I had the privilege of meeting Severin Hacker, the co-founder of Duolingo, at a technology event in 2018. Just by the way he talked, anyone could tell he was extremely passionate about what he did. This passion started long before 2018 or even when Duolingo was created in 2011. “What originally drew me to computers was video games and the desire to build your own games and understand how those games are built. I was somewhat obsessed,” Hacker said. He was able to take his interest and hobby, and use it as a starting block for his entrepreneurial thinking.

Hacker went to college at Carnegie Mellon University (which was actually my second choice to Grove City) in Pittsburgh. His initial idea was to create an application that could translate internet sites. In fact, Duolingo was what Hacker called a “happy mistake.” This example affirms what we learned in class that the best ideas sometimes come by accident when we put our initial ideas out there for testing and review. This “happy mistake” later led him to be included in the MIT Technology Review’s “Top Innovators under 35” and receive One Young World’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award. If I learned anything from this, it’s to not hold back my incomplete ideas because they might just be a few steps away from being successful.