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I stand by my comments. Groupon and LivingSocial said the same about their respective market, a decade ago. And if you'd done your research into HolonIQ's repor

I stand by my comments. Groupon and LivingSocial said the same about their respective market, a decade ago. And if you'd done your research into HolonIQ's report, offline language learning was the supermajority of the $61 billion market. Online learning was a tiny tiny fraction of the market, and as many other commenters have pointed out: Duolingo and most of its online competitors are only good for superficial, introductory-level learning, with actual skill growth requiring in-person interaction. Moreover, Duolingo's online competition alone includes hundreds of free and paid apps and websites, plus Youtube and Twitch. Duolingo's "gross profit" is not calculated using GAAP. It's calculated using fantasy unicorn accounting. Key giveaway: if a company's revenue "more than doubles" but it's losses also more than double, it's not actually profitable on a per-unit basis; it's simply shifting items that should be reported in COGS to other items that let it artificially inflate its gross margins. In Duolingo's case, it's actually worse: while revenues doubles, losses are on track to quadruple (they reported a $13.5 million loss for just 2021Q1, compared to roughly $16 million for all of 2020). I've worked for enough startups going public that I can spot when a startup is playing games with its financials. Duolingo is one of them. This time next year, Duolingo will be looked on as 2021's Groupon.

mbesto 5y ago
> Groupon and LivingSocial said the same about their respective market, a decade ago. These are hilarious businesses to cherry pick because they explicitly used fuzzy accounting for the nature of their industry - which was selling coupons that may or may not be used. Their numbers were irregular because they accounted for coupons that may have never been actually used, but were allocated on their books as such. DuoLingo is NOTHING like that. People pay a subscription for a service that uses software as its delivery mechanism. COGS is simple for them -> hosting + customer service. COGS is very different for Groupon and LivingSocial. > Key giveaway: if a company's revenue "more than doubles" but it's losses also more than double, it's not actually profitable on a per-unit basis; it's simply shifting items that should be reported in COGS to other items that let it artificially inflate its gross margins. You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly have never actually seen financials of a business like DuoLingo. Guess when NetSuite's most profitable year was? That's right, 2009, during one of the biggest recessions in the world's history, and it's because they fired their growth engine (S&M) and just pumped out cash. https://a16z.com/2015/05/15/a16z-podcast-why-saas-revenue-is-worth-more-than-traditional-software-sales/ https://a16z.com/2015/05/15/a16z-podcast-why-saas-revenue-is...
- gamblor956 5y ago
  You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly have never actually seen financials of a business like DuoLingo. :) My list of clients when I was still working at a firm include many tech companies ranging in size from vastly unprofitable startups to multi-billion dollar public companies, in industries including robotics, hardware, SaaS, PaaS/IaaS, biotech, media tech, aviation, and clean tech. A number of YC startups were clients, including some that are still actively discussed on these forums today. At least one of the Groupon, LivingSocial, etc., cohort was a client... DuoLingo is NOTHING like that. People pay a subscription for a service that uses software as its delivery mechanism. COGS is simple for them -> hosting + customer service. COGS is very different for Groupon and LivingSocial. DuoLingo's hosting costs should be low. But content development costs should be included in COGS (being pedantic: COGS doesn't apply to non-inventory business activities, so we should be using the term COR instead). Content development and customer service aren't cheap. And of course, gross margins are irrelevant if you're constantly blowing past your revenue numbers by overspending on "product development" (i.e., the tech side). History is littered with companies who claimed to have great "gross margins" but died because they overspent on "product development."
  - hsod 5y ago
    I’m not an accountant but the idea that content development should be counted in COGS seems way wrong to me. The whole point of COGS is that it should be subtracted from revenue since you have to pay it for every unit sold. Duolingo’s content isn’t like that— once they build out a lesson it can be served for free to any number of customers. Saying it should be counted as COGS because it’s expensive is to erase the whole idea behind COGS.
  - mbesto 5y ago
    > History is littered with companies who claimed to have great "gross margins" but died because they overspent on "product development." Please do tell. > DuoLingo's hosting costs should be low. But content development costs should be included in COGS (being pedantic: COGS doesn't apply to non-inventory business activities, so we should be using the term COR instead). Content development and customer service aren't cheap. I agree with you here, except for specifics. Do we know how much content costs? (ps, once you create content for a language it can scale infinitely - as opposed to having teachers in a classroom who can't). We don't know how much customer service costs / personnel they have, BUT it is part of COGS (as per their definition) so its impossible to qualify that hosting "should be lower" unless you know their specific hosting costs.

