👉 Background: Duolingo launched in 2011 as one of the OG language-learning apps with the idea of gamifying the painful process of learning grammar and slang in another language. The Duolingo owl, named Duo, has become a bit of an internet celebrity - part cheerleader, part mob boss, who’ll hunt you down if you skip your French lesson.  

👉 What happened: Duolingo has reported revenue of more than $252 million USD for the quarter. That was up 41% year-on-year… and well above analyst expectations. Clearly, Duo’s gentle threats and low-key bullying is paying off.

👉 What else: If that wasn’t enough, Duolingo announced its biggest acquisition ever: it bought music game startup NextBeat. As part of its push to become an “education super app”, Duolingo doesn’t want to stop at conjugating verbs… it wants to teach you to roll out a full symphony.

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‍What's the key learning?

‍💡Over the past 15 years, Duolingo has built a playbook to engage users in learning a language - from short lessons, streaks and rewards to just the right amount of guilt to keep people coming back.

💡 When you crack how people learn, you can teach them almost anything. And there’s no doubting that Duolingo’s strategy is working after its daily active users jumped 40% to 47.7 million last quarter.

💡They plan is to take that same formula and apply it beyond languages to other learning goals like maths, music and chess. Investors clearly liked this expansion strategy as well, because after the announcement, Duolingo’s shares rose 14% in after-hours trading.