investors operators and tools visit mercury.com to join over 100,000 startups on Mercury the powerful and intuitive way for ambitious companies to

bank Mercury is a financial technology company not a bank bank B in Services provided by Choice Financial Group and evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC is there an example of that kind of Like a message you remember for either from dualingo or from even latitude something that worked that was really funny or different look I think for dualingo we constantly looked at every copy we wrote and asked could this have been written by by other companies like what could this have been any other company or or does it or is it dualingo like what makes

this dualingo and it was tough because the more people you hire who come from other backgrounds they Don't they're not used to that style and they might even think it's unprofessional or whatever you're like nope this is a dual lingal way so it helps figuring out like okay exactly what is that voice what does it sound like what are some voices what are some words that it tends to use why yes why not what's too much what's too little in terms of specific examples this is something that I didn't write myself but I wrote a

lot of notifications for Dualingo for um the passive aggressive message that I'm sure people have received which started and then became a meme and then and then dualing will used as well but like the whole like this doesn't seem to be working we'll stop sending them for now message which like you got after five days of inactivity in addition to that message around the same time we decided to send an email to people in New Years because that's when people make a resolution to do things And we wanted them to make learning a language a

resolution for the year so we created an email and it had like sad Duo you know because there was I I don't know if the screen is still there I haven't USS rolling in a while but there was always the screen of dual really sad when you fail something and like and that owl du is the owl sorry the Green Owl will cry and and we AB tested the size of the puzzle the size of the puddle and the number of tears that came Out of his eyes in terms of Effectiveness so we used that

do in like you know you know in one of those emails and then it started you know someone picked it up on Twitter and the me like the passive aggressive message and and this this like sad duel they started making their own versions which was like study now or duo will will eat a poison loaf of bread or like the next email will be a funeral Evite things like that right and so that's an example I think To me which can now be seen very much throughout duelingo brand where we could have just said oh

no this is a PR disaster we need to go back to being this friendly like nice little fluffy thing that everyone loves instead of being like no like we're like we get that people think this is funny and we're just G to run with it you know because being using the dual voice it gives us the permission to do that because we're not just like we're not Square we're not going to do that thing that you read in the textbook in school we're just we're kind of going to play along with it that's an incredible

lesson it reminds me of this famous dingo meme that I'm sure you've seen where someone shared these they got these two notifications in a row I just pulled it up here where first they got this dualingo push notification looks like you forgot your Spanish lessons again you know what happens now and then The next push was from their security system intruder alert back door proceed with caution and I imagine Dingle even linked into like leaned into that uh I think when this started spreading 100% And and it was wasn't an easy decision you know because

of course a lot of people in the company were like really concerned about the brand image and like what are people doing and what do how do we revert this that kind of thing right so it was like a it was a it was a bet That we made where we're just GNA like no we're going to lean into it because that's what having this unique voice means it's about getting it it's about being part of something bigger it's about you know connecting with people outside of just teaching them a word a day or whatever

it is and with latitude I think we do that we do that all the time in our newsletter and it's a lot of like self-deprecating humor for Latinos and using Expressions that like could be Almost offensive but they're not not in terms of Latinos only but also the tech world making fun of like being a tech founder and like the the things that we do that we think are okay and like it's it's just a lot of that where I think I would call it irreverent but it's it's a it's a tough line it's a

lot easier to be I think a copywriter in a place that doesn't want to do that because the lines are a lot clearer and you don't have to take as many risks but it's so Less Fun which I think makes it so less fun for the user because people are used to getting emails from their banks with corporate lingo that you don't understand but if they get an email from their bank that's funny ironic but also very informative like that's that's a bank email I'm going to read you know I think that's a really good

lesson part of this is just taking a risk I think that's one of the big takeaways here is Just take some risks uh we had Lulu Chang on the podcast who was a huge advocate of that she's a PR comms person that's worked at substack and blizzard now and that was our advice to to people take risks do things that are a little little controversial because that'll get attention I definitely want to talk about ltitude just a couple more questions on dualingo one is today it feels like one of the most interesting interesting things about

duelingo is Their Tik Tock presence and feels like they're doing so well kind of leaning into exactly what you're talking about just being really silly and different with the owl especially uh I guess the question there is just what is it that you think allows for that is it just this like very special social media person they hired that was just like incredibly good at this thing and being irreverent as you said or is there something else that contributes and Allows a company to win in social media the way that t the way that dualingo

