Jackson Shuttleworth

Group Product Manager, Retention at Duolingo

Group product manager at Duolingo leading the retention team, responsible for the streaks feature which is arguably the single most impactful feature driving Duolingo's growth to a $14 billion business, having run over 600 experiments on streaks in four years.

The Growth Scientist The Scientist

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 45%

Execution & Craft 70%

Data & Experimentation 95%

Growth & Distribution 75%

Team & Leadership 35%

User Empathy & Research 60%

Key Themes

streaks as a billion-dollar feature engagement mechanics on top of valuable products simplifying the unit of measure for habit formation 600 experiments in four years loss aversion and user psychology balancing engagement with learning outcomes

Episode Summary

Jackson Shuttleworth provides the definitive deep dive into Duolingo's streaks feature, which has become arguably the most impactful single feature in consumer tech with 9 million users maintaining year-plus streaks. He reveals how simplifying from XP-based to one-lesson-a-day streaks was a massive DAU driver, while going too easy (one exercise) produced zero lift, and explains Duolingo's test-everything philosophy of running 600 experiments in four years on this one feature alone.

Leadership Principles

→ Test everything — we've run over 600 experiments on streaks in four years, and we'd much rather test it than debate it for days
→ Simplify the unit of measure — moving from XP-based streaks to one-lesson-a-day was a massive win because nobody thinks about doing one question on Duolingo
→ Streaks work best when sitting on top of an app people actually want to use — a streak is an engagement hack, but at the core you have to have an app people care about

Notable Quotes

"We have right now over 9 million users with a year plus streak. 9 million of our users have used Duolingo almost every day for well over a year."
— On the scale of impact the streaks feature has achieved

"We'd much rather test it than debate it for days. We've run in the last four years over 600 experiments on the streaks. So every other day effectively we're running an experiment."
— On Duolingo's test-everything culture applied to the streaks feature

"We actually tested, what if you do one exercise, just one exercise in a lesson will extend your streak. DAUs moved not one bit. We had dumbed down the unit of measure. Nobody thinks about 'I just want to come do one question on Duolingo.'"
— On the wrong turn of making streaks too easy to extend

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