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Noam Lovinsky

Chief Product Officer at Grammarly

Noam Lovinsky is CPO at Grammarly, previously an early PM at YouTube leading creator and consumer experience, CPO at Thumbtack where he reignited growth after a downturn, and creator of Facebook's New Product Experimentation team.

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 85%
Execution & Craft 70%
Data & Experimentation 60%
Growth & Distribution 70%
Team & Leadership 70%
User Empathy & Research 55%

Key Themes

reigniting growth after decline new product experimentation within big cos YouTube early days and near-sale startup within a startup smile curve turnarounds incubating big ideas

Episode Summary

Noam Lovinsky shares lessons from rescuing YouTube's early financial struggles, reigniting Thumbtack's growth after a Google SEO-caused downturn with what a board member called 'the prettiest smile graph ever,' and creating Facebook's New Product Experimentation team to incubate big ideas protected from the larger org. Now as Grammarly CPO, he draws on this experience building and rebuilding products at scale.

Leadership Principles

  • At Thumbtack, going from 1 to -1 and back to 1 required fundamentally rethinking the model, not just optimizing
  • Creating a startup within a startup requires protecting the team from the larger org's processes
  • YouTube was nearly sold by Google — transformative products sometimes need patience before they work

Notable Quotes

"There were many times where Google leadership reconsidered the acquisition and, 'Should we sell YouTube?' if you can believe it or not."

— On how close YouTube came to being abandoned by Google in its early days

"The new model really started to show legs and one of the board members said it was the prettiest smile graph that he had ever seen."

— On the Thumbtack turnaround after rethinking their business model

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