<story><title>Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/duolingo-valued-65-bln-shares-soar-debut-2021-07-28/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>poorjohnmacafee</author><text>Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before.&lt;p&gt;How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable?&lt;p&gt;How is a $6.5B valuation justified?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jonas21</author><text>1. So it looks like they lost $14M on revenue of $71M in 2019, and $16M on revenue of $162M in 2020. Revenue more than doubled YoY, which is impressive. Costs also grew (by a smaller percentage), but they&amp;#x27;re presumably spending a lot to chase after the growth opportunity and can dial back later.&lt;p&gt;2. They had positive free cash flow of $14M in 2020, which may be a better metric to look at when assessing their financial health.</text></comment>
<story><title>Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/technology/duolingo-valued-65-bln-shares-soar-debut-2021-07-28/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>poorjohnmacafee</author><text>Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before.&lt;p&gt;How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable?&lt;p&gt;How is a $6.5B valuation justified?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paxys</author><text>Why is this always the comment whenever any startup or IPO is discussed on this site? Every company at this stage loses money. It would be stupid to chase profits over user or revenue growth. They have 40 million monthly active users. Registrations grew 67% YoY. Their revenue doubled in a single quarter. Expenses are mostly stock comp. They have nearly $200M cash on hand. The numbers are all solid.</text></comment>