20Product: How Duolingo Build Product 10x Faster with AI | Duolingo's Biggest Lessons on Paywalls, Push Notifications and In-App Purchases | Why Small Teams are the Future of Product | Why PMs Will Become Extinct with Cem Kansu, CPO @ Duolingo

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cem Kansu is the Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, where he leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners. Since joining Duolingo, Cem has played a pivotal role in driving record user engagement, revenue growth, and product innovation, including the launch of Duolingo Math and the wildly successful Duolingo Music. Under his leadership, the company has consistently ranked as the #1 education app globally.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

04:12 – Cem’s Origin Story: From Google Ads to Saving Duolingo’s Business

06:45 – “Mini CEO” Myth: Why PMs Need to Ditch the Ego

08:55 – The Truth About Design Speed and Pixel Perfection

11:30 – The INSANE Story Behind Duolingo’s Viral Chess Launch

14:42 – Why Smaller Teams Are the Future of Product

17:20 – Duolingo’s AI Playbook: How They’re Building 10x Faster

20:05 – Will Engineers Even Exist in 5 Years? Cem Gets Real

26:10 – Do AI Tools Have ANY Defensibility? Cem Doesn’t Hold Back

29:00 – Why Duolingo Took So Long to Monetize (And What They Learned)

33:05 – Cem on Killing Ads, Tasteful Monetization, and Investor Doubt

38:30 – The Secret to Duolingo’s Paywall Strategy (And What Not to Do)

42:05 – Cem’s Weirdest Retention Hack? A Single Emoji…

46:25 – The Crazy Science Behind Push Notifications at Duolingo

50:00 – In-App Purchases Done Right: GEMS, Freeze, and the Psychology of Value

53:15 – Why Cem Thinks Daily Retention Is the King Metric

55:10 – The ONE Product Feature That Changed Duolingo Forever

57:45 – Will Duolingo Become the Disney of Gen Z?

01:00:00 – Dating on Duolingo?! Cem Reacts to Harry’s Craziest Product Ideas

01:03:45 – Cem’s Biggest Product Mistakes — And What He’d Kill Tomorrow

01:12:00 – The One Thing Every PM Must Do to Survive the AI Wave

01:14:00 – Duolingo in 20 Years: Cem’s Wildest Vision Yet

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings. Now 20 Product is the monthly show where we sit down with the best CPO's in the world to discuss how they build their product teams.
0:09.5	Today, we've got one of the best joining us in Gem Kansu, CPO at Duolingo, one of my favourites at Duolingo.
0:16.2	Gem leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners.
0:23.1	Since joining, Gem has played a pivotal role in driving user engagement, revenue growth and product innovation. He's launched
0:27.6	Duolingo Math and the wildly successful Juolingo music. Under his leadership, the company's
0:32.9	consistently ranked as the number one education app globally. This is a masterclass in how
0:38.9	Duolingo has created a product of true consumer delight. But before we dive into the show today,
0:44.4	are you struggling to beat model benchmarks or implement Gen AI in your product? If so,
0:49.7	you need Turing. Turing is an AGI infrastructure company backed by incredible investors like Foundation
0:56.3	Capital and Westbridge Capital. And they do two things. Number one, they help leading companies
1:01.5	in AI labs like Salesforce, Anthropic and meta, enhance their LLMs with advanced reasoning,
1:07.9	coding, multilinguality, multi-modality and more.
1:11.6	Number two, they combine human and artificial intelligence expertise to deploy cutting-edge
1:17.2	AI systems for awesome companies like Rivian and Reddit.
1:21.4	Right now, Turing offers a free, five-minute self-assessment to help you pinpoint your
1:26.5	place in the Gen AI journey, get tailored
1:28.8	next steps to optimize your model strategy, and then finally learn how Turing can refine and
1:34.6	implement your models for better performance. Take the guesswork out of Gen AI, visit Turing.com
1:40.7	forward slash 20VC to start your free assessment today. And once your Gen A.I strategy is on
1:47.4	point with Turing, now let's switch gears to the future of mobile and how one company is turning
1:52.4	your screen into real returns. We spend nearly half our waking hours glued to our phones,
1:58.4	upwards of 50 hours every week. Recently, one company transforming this reality stood out so much I personally became a shareholder.
	...

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