Before the Internet, coordinating more than 100,000 people, let alone paying them, was essentially impossible. But now with the Internet, I've just shown you a project where we've gotten 750 million people to help us digitize human knowledge.
I co-founded Duolingo with the mission of bringing free language education to the world.
The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?
I am always able to keep a laser focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted. It helps that I try to break everything I do into small, achievable tasks.
Because education is such a broad area, I chose to focus on language learning.
In 2011, after spending a couple of years working at Google, I decided that I wanted to dedicate myself to helping to transform education. I was particularly inspired by my upbringing in Guatemala, a poor country where high-quality educational opportunities are limited to those who have money.
One fact we're particularly proud of is that there are more people learning languages on Duolingo in the US than there are people learning languages in the entire US public school system.
[Captchas] are not only annoying, but they kill 10 seconds of your time.
If you get asked to do something that would take place down the road (say you get asked to speak at a conference that's a year away) and you wouldn't want to do it if it were taking place next week, then don't do it. This advice has helped me evaluate the opportunities that I truly want to dedicate my time to and those that I don't.
People are good at figuring out what's attractive, and computers are good at quickly searching and finding. You put them together, and bang!
The current business model for language education is the student pays — in particular, the student pays Rosetta Stone $500. The problem with this business model is that 95 percent of the world’s population doesn’t have $500.
I finished reading High Output Management by Andrew Grove, which had such valuable insights for leaders that I've been forcing managers at Duolingo to read the book.
I usually make to-do lists with timelines, and pen and paper does the trick for me.
My ultimate research goal is to transform our human existence to just eating, sleeping, drinking, playing - nevermind.
This sounds strange to many people, but I work out for exactly 16 minutes every day, and do so at maximum speed by running 2.5 miles. This keeps me healthy without taking up too much time so I can stay focused on other things. It's one of the most efficient things I do each day.
It's hard to think of a time when I'm not working, but when that is the case, I like to travel and eat good food.
Every time you buy tickets on Ticketmaster, you help to digitize a book.
I am an early riser, and always wake up between 5 and 6am.
Together with my advisor, Manuel Blum, I co-invented CAPTCHAs, or computer-generated tests that humans are routinely able to pass but that computers have not mastered (they are the squiggly computer letters that are prevalent across the web).
I watch a lot of TV. That's how I spend most of my time outside of work. If I had more time, I would fill it 100 percent with watching TV.
I worked on a number of projects that were used by millions of people and that also served as inspiration to what we now call "crowd-sourcing."
