Hey Yetis & Besties,

We interviewed Luis von Ahn, the co-founder & CEO of the world’s largest education app… Duolingo (he also invented CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, and somehow made a passive-aggressive 🦉 go viral).

In the exclusive interview on The Best One Yet, he announced Duolingo’s next new product: Chess.  

So we picked Luis’ brain on why a language app is launching chess, how much AI was involved, and what size bonus he’s giving the two guys whose idea it was.

Listen to the full interview here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube (Extended Version), Amazon Music, Wondery

And send this to a buddy with a worse streak than you.

Why Chess?

Duolingo was founded in 2011 as a language learning app. In 2022, they expanded to math, then in 2023 to music - They now have over 40M daily active users and the stock is up 50% in the last year.

But there’s always been one goal: Become an Education Super App. So there’s strategy behind each and every new product launch — and here’s the criteria that led Luis to green-light Chess as their next subject.

1. It must attract a big market (100 million potential chess-curious learners)

2. It must require a long time to master (unlike a TikTok dance)

3. It must be learnable in a digital-app environment (so swimming is out)

From a product-building perspective, those criteria are relevant beyond an education app. Any skill, activity, or experience that fits all three would probably drive long-term engaged users.

So when two long-term employees pitched Duolingo execs on the idea of Chess — And it checked all three boxes? It got the go-ahead from Luis. Plus, it reminded him of growing up in Guatemala.

Beginners create for beginners

Interesting strategy we picked up on from the interview: Luis mentioned that the success of Duolingo’s language app was that they were not academics - They were language-learning beginners designing for other beginners. That kept Duolingo accessible to a wide entry-level audience.

So Duolingo applied the same “beginners-creating-for-beginners” playbook to chess. User experience and learning modules be developed by people who can relate to the target customer, i.e. beginners.

Two Guys + Artificial Intelligence = Chess Course

Get this: The prototype for Chess learning was developed by just two employees at Duolingo — and neither were engineers. Without deep coding or chess experience (again, they weren’t Bobby Fischer Grandmasters), they used a large language model to build v1 without a budget. And that AI-designed Minimum Viable Product is what sold CEO Luis on dedicating resources to launch Duolingo’s biggest new thing in years. Shoot your shot.

What comes after Chess?

Luis wouldn’t say. But based on Duolingo’s new product criteria, we’ve got some ideas:

• Poker

• Crossword Puzzles

• Debate

• Financial Literacy

• Elvish?

We asked Luis how big a bonus he’s gonna give the two guys who leveraged AI to bring Chess from idea to launch.

Yetis, there’s way more in the interview beyond chess too: The psychology of Duolingo’s growth hacks, why an addictive screen isn’t a bad thing, and the origin story of the unhinged owl.

We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did recording with Luis. Gracias, arigato, danke, & asante.

— Nick & Jack

Listen to the full Exclusive Interview here: Apple, Spotify, YouTube (Extended version), Amazon Music, Wondery.

ABOUT US: From the creators of Robinhood Snacks Daily, The Best One Yet (TBOY) is the daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. 20 minutes on the 3 business, economics, and finance stories you need, with fresh takes you can pretend you came up with.