has look I haven't met the person who does the Tik Tok and they're fantastic uh definitely don't want to demerit their work it's it's awesome I don't think it's easy to do especially on a consistent basis so I think yes finding someone who gets who gets humor who gets the platform who's able to produce content like quickly but it also reacts to learnings like all of that is not Easy to do however I do think that everything we just talked about is at the bottom of that because if dualingo didn't have this unique voice and

leaned into the humor and wanted to be irreverent as a brand and was so focused on connecting with people where they were and and and ready to take risks that might seem you know maybe unorthodox in terms of especially in terms of education then an opportunity to build a Tik Tok like that wouldn't Exist so it's both and I think it goes back to the brand DNA it goes back to the culture of the company to and to the attention as I said to every single text that was published and whether or not it was

in 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 you know what do they sound like and is this a dual thing To say is this not a dual thing to say and and and committing to to this idea that you're going to be remembered that you're going to do things that are sometimes are are going to rub people the wrong way and you're not just going to sit you know

squarely in one place I think that opens the possibility for a Tik Tok like the one that duelingo has today to exist but again whoever is running the Tik Tok you're amazing that that's such a good lesson a Lot of people are looking at dueling like we need to find that person at our company and what you're saying is it's it takes a lot more than that like that person is not going to have a good time if the culture of the company isn't set up to be that sort of uh to have that approach

to try to just take risks and be reverent so that's a really good point one final question uh around internationalization you said that you help Drive internationalization of Duelingo and I read somewhere that one of the learnings you had there was essentially treat everyone the same almost across countries which I think people think is the counter like they should often like No it should be super personalized for every country we're in what did you learn there I think that this is very controversial because not only is it the case that that when you're working in

regulated Industries maybe in like more B2B Situations like looking at specific countries is important there looking at specific countries and and and elements of these countries are important especially when you're looking at like I don't know laws and if you need like legal differences and finan there's a lot of things that make countries different is what 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 F in Mexico we like to dance salsa in some places it's okay to hug in other place is not okay to hug like yes there are cultural differences and it's important to love everyone and to adapt Etc but a lot of these differences when it comes to like core human behavior are like that like final like 5% of getting people of understanding people and if as a startup whether it be early stage but As a startup you focus too much on those marginal differences between groups of people you can run the risk of making

big mistakes which is making too many changes too soon and learning very little and adding crazy amounts of code complexity and overall organizational complexity to what you're building and with dualingo because it was a consumer app because we weren't dealing with a lot of regulatory issues except for like China where we had to like watch out for Certain words and phrases in general people want to learn a language and people learn a certain way and people use apps a certain way so there's a lot of commonality we just found that by treating the world as

one and whenever we deployed you know AB test or or tried something new in terms of marketing we would just look at it as like 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 the Willing a 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 we think that green is is a negative color like owls are like 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 read things they're like oh in this country we 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 their

countries 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 that but in addition to that every new Ab 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 in 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 you just 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 or or hypothesis is going to take you way longer to be able to deploy and time 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 that is such cool advice it reminds me of a quote that I think of that a friend of mine shared once life as maintenance anything you add to your life is just something you're going to have to maintain from that point forward and similar in products anytime you add new code you're going to maintain that Code forever and the more you can not add anything new and not make things really different the easier everything

gets like people forget that it's like oh we're just going to spend bunch of time to make it awesome in China or Brazil and then oh they have to maintain that forever and every feature has to and it's an 8020 so you know like just focus on what will get you the 80 and and not the 20 and then when you have the luxury of focusing on the 20 then You can okay so speaking of different cultures and people being different but not that different you pivoted your career basically to focus on Latin America first

of all why did you decide to do that that's a pretty unique path and what pulled you there so Lenny I don't see it as a pivot because as we were joking you know in the beginning I you know 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 like roles that we have in our little Tech ecosystem and in my time working with Tumblr and my agency and du lingo I had the

the pleasure of speaking with entrepreneurs all over the world in part because I you know 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 Endeavor which is global so I I started working with entrepreneurs in Japan and like in Brazil on my free time I'm just mentoring and I know that the opportunity for growth in terms of tech in in Latin America is huge because first of all the

opportunity for growth in Tech is huge all over the world meaning there's just more there's more and more to do there's more pieces of Our Lives that can become more efficient Or 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 is also not you know like 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 in simply put there's a lot of lwh hanging fruit because a lot of what has already Been digitized and and productized in the US and where 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 it's 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 this entrepreneur succeed like maybe it's a Little bit of advice but it's like and and not only that but I 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 NE know we take it for granted so how can we make this more accessible to 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 what's the VC and 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 if you're going to get investment you probably can't 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'd 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've never I don't even know where that is and like what's a Secore you know what's this other thing like so there's just stuff that needs to happen for Latin Americans that we don't think about here and 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 the some of the problems that we wanted to solve why it matters to me 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 and 99.9% of

