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

1. Obsess Over Core Mission

Cultivate a deep, genuine obsession with solving a significant problem for many people, allowing this mission to guide all aspects of marketing, user experience, and decision-making.

2. Obsess Over Product Data

Develop an obsession with the product and its data, continuously analyzing insights to understand user behavior, ask questions, and form hypotheses for iterative improvement.

3. Focus on Core Value for Retention

Prioritize retention by ensuring your product provides genuine, undeniable value to users; if it offers real value, users will naturally stick around.

4. Develop a Unique Brand Voice

Create a brand voice that is quirky, unexpected, funny, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, aiming to evoke an emotional response (like giggling or surprise) from the recipient to your benefit.

5. Prioritize Brand and PR

Understand that brand and public relations (PR) are often underappreciated by startups but are crucial for building a lovable brand that resonates and increases word-of-mouth.

6. Maintain Lean Operations

Operate lean and scrappy for an extended period, especially in early stages, as it’s challenging to build a large business and afford top talent without significant funding.

7. Prioritize Retention Early

Force an early focus on retention and identifying users who find the product most useful; neglecting this risks short-term acquisition success without long-term viability due to user churn.

8. Foster Data-Driven Culture

Establish a rigorous, data-driven culture from day one, where questioning hypotheses and analyzing data are core to decision-making and continuous improvement.

9. Optimize Post-Click Experience

Shift focus beyond just ad creation to the subsequent steps of the user journey, particularly optimizing landing pages and the post-click experience, as this is where conversions are won or lost.

10. Embrace Long-Term Career View

Recognize that careers are long, offering ample time for growth and for efforts to eventually succeed, so avoid stressing if things aren’t moving as fast as desired.

11. Cultivate Resilience

Maintain resilience, believe in yourself, and persist by getting back on track after setbacks and failures, as these are common throughout a career.

12. Say Yes to Growth Opportunities

Say “yes” to challenging growth opportunities, even if you don’t immediately know how to accomplish them, and then actively learn and figure it out to expand your capabilities and career.

13. “Fake It Till You Make It” Mindset

Adopt a “fake it till you make it” mindset, not by lying, but by overcoming imposter syndrome and acting as the person you aspire to be, thereby creating opportunities for that transformation.

14. Master Storytelling for Value

Focus not only on doing valuable work and learning, but also on effectively telling a story about that work and understanding what others perceive as valuable to aid professional growth.

15. Acknowledge Career A/B Sides

Recognize that careers have both “A-sides” (highlights and successes) and “B-sides” (failures, struggles, and less impressive moments), and understand that B-sides are normal and part of the journey.

16. Optimize Resource Deployment

Beyond individual greatness and intelligence, focus on understanding and implementing effective strategies for deploying resources and talent across an organization to maximize impact.

17. Address “Leaky Buckets”

Pay critical attention to the second and third screens or steps in any user experience, as these are common “leaky buckets” where users drop off, making them as important as the initial touchpoint.

18. Leverage Landing Page Impact

Understand that significantly improving landing page effectiveness (e.g., 2x conversion) can compound the impact of initial ads, leading to substantial overall gains.

19. Prioritize Mobile Optimization

Ensure all landing pages and digital experiences are fully mobile-optimized, as most users access content on their phones.

20. Design for Skimmability

Design landing pages and content with the understanding that people skim; restrict copy, prioritize key information, and ensure the core message is digestible quickly.

21. Align Title and Call-to-Action

Ensure the landing page title and call-to-action button clearly communicate the core message and desired action, so users understand even if they only read those two elements.

22. Maintain Ad-to-Page Cohesion

Ensure strong alignment between the ad content and the landing page experience to provide a seamless user journey and reinforce the initial message.

23. Use Emotion in Design

Incorporate emotional elements (e.g., fear, humor, inspiration) into landing page design and messaging, considering how these feelings will influence user action.

24. Subordinate Images to Message

Use images on landing pages as supportive background elements that aid message digestion, rather than distracting from the core communication.

25. Avoid Overspending Pitfalls

Be cautious when ample budget is available, as it can lead to losing focus on effectiveness and making less strategic decisions; maintain a growth mindset focused on impact.

26. Avoid Paid Ad Dependency

Limit reliance on paid ads in the early stages to prevent addiction to acquisition channels, as it can be difficult to turn off once growth becomes dependent on them.

