Duolingo says no, none, nine, ninet to San Francisco.
This language learning app is headquartered in Pittsburgh, which is not well known as a fast-growing center for startups and venture capital. However, Duolingo said in a LinkedIn post that it will never open an office in San Francisco, in part because it would help maintain the culture they want.
“We built our headquarters here because we believe you don’t have to chase trends or exorbitant rents to do meaningful work,” Duolingo wrote in a blog post last year. “For us, Pittsburgh is not a ‘backup plan’ for the Bay Area.”
The company’s other U.S. offices are in Detroit, New York City and Seattle.
Startups can grow not just in Silicon Valley but all over the world, but the pressure to build companies near the Bay Area has grown so much that we’re hosting a TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 panel on this very topic.
“Pittsburgh is not trying to become the next Silicon Valley, and that’s exactly the point,” the company wrote.
Maybe this is all just fodder to promote a city that doesn’t even have a reasonably good baseball team. But it’s probably true that by building outside San Francisco you can avoid the Valley’s noise.
