Duolingo’s tech chief says his leadership principle is ‘reduce, automate, delegate’

Duolingo’s cofounder has a three-part principle for striking the right balance between “founder mode” and having some hierarchy in the company.

“One of my principles is reduce, automate, delegate,” said Severin Hacker, who is also the company’s chief technology officer. He spoke on an episode of the “20VC” podcast published on Monday.

Hacker cofounded Duolingo in 2011 with Luis von Ahn, his doctoral supervisor at Carnegie Mellon University. The language-learning app has since gone public and employs about 800 people.

Speaking about “reduce,” Hacker said that once a month or once a quarter, he thinks about what he needs to do — and what he can drop.

“If you just don’t do it, is it the end of the world?” he said.

Once he decides that a task is necessary, he tries to gauge if it can be automated, such as using ChatGPT to write a report or answer a question.

Lastly, he said he delegates what cannot be automated.

“I’ve handed off most of the day-to-day engineering to our head of engineering,” Hacker said. “I’m now a little bit out of the weeds.”

He said he’s focused on AI and its implications for Duolingo and deciding what the company should invest in.

“I probably spend 80% of my day thinking and acting on this AI question,” the CTO said.

The company has doubled down on AI usage in the past year. It uses the technology to generate lessons, and last month, Duolingo’s CEO von Ahn made headlines for outlining all the ways he plans to integrate AI at the company, including for hiring and evaluation decisions.

Duolingo’s use of AI and growing user base have made it an investor darling. It hit over 46 million daily active users this year, and its stock is up 191% in the past year. Duolingo has expanded its offerings from about 40 languages to math, music, and, recently, chess.

Evolving leadership

Hacker said that his role has changed every year since he cofounded the company.

He added that it’s important to find a balance between being in founder mode — Silicon Valley lingo for a leader who is very involved in the company day-to-day — and being a manager, who often delegates and prefers hierarchy.

“At a certain scale, you need to have managers or layers,” Hacker said. “The oldest organization in the world, the Catholic Church, that is still around, it’s very hierarchical and and I think there’s probably some reason for it.”

Earlier this month, von Ahn, too, said that his leadership style changed as the language learning company grew in size.

In an interview at Stanford University, the CEO said that he no longer gets into the fine details of every task, not because he doesn’t want to, but because it’s impossible to micromanage that many people.

“At this point, I also have learned that most of my job is culture carrier, mascot, and just making some of the kind of tough philosophical decisions,” von Ahn said.

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