Happy April Fools! To celebrate the spirit of first day of April, Jim welcomes to the show one of Duo the Owl’s best friends, Emmanuel Orssaud, the Chief Marketing Officer of Duolingo, one of the hottest growth brands in the world with one of the hottest mascots in the world. Duolingo is the most downloaded education app in the history of the App Store and i ... Show More
Mar 11
Sofia Hernandez (TikTok) | The Future of Marketing Belongs to the Curious
If culture moves at the speed of TikTok, then today’s CMO has to move just as fast. This week, Jim is joined by Sofia Hernandez, Global Head of Business Marketing and Commercial Partnerships at TikTok. Since launching in the U.S. in 2018, TikTok has reshaped culture, content, and ... Show More
54m 56s
Mar 4
Lara Balazs (Adobe) | The Golden Age of Creativity
To kick off Women’s History Month, Jim welcomes Lara Balazs, the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of Global Marketing at Adobe. A company at the center of creativity, transformation and technology. Founded in 1982, Adobe is a software company that is famous for its creativity, inn ... Show More
54m 6s
Feb 25
Conny Kalcher (Zurich Insurance) | Reinventing Insurance Through Empathy
What does it take to revitalize a 150-year-old company? Jim’s guest this week, Conny Kalcher, has done it twice. First at LEGO during its historic turnaround, and now at Zurich Insurance as their Group Chief Customer Officer, where she’s proving that empathy is not a soft skill b ... Show More
1 h
Nov 2024
Why Duolingo Worked (with Luis von Ahn, CEO)
Duolingo has fundamentally changed the landscape of self-guided education, starting with language learning. It is now a $9B publicly traded company in a space where everyone thought you could never build a large and exciting company. We’re joined by Duolingo founder and CEO, Luis ... Show More
1h 3m
Aug 2025
S8E8: Luis von Ahn Is Making Screen Time Count
<p>Luis von Ahn was a tenured professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who had sold a company to Google. “You were pretty set, a lot of us would say, so why were you so hungry to build something new with Duolingo?” asks Ayesha Karnik, MBA ’25. </p><p>“For ... Show More
57m 51s
Apr 2025
Who killed Duo? How Duolingo built a brand on entertainment
Today, I’m joined by James Kuczynski, Creative Director at Duolingo, and Dan Salkey, Founding Partner at Small World, for a conversation on how to build truly entertaining brands.Fresh off their SXSW panel titled "Entertain or Die", named after a report by Small World, we explore ... Show More
53m 6s
Oct 2025
How to find hidden growth opportunities in your product | Albert Cheng (Duolingo, Grammarly, Chess.com)
Albert Cheng has led growth at three of the world’s most successful consumer subscription companies: Duolingo, Grammarly, and Chess.com. A former Google product manager (and serious pianist!), Albert developed a unique approach to finding and scaling growth opportunities through ... Show More
1h 25m
Dec 2024
Behind the product: Duolingo streaks | Jackson Shuttleworth (Group PM, Retention Team)
<p><strong>Jackson Shuttleworth</strong> is a Group PM at Duolingo, where he leads the retention team and the powerful streak feature. The streak feature, which gamifies consecutive days of learning, has been Duolingo’s most important and innovative growth lever and a key driver ... Show More
1h 28m