We chose to pursue advertising as a business model to keep Reddit free and open, aligning with our values and community expectations.

We launched Duolingo with a premium model where users can learn for free but see ads, or pay to remove ads, which allows us to fund the platform while keeping it accessible.

We haven't launched any advertising products yet, but I'm not completely against the idea of ads if done carefully.

We started with a freemium model, but realized it distracted us; we shifted to a paid model and consistently increased prices over time, which helped us focus on serious customers.

We're building a high-quality performance ad stack in-house, which is crucial for scaling our advertising business effectively.

Facebook's decision to not charge users was strategic, allowing them to build a successful ad business based on scale.

In hindsight, we shouldn't have launched with a free service in the first place; we ended up becoming a truly premium model based on ticket prices. We won't monetize a free product, which allows us to undercut our competitors and led to thousands of free events being published on our platform.

It's acceptable to offer a free product if there's a structured plan to monetize it later, such as through freemium or ad-supported models.

I realized that if people stop clicking on links, the ad economy dies, which was a key insight we had after launching our product.