Gina Gotthilf

“Lenny, I'm so excited to be here. It's been awesome to see how you've built this, and just how far it's gone. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Look, I think for those of us here in the US, I became an American last year. I love the US. I've been here for 19 years. It's hard to imagine just how much is going on south of the border. There's ac...”

“And Brazil is a huge market, just in terms of sheer size, over 200 million people. And also in terms of where the ecosystem is. I am Brazilian, so I am Latin American, even though sometimes Brazilians...”

“More than 5,000 people came. We had over 70 speakers. It was across two days. We had amazing people like Ben Horowitz, who never gave a talk, or did a fireside specifically for and about Latin America...”

“And when I talk about my A-side, it's very impressive. I did things like we'll talk about, I met President Obama, I worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. I helped Duolingo scale from thr...”

“And the story I ended up telling was how, much I have these A and B-sides that I don't talk about my B-side so much. Latin America also has A and B-sides. Because it's really easy to focus on, it's da...”

“I applied to schools. I didn't get into any Ivy League, I didn't get into any of the top schools I wanted to go to. When I got to college, I actually ended up dropping out because I got so depressed, ...”

“Ironically, I dropped out of Reed College, which is the same college that Steve Jobs dropped out of. So I was just destined for greatness. I knew it at that moment.”

“Totally. I was dropping out, being like, yes, this is exactly the path. No, I was miserable. I thought there was no path forward.”

“I'm not talking about net value. But I'm talking about, if you want to grow in the world, it's understanding that psychology of how humans react to what you're showing them. So that was one lesson.”

“And so that's how they connected me with Duolingo, and I started helping them grow in Brazil as a consultant. They were like, this is great. Can you help us grow in Chile, Argentina? And I was like, y...”

“They were like, how about Mexico? And I was like, yes. Did I know anything about these places, Lenny? Did I know people there? No, but you can figure it out.”