27. Embrace Experimentation Failure

Accept that a majority of A/B tests and experiments may not yield positive results, viewing them as learning opportunities rather than outright failures.

28. Implement Dogfooding Practice

Integrate “dogfooding” (using your own product internally) as a regular practice to quickly identify usability issues and gather intuitive feedback from the team.

29. Trust User Instincts

Trust your own instincts as a user; if something in the product is confusing or frustrating to you, it’s likely many other users will experience the same at scale.

30. Develop Self-Trust and Voice

Overcome imposter syndrome by pretending you know the answers or adopting the mindset of an expert, which helps develop your point of view, voice, and self-trust, especially when young or from underrepresented groups.

31. Take Calculated Risks

Be willing to take calculated risks and embrace slightly controversial or irreverent approaches, especially in brand communication, as these can capture attention and foster deeper user connection.

32. Cultivate Risk-Taking Culture

Foster a company culture that supports risk-taking, irreverence, and experimentation in brand and communication, as this enables innovative and viral content strategies.

33. Understand Underlying Principles

Avoid simply copying successful product designs or strategies; instead, understand the underlying principles and data-driven processes that led to those successes to adapt and innovate effectively.

34. Prioritize Universal Human Behavior

When internationalizing, focus on universal human behaviors and core product value rather than over-customizing for marginal cultural differences, to avoid unnecessary complexity and slow down development.

35. Minimize Product Customization

Avoid creating multiple localized versions of your product unless absolutely necessary, as this significantly increases code complexity, maintenance, and the time required to run A/B tests and deploy new features.

36. Embrace “Life is Maintenance”

Apply the “life is maintenance” principle to product development: every new feature or customization adds ongoing maintenance, so prioritize simplicity and avoid unnecessary additions to conserve resources and time.

37. Apply 80/20 Rule to Development

Focus development efforts on the 80% of features or changes that will yield the most impact, deferring the remaining 20% until resources and time allow.

38. Identify Market Gaps

Look for significant market opportunities in regions where digitization and productization are less mature, as existing solutions from developed markets can often be adapted or built from scratch.

39. Leverage Information Access

Recognize that access to information and networks (e.g., Silicon Valley experience) provides an unfair advantage; seek to democratize this knowledge or leverage it to build solutions for those who lack it.

40. Seek Peer Founder Mentorship

Actively seek out and connect with founders who are a step ahead in their journey, as their direct advice and connections can save significant time compared to self-learning.

41. Cultivate Scrappiness & Resourcefulness

Develop and leverage scrappiness, resourcefulness, and resilience, as these traits are highly valuable for navigating the challenges of startup building, especially in less developed markets.

42. Identify Unfair Advantages

When evaluating opportunities or building a team, identify and leverage unfair advantages, such as deep problem knowledge, unique solutions, or access to top talent.

43. Design for Emerging Market Realities

Understand and design products for the realities of emerging markets (e.g., limited Wi-Fi, older devices), as this approach can unlock massive total addressable markets and create highly resilient products.

44. Capitalize on Market Leaps

Look for “catapult opportunities” in emerging markets where entire technological stages (e.g., desktop computing) are skipped, allowing for direct innovation on newer platforms (e.g., mobile) without legacy constraints.

45. Understand Design & Usability

Read “The Design of Everyday Things” to fundamentally shift your understanding of design from aesthetics to a deep appreciation of usability and how everything is intentionally designed.

46. Reflect on Life’s Meaning

Read Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to reflect on life’s purpose and how to live a good life, as these philosophical considerations remain important regardless of professional path.

47. Assess Mission Alignment in Hiring

When hiring, ask “Why do you want to work here?” to assess if candidates have researched the company, understand its mission, and genuinely connect with its purpose, ensuring long-term alignment.

48. Evaluate World-Class Skills & Metrics

Ask candidates “What are you world-class at, and how do you know?” to identify their top skills and, more importantly, to gauge their ability to quantify and demonstrate their impact with metrics.

49. Explore Health Tech for Self-Knowledge

Investigate emerging health tech, such as gut health or microbiome tests, to gain deeper insights into your body and leverage technology to democratize personal health information.

50. Embrace Impermanence

Remind yourself “this too shall pass” during difficult times, recognizing that all experiences, good or bad, are transient moments in life.

51. Reflect on Core Identity

Ponder the Ship of Theseus allegory to reflect on personal or organizational identity, considering what constitutes the core essence that persists through continuous change and transformation.