So we hired a CTO from Netflix last year, Gorov Agaval. Amazing guy. He was the guy who led all of growth at Netflix.Tremendous resume. He's Indian. For him to get a visa to come to Germany after he had signed a job contract.This guy makes a lot of money. Took him 6 months. Why.Because he had to go to the consulate in San Francisco and they only take appointments two times a week and they've been booked out for the next 6 months. So I literally had to call up, you know, the foreign office in Germany to get ...

If I want to hire, let's say, the next chief product officer at Get Your Guide, it's almost impossible to do that in Europe. I need to go to Silicon Valley because the density of people who have done that scale, have served tens of millions of customers a year, build a business that's 10 billion plus valuation that just doesn't exist to build the structures and the processes and everything to do That. ...

So we almost lost the company after raising that A round. That was the moment when I made the biggest mistakes. I remember like a year or so after raising that A round.I needed to lay off 30% of the company and completely rejuggle get your guide to refocus us on the core. It was the decision that ultimately made Get Your Guide into what it is today. I would have not raised as big of a series A looking back.I think it was too much dilution. If you have a Seoia capital or an index or a Spark capital on your c ...

If you build an amazing free product, it takes way longer. But what you end up building is an organic growth flywheel. Meaning you tell your friends about Dualingo.I don't know if you do, they can go experience the full thing for free. Whether they appear or not, doesn't matter. If they like it, they will also tell their friends.It just expands the entire pie of people who can use your product. And we have a lot of users that use the app for free for 5 years. Eventually, one January, they're like, "Oh, I'm ...

There's already signs that people date on Duolingo. We have couples that got married because they met competing on a leaderboard and then they found each other on Facebook and got married. This behavior is already happening.So, it's not out of the question for us to figure out, well, how can we do matching better. Wow, that's pretty cool. I mean, it is out of the question for the record.not doing that. ...

I do believe the old guard can compete in certain circumstances if the situation is right and then they have leadership to just push it through. But I don't think that's the issue here. The real truth about Dropbox shipping or not shipping whatever the product is dash is it doesn't matter.Let me tell you what I mean by that. Typically the old god play is some version of I'm the system of record. I'm already in there.I can add this stuff on top. That's the pitch every time. I'm service now.I can add an agent ...

So you're the guy who puts ads in my Dualingo. But I did that. Yeah.Jeem Canu, CPO at Dualingo. Jeem leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners. Consumer products live and die in the pixels.Product managers are sometimes viewed as I'm the mini CEO. I decide strategy and then people execute. That is like the worst definition of a product manager that I've ever heard.So if someone is actually creating more output with AI, well, they'll probably get promoted faster. Why would you write ...

We're going to hit AGI when Microsoft and Open AI litigate what open AGI is cuz everyone else is using that term loosey goosey. It could be now. It could be 2045.Who the knows. Now half a trillion dollars of value depends on that word. I can tell you that is the only part of the contract where you go ooh cuz it's ambiguous.So you're right. That would be a fun vector of this discussion. ...

There's no way that scale can recover from losing its founders. I love you, but it's a dead man walking instantly. I could imagine an entire IPO cycle where once again, neither of the two names decided chose to go out and we get to the end of the year.I'm starting to lose confidence in the old guard. In situations of ambiguity, the person who has the most leverage has the best chance to win. And I would argue Microsoft has quite a lot of leverage cuz it's not existential for them, especially now.I think the ...

How did Theronos happen. The big loss there was for me personally. We signed up to do a secondary at a really good price and met with management.Something didn't feel right. Can't say that I was like, "Oh, it's a great gigantic fraud." I didn't know what it was. Did you meet with Elizabeth.No. The kind of seauite without her. And something just didn't feel right.So, we went back and we had a that form I told you about binding to transact. Oh, no. One page. One page.Simple. Companies love it. So, I ripped it ...