people in Latin America will not have these opportunities and so for me if I don't use this privilege to somehow make a huge impact where I came from that will last then I kind of wasted my life so that's why this matters so much to me and I met my Co-founder Brian rorth at on De if you've heard of on De before I'm a big fan I'm wearing wearing on socks right now yeah I am I love their socks and I just had a conversation I just had a conversation with them yesterday I really love

like I'm a big fan of what they what they built I met Brian doing on Deck I actually was thinking of starting a completely different company but also focus on community as we were talking about like people want to find Connection and I think that there's a lot of Opp business opportunity there um but I met my my co-founder and he was working with our third co-founder Yuri who's actually the guy we joke he's the guy who builds things he's the CTO he 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 because we think we can have a huge impact on the GDP of the whole region uh 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 socio economic social economical Mobility for people in the world and focusing on the of the world that I came from made the most sense so you referenced

this company they started latitude maybe just describe briefly what it just broadly How do you pitch what latitude does to folks that you might find it useful I will and I I still do a pretty bad job of pitching it but the pitch is basically like we're 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 so 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 like 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 3% of people in Brazil only you know and that varies in Latin America speak English so the likelihood of you being taken seriously is is low so your chances of success success are low but it 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 we just think we're countries like 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 we like in the US you're like oh yeah Latin America but if you're there it's just like not at all connected but 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 from for one part of this region could potentially be great

for another part of the region I'm not doing a great job of of pitching but in addition to to um it being lonely and it being difficult to find the right resources and really trustworthy not it's really hard to raise capital and It's really hard to do things like incorporate and and bring your money down Etc so that's what we do first we have a like a fellowship program we have 1,500 entrepreneurs who got in we've 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 you we have a fund so we've invested in 100 startups and we we're raising our second fund now it's going to be around $25 million with a $30 million cap um 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 in 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 as an entrepreneur because you're trying to solve a pro a problem and build a team and build a product you're not trying to figure out what's the best incorporation method and what how to open a bank account in the US and how to figure out like 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 build a bank that we built and and so on and so forth so it's it's not an easy to describe business because it's kind of an ecosystem play We're Elevate we're trying to elevate the tech ecosystem in Latin America and it's it's a lot of moving Parts you basically help them do everything uh which is what I'm hearing

and it sounds like you'd be a fool not to take advantage of this the customers essentially are founders in any Latin American country is that right is that who 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 awesome and then how is what is the arrangement do you take Equity if they join the program is it free what's the we don't joining the program is free you just have to be able to get in we we don't

for a number of reasons we just don't want to like 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 you can choose what makes sense for you something I want to ask about is what is It that you think is that Latin American Founders and companies are uniquely good at is there kind of a thread across Latin American startups that are like oh this is they're

so good at this area pay attention here in general terms startup 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 like you don't have other Solutions so I think that's something that we see a lot in terms of what we what we are 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 to make payments and so on and

so forth so there's just huge opportunity there trying to think what else I would like Highlight ah Lenny you talked about like B Toc 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 effectively so I think that's that's an advantage we have other than that I wouldn't I wouldn't highlight anything In particular

I think that there's amazing people all over the world it's just a matter of what are the opportunities that exist and because there's so many opportunities that are left Latin America specific or that are Emerging Market specific which means that if they work in an Emerging Market in Latin America they could work in other emerging markets and you know what most of the world is not developed markets and understand understanding What it's like to not have access to amazing Wi-Fi and and like iPhones and and all the things that we have access to that's that

can be a huge Advantage because that's the reality that most of the population lives in and that's a huge Tam yeah that makes me think about WhatsApp and one of the reasons they made it is they were just obsessed with making the app incredibly small and fast and they started I think with International markets and then that just ended up being an amazing app because it's so fast and so easy to use and and still and now there's things being built on top of WhatsApp like we just invested in 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 there's examples of these like in India and in some countries in Africa where

like I don't know the the desktop was skipped you know people just went straight to mobile I think we can see these cat 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 in the next few years and I'm particularly curious to see how that

plays out when it comes to AI one last question around Latin America it's going To be kind of a broad question what do you think people should be paying attention to whether it's specific companies you want to call out big companies that have done that are doing great or just Trends or patterns what do you think people should be paying attention to anything you want to shout out Lenny the truth is I you know I I would love to call out all of our portfolio companies because I I believe in all of them and there

