The CQ | The Next Act From Duolingo's Former Duolingo Chief Product Officer
Plus the Forerunner Team's Must-Reads of the Week
The CQ is Forerunner’s weekly newsletter rounding up the top consumer news, plus bonus musings from our investment team and portfolio highlights. Subscribe to get the latest each weekend.
Some early-stage teams stop you dead in your tracks. A rare combination of deep operational excellence, a unique tenacity for building hard, mission-driven companies from scratch, and, perhaps most importantly, unparalleled founder-market fit that provides a disproportionate advantage.
That was exactly the case with Outsmart, which is on a mission to restructure something so hard, important, and entrenched that most of the industry already gave up on it: higher education.
Eurie Kim details our newest investment in Outsmart, which is being started by Duolingo’s past execs — the former Chief Product Officer, former VP of Marketing & Growth, and former GM.
This founding team’s background reads like a mission statement for the company, and makes them uniquely suited to truly deliver on the promise of AI-driven higher ed: one where drive and talent mean endless opportunity, regardless of resources.
For more on our investment, see Eurie’s post.
What We’re Talking About on Slack:
Parents are bringing back the landline as a way to limit their kids’ exposure to screens and social media. A new product called Tin Can is a Wi-Fi‑enabled, corded landline for kids that allows parents to control calling hours and approved contacts with no apps, so there’s little distraction beyond good old-fashioned conversation. One parent says, “It feels like a rebellion.”
Contrary to all the noise about AI being better than humans or causing apocalyptic doom, the Substack Read Max makes the argument that AI might just be normal technology: “The future of AI is more Facebook, not jobs in space.” One example is how GPT-5’s much-hyped release was ultimately underwhelming, with only minor improvements and a ‘colder’ personality than that of GPT-4o. Some users who had formed deep emotional bonds with the previous version mourned its loss (as evidenced by the flurry of distraught comments on the r/MyBoyfriendIsAI and r/AISoulmates subreddits). In this sense, AI chatbots and social media share patterns of user dependency, emotional manipulation, and poorly regulated influence. But even if L.L.M. chatbots are meaningfully worse for their users’ mental health, they also follow in the fine Silicon Valley tradition of delusion-amplying machines like Facebook and Twitter. The extent to which social media can reinforce or escalate delusions, or even induce psychosis, is well-documented by psychiatrists over the last two decades, so it’s hard to say that “ChatGPT is anything but ‘normal’ in this particular sense.”
Why are more young people getting cancer? Between 2010 and 2019, rates of 14 different cancers, including breast, colorectal, kidney, pancreatic, and stomach, rose among Americans under age 50, and global data show similar increases since 1990. One study found that people born in 1990 have a 2–3 times higher risk of certain cancers compared to those born in 1955, suggesting a “birth cohort effect” linked to environmental and lifestyle changes that started during that decade. Obesity, alcohol consumption, and Western diets have been strongly associated with increased early-onset cancer risk, with research showing that 6 of 12 obesity-related cancers increased in young adults between 1995 and 2014. “Identifying novel risk factors for cancer is a really challenging task. Historically, it has taken a long time and a large body of evidence to establish such a connection, as it did to prove that smoking caused lung cancer.”
Welcome to the age of the AI matchmaker: It’s complicated. Dating apps are seeing the possibilities of using AI to become a “Machine-Learning Cupid,” sort of like a personal shopper for love to maximize matchmaking success and combat burnout. Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of Bumble, is developing an AI-powered app that matches users based on shared values and goals rather than selfies and snappy one-liners. The Sitch app presents personalized matches based on questions, while Amata acts as hype man, describing the user to potential suitors. Facebook Dating entered the game with an “AI assistant” to help find other singles and a “Meet Cute” feature with a weekly “surprise match” to help users “avoid swipe fatigue.” Despite all these strategies, the truth of the matter is that decades of research have yet to uncover the mystery behind what makes people compatible and what creates spark. “What one person just happens to say might resonate with the other one, or lead to a topic that proves conversationally fruitful—or not. At the moment, only one true test of chemistry exists: Two brave souls have to meet and see what happens.”
The Wall Street Journal looks at how AI is turning traditional corporate org charts upside down. “I believe that 80% of the jobs will change at least 20% by AI. And 20% of the jobs will change as much as 80%,” says one executive. Companies are flattening organizational structures, reducing middle management, and prioritizing skills over headcount. Instead of resembling a pyramid, org charts are evolving into “barbell” shapes with more individual contributors getting the work done and fewer leaders managing larger teams and a broader range of responsibilities. HR and leaders now need to focus on “work planning” to better integrate both human skills and AI capabilities.
NYC’s running boom is adding almost $1 billion to the local economy in the fiscal year through March, up 58% from five years earlier, more than double the increase in consumer prices. The 2024 marathon alone contributed $692 million, including $287 million in lodging and dining and $19 million in local transit. Over 291,000 participants and 1 million visitors took part in 34 races during the year. Training program participation also surged, and one coaching app saw a 94% increase in virtual users from the year before. Businesses are capitalizing on the trend with gear, apps, and events tailored to the city’s growing running culture. “What has happened with running in the last five years or so, especially since the pandemic, especially, is that people are now using running not just as a form of exercise, but it’s a form of therapy. It’s just become a really big part of the social fabric of the city.”
Are trampoline bunnies and dog podcasters the future of entertainment? For just $6 per 8 seconds, a marketing professional created a realistic-looking AI bunny video using Google’s Veo 3. It reached 237 million views—double the Super Bowl audience. And in this week’s viral Sora 2 launch, and more and more of this “AI slop” is being made on the cheap, yet is visually convincing, and going viral, rapidly changing the social media landscape and democratizing the creation process. “Think about what the average teenager has access to now. You don’t need multimillion-dollar budgets, sets, or actors. You just need your imagination.”
Is Gen Z unemployable? A new study analyzing 45,000 Americans’ responses found there’s a big disconnect between the values that employers are looking for in employees and what Gen Z wants. Only 2% of Gen Z share the top three values that companies want most in new hires—achievement (ranked #11 for Gen Z), learning/action/stimulation (#10 for Gen Z), and workcentrism (#9 for Gen Z). The 2,100 hiring managers surveyed overwhelmingly sought values aligned with ambition and dedication to work. Meanwhile, Gen Z prioritized self-care, individual expression, and helping others in their top three. According to one chief human-resources officer, “The bodies are out there. The attitudes are not.”
Portfolio Highlight:
The New York Times talks to Oura CEO Tom Hale about the future of the company, which was also covered in TechCrunch.
CNBC interviews Kara Egan, CEO and co-founder of Teal Health.
Inc. profiles Ritual Founder and CEO Katerina Markov Schneider.
Nicolas le Jeune, founder of Courtyard, is quoted in a story on repacks in The New York Times’ The Athletic.
Wired, Bloomberg, The Verge, Fast Company, and more cover the release of Oura’s new ceramic-finish ring in four colors, charging case, and blood test feature.
Job the Week:
Director of Finance at Wonder, the platform reimaging quality food and delivery at scale.
There are ~1700 open jobs at Forerunner portfolio companies — check ‘em out.