The Twenty Minute VC

Gina Gotthilf: Lessons Scaling Duolingo from 3-200M Users; How to Master PR and Comms | E1028

Gina Gotthilf is a Co-Founder and COO at Latitud, an a16z-backed platform supporting the next generation of iconic tech startups in Latin America through digital products, a community and fund. Previously, Gina led growth and marketing at Duolingo from 3 to 200 million users via organic strategies and was part of the executive team. She also worked on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign, helping oversee the creation of digital ad campaigns at a historical budget, and led growth and community for Tumblr in Latin America. ---------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Gina Gotthilf’s Journey from Brazil to Silicon Valley 6:00 Lessons from Time at Tumblr 8:04 What Worked and Didn’t Work at Duolingo 19:20 Effective North Star Metrics 22:20 The Tactics of Public Relations 31:59 Ultimate Guide to the Press Release 46:47 How to Measure Success with PR 53:24 Should Founders Work with PR Firms? 58:09 Quick-Fire Round 1:04:20 Why Now Is The Best Time to Invest in LATAM ---------------------------------------- In Today’s Discussion with Gina Gotthilf We Discuss: Entry into the World of Growth: How Gina went from working on a farm to leading growth for Tumblr in LATAM? What are 1-2 of Gina’s biggest takeaways from her time leading growth for Duolingo? What does Gina know now that she wishes she had known when she entered the world of growth? 15 Top Tips and Secrets to Being Featured in the Best Publications: What is the best way to get in touch with journalists? What mistakes do founders have when they reach out to journalists? Should founders get in touch with more than one journalist at a publication? Should founders be explicit about the embargos they have on a story? Should they stick to them? Should founders be more wary of being published in a publication with a paywall? What materials should they send to journalists to get their attention? Should founders send press releases in early messages to journalists? How can founders control in some way what the journalist will ultimately publish? How long before the company wants the piece to come out, should they reach out to journalists? How can founders create FOMO when trying to get journalists to write their story? How can founders create social validity with journalists, when they are a small company? Once published, what should the distribution strategy look like? How can you get people you know to like and share content you are featured in? What are the top tips and tricks to get people to share content with you in? Should PR and Comms be an ongoing effort or static projects with news stories? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make in getting their company in the press? ---------------------------------------- Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3j2KMcZTtgTNBKwtZBMHvl?si=85bc9196860e4466 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-minute-vc-20vc-venture-capital-startup/id958230465 Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Gina Gotthilf on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ginag Follow 20VC on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/20vc_reels Follow 20VC on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@20vc_tok Visit our Website: https://www.20vc.com Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/contact ---------------------------------------- #GinaGotthilf #Latitud #HarryStebbings

Gina GotthilfguestHarry Stebbingshost

Jun 20, 20231h 9mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

From Fumbling Intern To Duolingo Growth Chief: PR-Driven Hypergrowth Playbook

Gina Gotthilf recounts her non-linear path from struggling philosophy graduate and unpaid startup operator to leading growth at Tumblr and Duolingo, scaling the latter from 3M to 200M users. She explains how she learned growth by doing, building a scrappy experimentation culture focused on high‑ROI tests, retention, and product‑market fit before performance marketing. A major focus is her unconventional, highly tactical PR playbook—using story, scarcity, social proof, and ‘spray and pray’ outreach—to drive user growth, credibility, and brand equity. She closes by broadening “PR” to mean any channel with concentrated attention, and champions Latin America as a massive, under-served opportunity for tech builders and investors.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Career paths can be chaotic and still lead to outsized impact.

Gina’s early 20s were marked by visa issues, bad bosses, crying in bathrooms, and nearly abandoning traditional careers before a chance connection led to Tumblr, and later Duolingo. Founders and operators shouldn’t over-index on linear résumés; relationships and persistence compound over time.

Prioritize growth experiments by ROI: low effort, high potential reach.

Duolingo’s early growth team was just Gina and one engineer, so they chose experiments like notification copy changes that required minimal engineering but touched nearly all users, driving outsized gains with tiny investment.

Both big wins and big negative test results reveal true inflection points.

Experiments that meaningfully help or hurt metrics (with statistical significance) indicate moments that deeply matter to users; those areas are worth deeper iteration, while “no effect” tests teach almost nothing.

Retention is the closest operational proxy for product‑market fit.

Gina views retention as evidence that users truly value a product; Duolingo’s North Star was DAU, but its strategy was retention-led. Pouring money into acquisition without strong retention wastes resources.

PR is a powerful, underused growth lever when approached like sales.

Instead of fluffy branding, Gina treats PR as targeted customer acquisition: craft a sharp one-line hook with credible signifiers, understand what matters to each journalist, generate scarcity, and relentlessly follow up—measured against core business metrics like DAUs or qualified leads.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

No one knows what they’re doing at most points in time, in life and in business.

— Gina Gotthilf

An experiment fails if you don’t learn anything. If it hurts your metrics with statistical significance, that means you’ve found an inflection point.

— Gina Gotthilf

Retention is almost like product‑market fit. If you have retention, people actually like the thing you made.

— Gina Gotthilf

PR is reaching anyone who has a big audience and getting them to share something with that audience. That’s it.

— Gina Gotthilf

What matters to you doesn’t necessarily matter to the other person. That’s the biggest mistake I see founders make in PR.

— Gina Gotthilf

Gina’s turbulent early career and entry into Tumblr and DuolingoFoundations of growth: experimentation, ROI, retention, and product‑market fitDuolingo growth experiments: notifications, badges, and statistical significanceHow to think about PR strategically as a founderHyper-tactical PR execution: hooks, exclusives, embargoes, and journalist outreachLeveraging brand, community, and influencers (including micro-influencers) for distributionLatin America as an emerging startup and investment opportunity

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