Duolingo CEO explains his approach to ‘founder mode’ — and what happens when executives disagree

• Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn talked about his data-driven approach to “founder mode.”
• The CEO said he and his team look to the data and rarely disagree — but when going solely off opinions, his wins out.
• A debate over founder mode was recently sparked by Paul Graham’s essay advocating hands-on leadership.

With the Silicon Valley split on how to actually run a company, Duolingo’s CEO is siding with founder mode — but he’s not the only one in the company who could fill those shoes.

In an interview on The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast, Luis von Ahn said that while he has a “view of everything,” other executives, such as vice president of product management Cem Kansu and chief design officer Ryan Sims, do as well.

“Yes, I am in that mode, but we have a number of people who could probably play that role as well,” von Ahn said.

The tech industry’s latest debate on management styles was first sparked in September after Paul Graham, a writer and founding partner of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, published an essay titled “Founder Mode” that sent leaders into a frenzy.

Graham, inspired by Airbnb’s cofounder and CEO Brian Chesky, argued that companies should be run with a hands-on approach rather than delegating tasks to direct reports.

He described it as a way to run a company that involves being highly hands-on rather than delegating to a small number of direct reports and isolating executives via administrative tiers — or “manager mode.”

Von Ahn, who cofounded Duolingo in 2011, said that when disagreements occur between the three executives, he goes by the saying, “If we’re going to go by opinion, let’s go by mine.”

“Generally, when we have disagreements, I see how deeply they believe in their thing, and sometimes I just disagree and commit,” he said. “But if we believe with equal strength on something, I will just go with my thing.”

While this my-way-or-the-highway approach feels very indicative of founder mode, arguments rarely happen between the three executives, von Ahn said in the interview.

Von Ahn said that since Duolingo is a very “metrics-based company,” the majority of decisions rely on data rather than opinion.

“If we run an A/B test and the metrics say something, my opinion doesn’t matter all that much unless it’s something that we think is really like a dark pattern or something,” he said.

Duolingo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider

Von Ahn also said in the interview Kansu and Sims, who have been with the company for eight and six years, respectively, have worked with him for so long that they’re all “pretty aligned on everything.”

“But generally, my opinion or their opinion doesn’t matter all that much,” he said.