How Duolingo's uses strategy to kill the competition

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INTRODUCTION

In only a few years Duolingo has reached $483M in revenue, doubled its share price and experienced 43% year-on-year growth. How did they do all this? By doing strategy better than anyone else in their category. Let me tell you all about it.

PLAY BY DIFFERENT RULES

Most brands fail not because their product or service is bad. They fail because they don’t reinvent their category. Duolingo, however, is not one of those brands.

When Duolingo was founded in 2012 language learning was already saturated and competitive. You had competition from legacy players (Rosetta Stone), traditional classrooms, and increasing new challengers (Babel). Now Duolingo could have tried to compete in this overly crowded category directly, but thankfully they didn’t. They do what all iconic brands do, they look for better opportunities.

Duolingo realized that despite all this competition, language learning was very much stuck in the past. In fact, it had barely changed in over one hundred years. Learning, they realized, still mainly involved mind-numbing repetition of words and hours sitting at a desk or in front of a computer. And these outdated teaching methods were holding many back. You see many students were not failing to learn a new language for lack of effort or willingness. They were failing because the outdated teaching methods were so ineffective

Understanding this revealed to Duolingo the real and more lucrative opportunity ahead. Instead of trying to win in the overcrowded language learning category, they should seek to find new and more fun learning occasions.

How did they do this? Well before I proceed I have some news…

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Who is it for? Three types…

WHAT BUSINESS ARE YOU REALLY IN?

How might Duolingo create a more modern & fun way of learning? By Looking to culture. Here they observed that a rapid rise in smartphone adoption has seen users of all ages, invest countless hours playing games. Yet often these games were far more than a frivolous pastime. Often people would spend countless hours investing their time and energy into mastering a new ‘skill’ such as drawing (ie Draw Something) or spelling (ie Worlde).

Understanding this unlocked a powerful strategic pivot for Duolingo. They realized if people were willing to spend months mastering drawing & spelling, they would likely do the same when it came to language learning. Grasping this made Duolingo reframe the business it was competing in. They realized they were not in the learning business, they were in the games business. And they should, therefore, create games that gets the world learning through the power of play.

This pivot has gone on to guide all the brand has done moving forward. It saw them create a playful learning experience more addictive than CanyCrush. One filled with achievements, and passive-aggressive nudges when you fail to play. It has seen them create a DUO, a playful (and somewhat psychotic) mascot. It has seen them create a playful brand world filled with characters you might find in video games. And it is an approach that is now enabling them to expand into new verticals such as maths and science.

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CONCLUSION 

Duolingo teaches us the power and importance of reinvention. It teaches how powerful it can be to look beyond the obvious, identify new opportunities, and find new occasions to win.

Want to know how to do all that? Then you need to join STRATLABS. And the best thing of all? The community is full expensable if you are a freelancer/business owner or can pay for it out of your compani’s annual training budget (go ask your boss 😉 ).

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Expect big thinking & small typ0s because i'm #MadeByDyslexia 

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Will Poskett

Co-Founder Defiant