Duolingo Category Entry — Map of Content

Duolingo entered high-stakes English testing, then math, music and chess — from a language app. Each entry reused something and rebuilt something, and the interesting part is which was which. This skill packages that judgement into patterns you can run against your own next bet.

Structured as a graph: scan the descriptions, follow only the [[wikilinks]] you need. Don't read all ten up front.

Choosing what to enter

• [[references/intensity-of-demand-beats-market-size]] — rank candidates by evidence of self-organization, not by addressable population.
• [[references/repeated-inbound-requests-are-the-spec]] — demand from your own users removes the reach risk and the trust risk at once.
• [[references/demand-hides-in-your-own-data-and-your-users-misunderstandings]] — stated interest at scale, informally-served categories, and recurring misconceptions as roadmap signals.

Where to attack an incumbent

• [[references/attack-the-axes-the-incumbent-cannot-move]] — move price, duration, place and format together; size by who is priced out.
• [[references/optimize-for-the-side-nobody-has-served]] — in a two-sided market, the side that endures the category is unclaimed value.
• [[references/port-the-incumbents-goal-not-their-safeguards]] — their controls compensate for constraints your medium doesn't have.

What transfers and what breaks