Duolingo says San Francisco no, non, nein and nyet.
The language learning app is headquartered in Pittsburgh, which is not referred to as a booming center for startups and enterprise capital. But Duolingo said in a LinkedIn post that it did will never open an office in San Franciscoin part because it helps them maintain the culture they desire.
“We built our headquarters here because we believe you don’t have to chase trends or inflated rent prices to do meaningful work.” Duolingo he wrote last yr in a blog post. “For us, Pittsburgh is not a ‘backup plan’ for the Bay Area.”
The company’s other U.S. offices are situated in Detroit, New York and Seattle.
Startups can thrive throughout the world — not only in Silicon Valley — but the pressure to build near the Bay Area is so great that we’re hosting a TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 panel dedicated to this very topic.
“Pittsburgh is not trying to be the next Silicon Valley – and that is exactly the point,” the company wrote.
Maybe all this is just fodder for promoting a city that does not exist at all pretty good baseball team. But they’re probably right that building outside of San Francisco helps the company mute the noise of the Valley.