YouTube’s Founding Head Of Scripted Originals Timothy Shey Joins Language App Duolingo

YouTube’s founding head of scripted originals, Timothy Shey, has joined language education app Duolingo as head of studios and content, where he will harness storytelling to help users on their journey to fluency.

Shey was formerly the president and co-founder of the multi-channel network startup Next New Networks, which YouTube acquired in 2011. After a seven-year tenure at Google — where he formerly served as director of YouTube Spaces and also helped helm the company’s now-defunct YouTube’s Original Channels initiative —  Shey’s move brings him back into the startup sphere, Variety notes.

At YouTube — which launched original programming in 2014 — Shey collaborated with leading studios on hallmark series and features for YouTube Red, which has since been renamed YouTube Premium. These include Lionsgate‘s Step Up: High Water, Legendary‘s The Thinning, and Universal Cable Productions‘ Impulse. He also worked on the YouTube Music Awards and YouTube and Sundance‘s New Voices Lab, according to his LinkedIn profile

. “I had a really amazing seven years at Google and YouTube,” Shey told Variety. “I wanted to see what other challenges were out there…I always wanted to take another shot at building out a new studio from scratch.”

Duolingo offers mobile app courses for 31 different languages, and counts 200 million users worldwide. There’s an ad-supported version of the app and also a subscription version, which is priced at $9.99 per month. The company’s original content ventures include a Spanish podcast and a forthcoming 30-minute documentary titled Something Like Home, which will explore how language informs the experiences of Syrian refugees. It will bow on YouTube and other platforms on June 20.

Seven-year-old Duolingo, which has raised $108 million in venture funding to date, is based in Pittsburgh, though Shey will remain in Los Angeles.