Mr. Ahn then did something laterally brilliant. Aware of how annoying his service was, he re-launched it as RE-CAPTCHA. When older books are being digitized, there are portions that Optical Character Recognition software can’t read. This problem becomes frequent with older pages where the ink has faded or paper is discolored. Now for anti-robot verification, RECAPTCHA shows an image of this old text. If the majority of people type the same answer, this is used as the text’s translation. His service is both making money and digitizing books that might otherwise be lost. He really is making the world a better place. The example Ms. Gotthilf gives is that it only took 100,000 people to put a man on the moon. Imagine what 750 million people dedicating 10 seconds can do? “Learn a Language Free Forever” includes teaching and thereby saving dying languages. This doesn’t just sound noble, it is.
But how does Duolingo make money? It posed the question “How can we get 100 million people translating the Internet into every major language for free?” Machine translation into other languages is about as accurate as scanning old books. So Duolingo combines the translations of multiple beginners to get the quality of a professional translator. These translators work for free, and generate ad revenue to boot.
Ok, Mr. Ahn’s business models are genius. But the parts that impress me are not growth hacking. I don’t see where G.H. is all that different from other fruit fly trends in the business world. Much like Buddha or Jesus were spiritualists rebelling against established dogma, I’m trying to see where the hacker rebel lurks in this new methodology. Also, whoever owns Rosetta Stone stock better short the crap out of it. This young lady isn’t messing around. And how the heck do you compete with free anyway?
Sean Ellis thanks her, drops a quick verbal fortune cookie “If you can’t measure it you can’t change it” and introduces the next speaker. He is a charismatic gentleman named Nilan Peris from Transferwise. Sporting jeans and a green t-shirt that says “Obey” he uses attention catching phrases like “death zone” and “disruptive products”. Or at least in the beginning he tries to. But there continue to be technical issues with the microphone (which I find humorous since we’re at a tech conference). And to be fair, he echoes my earlier sentiment “You didn’t really learn anything until you utterly fail.” Mr. Peris points out that nobody Googles you when a product like yours hasn’t existed before.
His company created a digital currency exchange system that operates parallel to banking. As he talks, though, I’m not sure if I agree with some of what he says. What Transferwise “created” has existed since the 8thcentury as Hawala. Think of it like AirBnB but what’s being hosted is money. It is popular in poorer countries and among criminals who don’t want their finances exposed. So maybe “create” is a strong word to use. Yet look at solar power. It existed long before Elon Musk. Does that make his accomplishments any less impressive?
I don’t agree that Transferwise solves really hard problems that haven’t been solved before. But hey, they’re much cheaper than a bank. And who hasn’t had their local depository treat them like garbage? “It’s not me sir / ma’am, it’s the giant institution that I represent which is treating you like crap. I’m just it’s sphincter!” The only thing this teller’s approach has hacked is the humanity of your soul. So whether I agree with their brand identity or not, Transferwise sounds great to me.