Duolingo is saying no, non, nine, and never to San Francisco.
The language learning app is headquartered in Pittsburgh, which isn’t exactly known as a budding hub of startups and venture capital. But Duolingo said in a post on LinkedIn that it will never open a san francisco officePartly because it helps them maintain the culture they want.
“We built our headquarters here because we believe you don’t have to chase trends or skyrocketing rental prices to do meaningful work,” Duolingo said. wrote In a blog post last year. “For us, there is no ‘backup plan’ for the Pittsburgh Bay Area.”
The company’s other US offices are in Detroit, New York City, and Seattle.
Startups can thrive all over the world — and not just in Silicon Valley — but the pressure to build near the Bay Area is so great that we’re hosting TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 panel About this topic.
“Pittsburgh isn’t trying to be the next Silicon Valley — and that’s the point,” the company wrote.
Maybe this is all just fodder to advertise a city that has nothing of the sort a passably good baseball teamBut they’re probably right that building outside San Francisco helps the company drown out valley noise.
