A masterclass in crowdsourcing, w/Duolingo's Luis von Ahn
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
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Summary
Crowdsourcing is more than a group of people interested in the same cause, it’s a way to tap skills – and scale – that you don’t have. And when it works, it can be the rocket fuel that launches you to scale further than you could have ever imagined. No one knows this better than Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO of Duolingo. Duolingo is a language app with over 300 million users worldwide, who complete over 7 billion exercises a month. It’s their passion for learning that drives them to create even more content for the app – igniting the rocket fuel that Duolingo needs. Cameo appearance by Elizabeth Sampat (game designer and author).
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.8 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player |
| 0:28.0 | and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:35.0 | I was gonna make a gym, |
| 0:39.0 | that was going to be free. Anybody could go there. |
| 0:46.0 | Imagine it's a free gee. |
| 0:48.0 | It's amazing. |
| 0:49.0 | That's Luis Van On, founder of Language Learning App, Duo Lingo, describing a game-changing idea he |
| 0:56.6 | had at the age of 12 to disrupt the fitness world. |
| 1:00.7 | I thought this was a unique idea that was going to completely revolutionize the world. |
| 1:05.0 | What was it that made this idea so revolutionary? |
| 1:09.0 | It would harness the power of gym goers to generate electricity. |
| 1:15.0 | We're going to connect all the exercise equipment to the power grid and we're going to sell |
| 1:21.8 | that electricity to the power |
| 1:23.3 | company and that's how we were going to make money. |
| 1:25.5 | Young Louise feverishly doodled, weird and wonderful designs for its free gym |
| 1:31.0 | exercise bikes hooked up to the grid, treadmills wired to power converters. |
| 1:37.0 | Bodybuilders could pump out the electrons as they pumped iron. |
| 1:42.0 | And society could burn calories instead of fossil fuels. |
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