are some of Them that are growing incredibly impressively one of them is pomelo um which is like a fintech platform for Finch that that you know has just grown incredibly it's to me it's more about paying attention to Latin America I think for for the US that's already a lot I don't think people know what's going on below the Border have no idea what Brazil is like but paying attention because it's not just a place that's Behind and trying to catch up it's a place where the opportunity to make a lot of money exists it's

a higher risk like region because of all the political and economic stabil instability but given the scenario that we're in right now which is that we're still quotequote behind in terms of like all the solutions that we know will be built to give people access to health to education to financial services Etc but we actually have a lot of money flowing Into the region in terms of like 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 and and and and and unicorn companies people who have worked at those companies or who have worked at places like dual lingin 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 like 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 like what a what a problem a Problem that exists and knowing how to solve it in a way that others couldn't do 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 what's the Tam and not just what they put on the slide but like what

do you actually believe the Tam to be so 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 uh I'm super excited about what happens with with with health and education in particular because I think that that has the power to truly transform uh the region in in a massive way at Latitude like I I think I mentioned in addition to fintech We tend to invest a lot in in B2B SNB 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 so I think 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 well we can point people to your portfolio page on your website I would love to highlight our portfolio companies maybe I'll just send you a list or something I don't know perfect we

will figure out a way to Share that with that we reached our very exciting lightning round Gina are you ready I'm ready Lenny what are two two or three books that you've recommended most to other people the one book I I recommend because I truly it really 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 you 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 Frankle 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 you know what what differentiates one life from from the next and and how to how to live a good one and no matter what profession we choose that continues to be important so those are my recommendations what is a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really Enjoyed so first of all I loved 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 creger co-founder of Instagram is

howto with 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 he's a he's a film filmmaker and he he's awkward and he's it's cool that he's awkward it's just his style And he decides to make a TV show about like to like about creating to help people who are really worried or scared of doing something and prep and helping them prepare for that moment in their 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 5 years and it was like it's Like their it's not the debate Club but it's I forget what it is but something that like requires some sort of intellect and like he doesn't want to confront the the group and so like he recreates everything that could possibly happen that day in order to make this easier or another one like about

like having kids someone's really scared about making the decision about whether or not they want to have kids so that's 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 I do that I do that song to my new child often because it's so funny OT is a recurring yeah yeah I'm not gonna do it but it's a recurring favorite on this podcast so we had a short drinking game where every time someone said wait Lotus we

drank so I'm gonna have some tea here real quick okay I'm sorry to to be predictable but You know like I said we humans are a lot more similar than we'd like to think you know what's amazing Lenny is 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 started 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 uh furniture And if you oh you know what actually I'll tell you what movie is my favorite one Bo Burnham's inside I love my God I don't know if that's a movie but I just I'm I'm in love with Bo Burnham husband knows about this I know all of the songs and white white what is it white girls Instagram white woman's white women's Instagram such a good song that's what I'm talking about yeah also I've been uh Rel listening to uh how is the best case Scenario Joe Biden they're gonna

make me vote for Joe Biden I was singing this to my parents they didn't get it it's it's amazing we'll link to that video that movie it's even after Co it's incredible anyway uh I was also going to say that that first show you mentioned I think it's called the rehearsal maybe there's like a different title gosh you're right so he has two shows and one of them is called howto and the other one is called the Rehearsal and you're right I am recommending the rehearsal I have also seen howto which are shorter episodes where

he films in New York and he just goes like how to find a parking spot and then it takes him this 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 and they fielders the guy behind all this who's incredibly incredibly hilarious he has a new show actually I think it's on HBO With John Wilson or something that he's producing or it's this other guy just going around talking about stuff in New York and I think he's a producer that's

the one I'm talking about that's house who with John Wilson oh there we go so I think he's behind that okay look at us we're figuring things we are figuring things out so I think he has maybe a new season I think season two I haven't started that one yet anyway here we go we're Going to keep going what is a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates that you're interviewing why do you want to work here is what I really like to ask because it tells me a lot you know 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 I want to know if this person like 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 I 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 dualingo 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 the what are you world class at like it's okay if someone says like look I'm I'm working on becoming world class at whatever and this is like why I think I'm better you know

like I'm I'm great at 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 what not 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 that's also

