Session: Quit Your Job… Then Join Duolingo? The Unexpected Journey Of An Indie Icon
summary
Leaves indie studio life to join midsize Space Ape (~110 people), helps grow a match‑3 + car restoration team to ~80, launches Crown Valley Customs (good release but fails to scale) and watches BeatStar succeed but not hit billion‑dollar levels. Spins out to Nextbeat (~25 people), rebuilds BeatStar variants, then joins Duolingo to build a music course. Uses Unity prototype to iterate fast inside a native app stack, wins leadership buy‑in, and brings real game feel into a 50M DAU product (≈10M users with >1‑year streak).
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Unexpected journey intro
- 1:30Indie to corporate life
- 2:54AAA games career
- 3:55Indie life challenges
- 5:19Why leave indie life
- 6:23Joining Space Ape
- 8:52Space Ape struggles
- 10:16Next Beat founder
- 12:42Scrappy music games
- 14:07Duolingo’s offer
- 16:10Duolingo staff engineer
- 17:12Duolingo culture tech
- 18:36Prototyping at Duolingo
- 20:03Unity integration hurdles
- 20:47Current work vision
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