Timothy Shey is a producer, designer, startup founder, and executive who has led original content for Duolingo since 2018, developing the company’s iconic cast of characters, live action and animated video, award-winning podcasts, and long-form learning content for the app’s more than 500 million learners worldwide. Previously, Tim was head of scripted programming for YouTube Originals, and one of the founding executives behind the strategy and creative direction for the YouTube Premium content offering. Programming from the scripted team included YouTube’s first hour-long dramas, Step Up: High Water (Lionsgate) and Impulse (Doug Liman/Universal), comedies Foursome (Awesomeness TV), and Single by 30 (Wong Fu/New Form), horror anthology 12 Deadly Days (Blumhouse), and action series Lifeline (from Corridor Digital, Studio 71 and Dwayne Johnson), as well as YouTube's first feature-length films including Lazer Team (Rooster Teeth) and The Thinning (Legendary), animated series Dallas & Robo and Bee and PuppyCat, and the smash hit Cobra Kai.
Previously, as director of the YouTube Next Lab and YouTube Spaces, Tim built the YouTube Creator program and launched projects to scale and develop YouTube’s creator ecosystem, including YouTube Spaces in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, and New York; the Creator Playbook, sharing the secrets to success on YouTube; YouTube Rewards, with the iconic gold play button. Tim and his colleagues also developed over 200 funded channels of original content with creators such as Pharrell Williams, Amy Poehler, Jay-Z, Hank and John Green, and Felicia Day; launched groundbreaking video brands such as AwesomenessTV, I Am Other, Jash, VICE News, and Buzzfeed Video; and executive produced the YouTube Music Awards, with Spike Jonze and VICE Media. As reported in The Atlantic, Tim and his team popularized the term “creator” and the concept of a new creator economy, now valued at over $250 billion worldwide.
Prior to YouTube, Tim was co-founder and president of Next New Networks, raising over $26 million in funding from investors including Spark Capital and Goldman Sachs, and leading creative and product development for the company until it was acquired by Google in 2011. Next New Networks popularized the ideas of videoblogging and branded and advertiser-supported online video channels, and pioneered the multi-channel network (MCN) business model and the concept of audience development, assembling at the time the most diverse and successful portfolio of original programming on the Internet, including hit channels Barely Political, VSauce, and ThreadBanger and a network of independent creators such as The Gregory Brothers—racking up over 2 billion video views and thirteen Webby Awards, more than any online media company at the time. They also built industry-leading partnerships with companies such as AOL, YouTube, and MSN and blue-chip advertisers including Warner Bros, American Express, Verizon, and Unilever. Tim’s favorite review was probably this one.
Tim and his work have been featured in places like Fast Company, The New York Times, The New Yorker, USA Today, WIRED, Rolling Stone, TechCrunch, and AdWeek’s “The Young Influentials,” and in the books Extremely Online, Like, Comment, Subscribe, and Traffic, which recounts Tim’s days as an early blogger, where he posted what may have been the world’s first truly viral blog post, and inadvertently popularized the idea of reblogging, which became a core feature of Tumblr, Facebook, and the social web.
Tim’s over 25 years as a designer, producer, and creative executive have included projects in television, mobile, and the web: as a college undergrad in 1996, Tim co-founded Proteus, a pioneering interactive agency, which was responsible for the first-ever nationwide interactive TV broadcast using mobile phones during FOX’s Super Bowl XXXVI, and produced interactive TV experiences for NBC’s 2004 Olympics and for multiple seasons of NFL, NASCAR, and MLB on FOX Sports. His work as Proteus’ creative director also included campaigns for AT&T, Sony, Sprint, Newsweek, ExxonMobil and The Washington Post, and the creation of network-wide mobile entertainment offerings for HBO, ABC, Discovery, and FOX.