Duolingo’s stock is plunging and the company is blaming its slower growth on less “unhinged” posting
Language-learning app Duolingo plunged yesterday, declining 26%, the worst-ever single-day decline for the stock, as we’ve charted here.
This came after the company posted weaker-than-expected user growth in Wednesday’s Q3 results and simultaneously signaled that it was deprioritizing monetization over the short term in an effort to revive its growth numbers. Given that “prioritizing monetization” is essentially Wall Street’s unofficial slogan, the stock market tumble is perhaps understandable.
But what does it actually mean?
Basically, it means the decisions the company makes in structuring how the app works will be biased toward keeping new users on the app, rather than steering them to pay up to subscribe right now or monetizing their eyeballs through ads.
While those app roadblocks do pull in cash, they also increase the number of people who quit the app out of frustration.
Why is the company doing this? “We just posted 135 million monthly active users. If we’re able to do an app that teaches much, much better than we have now, we will be talking about billions of users that we have. And that’s what we want to shoot for here,” CEO Luis von Ahn said on the post-earnings conference call.
Duolingo intends to redouble its efforts to create “unhinged” social media marketing content — which often features a stalker-like version of its ubiquitous green owl that’s fixated on getting you to do your language lessons. Such content was key to the way the company built its user base over the last few years.
THE TAKEAWAY
“We paused all the unhinged posts in our social media for a bit because we were listening to our community and trying to build brand love. And when we don’t post unhinged things, that basically our posts were much less likely to go viral, and that did have an impact on [daily active user] growth,” as Von Ahn explained on the conference call. “The good news is that, over the last few weeks, we have started the unhinged posts again in our social media accounts.”
Tesla shareholders approve Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package
At its annual shareholder meeting Thursday, Tesla announced that shareholders voted for CEO Elon Musk’s much-watched $1 trillion pay package, with 75% voting in favor.
Tesla’s board argued that Proposal 4 — a performance-based compensation package granting Musk greater control over the company — was essential to retaining him and, by extension, ensuring Tesla’s continued success.
For Musk to receive the full payout, he and Tesla must hit a number of milestones over the next decade. That includes raising Tesla’s market cap to $8.5 trillion from its present $1.4 trillion, delivering a million AI robots, and deploying a million robotaxis into commercial operation.
The board didn’t announce shareholders’ decision on investing in xAI, even though it had more yes than no votes, due to member abstentions.
Proposal 7 argued that xAI’s AI expertise would complement Tesla’s autonomous driving and robotics endeavors, and would give Tesla investors a stake “in a major AI player, potentially yielding significant financial returns while fostering technological advancements that benefit Tesla’s customers and shareholders.”
Musk himself has said investment in xAI is something Tesla should have done “long ago.”
THE TAKEAWAY
Ahead of the annual meeting, shareholders voted on 14 separate shareholder and company proposals, on topics that also included refilling Tesla’s employee stock option pool, ratifying an auditing firm, and performing a child labor audit. Shareholders followed the board’s recommendations in all but one, voting for Proposal 12 to reelect each director annually.
If anything, this confirms what we mostly already knew: the value of Tesla is intrinsically tied to Musk, and this vote cements that sentiment into corporate democratic truth.