PITTSBURGH — Beyond its headquarters in Pittsburgh, ed-tech platform Duolingo has office space in New York, Seattle, Detroit, Berlin and Beijing. But despite being a growing tech company with over 40 million daily active users, the company has no plans of opening office space in Silicon Valley.
Jocelyn Lai, the company’s global head of talent brand, spoke with the Pittsburgh Business Times about why.
“If we were in Silicon Valley, I think there would be so many more distractions and so much more pressure to follow all the trends, hit these specific numbers, even like open an office in a specific neighborhood,” Lai said. “What I think is interesting for folks or companies that are outside of Silicon Valley is they can actually redefine what success means in tech, and that’s kind of what we’ve done.”
In her eyes, there’s a cultural difference between Duolingo (Nasdaq: DUOL) and other tech companies — a difference between “greatness and goodness.” Duolingo as a company has been built on impact, whether that be the product itself, free educational tools or initiatives like partnering with the United Nations to provide guidance and assistance to refugee student scholars. Where Silicon Valley firms aim for greatness, for example in earnings, she feels it’s Duolingo’s “goodness” that has led to its “greatness.”
Click here to read more from our partners at the Pittsburgh Business Times.
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