Every business involves tradeoffs. You can spend money to grow or give money to shareholders. You can prioritize more users or more profits. There are always tradeoffs in business that managers and investors need to keep in mind. And those tradeoffs are hurting $Duolingo, Inc.(DUOL)$ ’s stock price today while potentially giving the company more upside long-term. More on that in a moment. Duolingo’s Tradeoff Six months ago, the concern with Duolingo was user growth. The company seemed to have lost its mojo: monthly active users (MAUs) grew by only 2.9 million between Q1 2025 and Q4 2025, while daily active users (DAUs) grew by 6.1 million over the same period. The DAU number was decent, but the top of funnel (MAUs) was weak, and that will eventual