mbesto 5y ago

> Groupon and LivingSocial said the same about their respective market, a decade ago. These are hilarious businesses to cherry pick because they explicitly used fuzzy accounting for the nature of their industry - which was selling coupons that may or may not be used. Their numbers were irregular because they accounted for coupons that may have never been actually used, but were allocated on their books as such. DuoLingo is NOTHING like that. People pay a subscription for a service that uses software as its delivery mechanism. COGS is simple for them -> hosting + customer service. COGS is very different for Groupon and LivingSocial. > Key giveaway: if a company's revenue "more than doubles" but it's losses also more than double, it's not actually profitable on a per-unit basis; it's simply shifting items that should be reported in COGS to other items that let it artificially inflate its gross margins. You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly have never actually seen financials of a business like DuoLingo. Guess when NetSuite's most profitable year was? That's right, 2009, during one of the biggest recessions in the world's history, and it's because they fired their growth engine (S&M) and just pumped out cash. https://a16z.com/2015/05/15/a16z-podcast-why-saas-revenue-is-worth-more-than-traditional-software-sales/ https://a16z.com/2015/05/15/a16z-podcast-why-saas-revenue-is...

gamblor956 5y ago
You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly have never actually seen financials of a business like DuoLingo. :) My list of clients when I was still working at a firm include many tech companies ranging in size from vastly unprofitable startups to multi-billion dollar public companies, in industries including robotics, hardware, SaaS, PaaS/IaaS, biotech, media tech, aviation, and clean tech. A number of YC startups were clients, including some that are still actively discussed on these forums today. At least one of the Groupon, LivingSocial, etc., cohort was a client... DuoLingo is NOTHING like that. People pay a subscription for a service that uses software as its delivery mechanism. COGS is simple for them -> hosting + customer service. COGS is very different for Groupon and LivingSocial. DuoLingo's hosting costs should be low. But content development costs should be included in COGS (being pedantic: COGS doesn't apply to non-inventory business activities, so we should be using the term COR instead). Content development and customer service aren't cheap. And of course, gross margins are irrelevant if you're constantly blowing past your revenue numbers by overspending on "product development" (i.e., the tech side). History is littered with companies who claimed to have great "gross margins" but died because they overspent on "product development."
- hsod 5y ago
  I’m not an accountant but the idea that content development should be counted in COGS seems way wrong to me. The whole point of COGS is that it should be subtracted from revenue since you have to pay it for every unit sold. Duolingo’s content isn’t like that— once they build out a lesson it can be served for free to any number of customers. Saying it should be counted as COGS because it’s expensive is to erase the whole idea behind COGS.
- mbesto 5y ago
  > History is littered with companies who claimed to have great "gross margins" but died because they overspent on "product development." Please do tell. > DuoLingo's hosting costs should be low. But content development costs should be included in COGS (being pedantic: COGS doesn't apply to non-inventory business activities, so we should be using the term COR instead). Content development and customer service aren't cheap. I agree with you here, except for specifics. Do we know how much content costs? (ps, once you create content for a language it can scale infinitely - as opposed to having teachers in a classroom who can't). We don't know how much customer service costs / personnel they have, BUT it is part of COGS (as per their definition) so its impossible to qualify that hosting "should be lower" unless you know their specific hosting costs.