really important what is a favorite product that you recently discovered they you really like 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 like 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 um and and going on a a tiny rant I'm also feeling very uh 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 know you have to know how to filter that information really well and you don't find you know 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 that can give you great information about your body so that you understand your nutrition and you know very core things about ourselves that we don't today are becoming accessible to a lot of people just to to the population it's still expensive but we're getting there and I think that will that will be magical so I will I will call out the company Levels by my friend Sam coros because I think that what they're doing is awesome next question what is a favorite life motto that you like

to think about come back to share with other people one is this two shell pass and I will tell you this one right now is particularly meaning ful to me right now because I'm going through a really tough moment because I have long Co and lost my uh taste and smell and it might be long term and so but I think it applies to The ab thing that I was talking about you know when like everything in life is moments except for you know a couple a couple of diagnoses and so this two shall pass

is something I 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 I've held on to for a long time and even today I don't mean 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 I did fake until I make it from the point of view of like 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 duing 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 and

I just said yes and then you know kept going with that so fake it till you make it is kind of that for me but even today I have a lot of impostor syndrome which I actually think is not impostor syndrome it's just acknowledging that I don't know a lot my team says I have too much Self-deprecating humor that actually puts you know that's it puts the company down it puts me down so take it till you make it to me means like standing knowing how to stand in front of your team or or or

reporter or or Lenny in a podcast and almost like being that person that you would like to be or being your best self you could call it whatever you want but I think it can really help you get out of the little hole that you would put yourself into And limit opportunities for yourself amazing this question elist it'ss so many interesting insights and stories I appreciate you sharing all that but final question you majored in philosophy if I'm not mistaken I'm curious do you have a favorite philosopher or someone that most influenced the way you

think about the world you know I use a lot of philosophy in my day-to-day but it's not because I have deep knowledge is because I have light knowledge that I draw on that helps people like think I'm smart and relates to ideas like I often talk about thesis is ship to me like that allegory is like one of the most interesting ones because it's about identity and and building and whether you know I don't know if the allegory is like you know the shiplet no pleas sure the so thesias is on this on this journey

I think he leaves cre 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 like storms that they have to replace like planks and and re sew the 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'd replace every single plank theyve replaced every all the masks 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 you know so to to me that shapes I think a lot of ideas because it's it's a cool allegory and it resonates a lot but 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 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 and go study but I'm also embarrassed to admit that I'm not a person who just like finishes work is completely depleted and then wants to like bury my face in a philosophy book I don't I would like to I would like to acquire all of this philosophy knowledge but I I want to watch White Lotus or if I'm going to force myself to like work Out I'll

listen to an audio book like that makes me feel good about myself and it's a fiction one I think this is actually a great example of exactly what you're talking about where we change and we are not necessarily the same person we were right to Mak sense that you're not obsessed with philosophy having finished that a while ago and now working on something totally different yeah I think I still am like because I'm you know I I consider myself to be very Like existential I'm an atheist so I like to find meaning it's it's not

like it doesn't exist so much for me and I think about the big questions and and I am interested in philosophy I'm just not interested enough to make time and effort for it in my life right now uh as a Hidden Gem at the end of this episode I'll share I'm also an atheist and I actually ran a website called atheists spot.com it was like a Reddit for atheist news I went to conferences what Is it news we didn't see God again today still no god Till be found yep indeed the funniest thing is we

had Google AdWords on there and the ads were based on the stories around like different religions and it says all like christianmingle.com on the atheist spot.com anyway yeah Gina we covered so much ground what an amazing episode I learned a ton from you I'm so excited for people To hear this two final questions where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and how can listeners be useful to you yes okay thanks Lenny so people can find me online um 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 wow so that's super impressive you won't even find it when you look for me because you'll see all these other gas but it's Just at 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 God Hill on LinkedIn um and I'm stories we haven't

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 Tik Tok but I've never Posted so but maybe at some point I'm just I feel self-conscious but I think I I could do be a good T Tik tocker because I think I'm amusing well you're not going to get followers by saying there's nothing good there so I think if you want people go follow you you should tell them there's gonna be great Stu there come see my amazing cont

content on Tik Tok I will definitely start posting it soon and you can influence what kind of cont cont 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 VC's who are interested in this then definitely tell them about latitude you go to [Laughter] but now that's what it is and it's and it's grown a ton so get in touch

join the fellowship join our community it We're particularly useful by the way to us people who are interested in getting plugged into Latin America because you if you get in you just meet all the like all the top people in one in one fell soup and that helps you make friends relationships find clients find your business partners and understand the ecosystem in a hacky way so amazing Gina thank you so much for being here bye everyone goodbye everyone thank you so much for listening If you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on

Apple podcast Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny podcast.com see you in the next episode