A culture like Duolingo’s doesn’t come from some corporate playbook - it had to be built from scratch.
We started with a few dozen nerds above a Pittsburgh sports bar, fueled by a wild dream to make the world’s best education accessible to everyone.
Today, we're a ~$16B* company with 800+ employees, but we've held on to what makes us special: a truly quirky culture, endless experiments, an obsession with thinking long-term, and our slightly unhinged sense of humor.
After 14 years of figuring out what works (and what doesn't), we decided to write it all down. The Duolingo Handbook captures our core principles through stories of wins, failures, and plenty of surprises along the way. It's not a blueprint – it's a look inside a culture that's helped us build something unique in tech.
What's in our handbook?
At the center of this book are 5 principles. These aren’t aspirational—they’re lessons we've learned through experience.
- Take the Long View: If it helps in the short-term but hurts Duolingo in the long-term, it’s not right.
- Raise the Bar: To change how the world learns, we must do world-class work.
- Ship It!: For a good idea to become reality, we need to push experiments with a sense of urgency. So go, go, go!
- Show Don’t Tell: We use clear, concise communication that is grounded in data and real impact.
- Make It Fun: We bring a sense of humor, joy, and imagination to everything we do.
Plus, we unpack The Green Machine, our simple approach to building things: gather excellent people, let them experiment, and double down on what works.
Want the full scoop?
The Duolingo Handbook is packed with insights, stories, and principles that you can use for your own work or team. Whether you’re a founder, creative, aspiring CEO, or just someone who loves learning about how companies work – this handbook is for you.
*Valuation as of 1/28/25