5 lessons from Duolingo’s edtech IPO of the year – TechCrunch

Duolingo landed on the public markets this week, rallying enthusiasm and attention to the edtech industry and its cohort of founders. The language learning firm’s share price soared when it started trading, even after the unicorn increased its IPO price range and exceeded the increased interval. .

Duolingo’s IPO Proves Public Market Investors Can See the Long-Term Value of a Mission and Technology-Driven Education Company; the company’s listing on the stock market carries additional weight given the historically low number of listed edtech companies.

For those who want the full history of Duolingo, from the inception to messy monetization to the historic IPO, check out our EC-1. It contains dozens of interviews with executives, investors, linguists and competitors.

For today, however, we have new additions. We sat down with Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn earlier in the week to discuss not only his company’s IPO, but also the impact the listing could have on startups. Duolingo’s IPO can be seen as a case study of mainstream startups, mission-driven businesses that monetize a small user base, or education companies that have recently reached their stature. Paraphrasing von Ahn, Duolingo doesn’t see itself as just a high-tech company with a new branding. Instead, he thinks his growth comes from being an engineering start-up first.

Selling the motivation, it seems, over selling language proficiency is a proposition that international consumers are willing to pay for, and an idea that investors believe may continue to evolve into software-like margins.

1. The IPO event will bring “more sophistication” to the core service of Duolingo

Duolingo has gone through three distinct phases: growth, during which it has prioritized as many users as possible for its application; monetization, in which he introduced a subscription level for survival; and now, education, in which he focuses on adding more sophisticated and intelligent technology to his service.