the Guatemalan Louis Von Ahnwho worked for companies like Google and Microsoft, I had a dream: to contribute to education. With the support of Severin Hacker, they created a free language learning platform: Duolingo. This is his story.
Luis von Ahn, known as the ‘Latin Mark Zuckerberg‘, was born in Guatemala in 1978, where he lived until 1996, when he moved to the United States. In the US, von Ahn studied at Duke University and Carnegie Mellon University, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science.
“It is very easy to give up when you are learning something. That’s why we want learning to be addictive.” told this 45-year-old math prodigy, who is known for his efforts to revolutionize global education.
His computer became his secret weapon.
At 8 years old, in his native Guatemala, Luis dreamed of having a Nintendo, he said. However, his mother surprised him with a gift that would become the first step in creating the captchas and Duolingo: a computer.
“My mom has always been there. The fact that I bought a computer changed my life. He always did everything so that I went to the best schools and coming to the United States to university has been the greatest example, ”she said.
Already in 2000, he created the programs that he would later sell to Google in 2009 at the age of 29, which generated a fortune of millions of dollars.
In 2011, he created Duolingo and by 2018, it was the most downloaded language app in the world. Also, until 2019, the popular learning app had more than 300 million users.
“Born from a passion to improve education”
After two years of working for Google, the Guatemalan decided to focus on the world of education and created, together with the computer scientist Severin Hacker, the digital platform to learn more than 80 languages.
“It was born out of a passion to improve education,” explained the businessman. For this reason, he decided to make it totally free, as it was until its Duolingo Max version, which will use artificial intelligence to make learning more efficient on its platform.
CurrentlyDuolingovalued at $2.78 billion, is located in 82 countries, has 500 employees and millions of users who learn languages for free, including Bill Gates.
Source-larepublica.pe
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