Tim Shey

Bio:

Timothy Shey is a producer, designer, startup founder, and tech and media executive, currently serving as chair of creator-backed media company Electrify and a venture partner at early stage fund TMV. Tim most recently led studios and content for Duolingo, developing the company's iconic cast of characters, award-winning podcasts, and engaging learning content, serving six years on the executive team as they grew to a publicly traded, household name brand with over 80 million monthly active users worldwide.

Before Duolingo, Tim spent over a decade as an exec shaping the YouTube creator economy, first launching the YouTube Creators program with projects including YouTube Spaces, the Creator Playbook, and YouTube Rewards—the iconic gold play button—and then serving as the founding head scripted exec of YouTube Originals, overseeing its slate of animated and live action series and feature films. Tim was co-founder and president of Next New Networks, which pioneered the MCN business model and audience development, and popularized the term "creator," before being acquired by Google to become part of YouTube in 2011.

Tim and his work have been featured in Fast Company, The New York Times, The New Yorker, WIRED, and Rolling Stone, as well as in the books Extremely Online, Like, Comment, Subscribe, and Traffic. In college, he co-founded Proteus, a digital agency that powered some of the earliest mobile and interactive TV applications for partners including FOX, AT&T, HBO, ABC, NBC, and the Washington Post.