Yuriy Timen

Growth Advisor at Former VP Growth at Grammarly / Advisor to Canva, Airtable, Otter

Yuriy Timen is a full-time growth advisor who spent nine years at Grammarly leading growth and marketing. He has advised Canva, Airtable, Otter, Whimsical, Hims, and dozens of other companies on growth strategy.

The Growth Scientist The Growth Architect

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 60%

Execution & Craft 65%

Data & Experimentation 70%

Growth & Distribution 95%

Team & Leadership 40%

User Empathy & Research 50%

Key Themes

giving channels appropriate shots premature channel dismissal virality SEO and paid growth B2C growth failure modes subscription product growth growth channel evaluation

Episode Summary

Yuriy Timen provides the most tactical and actionable conversation on product growth, especially for subscription products, drawing on nine years leading Grammarly's growth and advising Canva, Airtable, and dozens of others. His key insight: the biggest growth failure mode is prematurely dismissing channels that were never properly tested to begin with.

Leadership Principles

→ The worst thing is prematurely concluding a channel doesn't work because you didn't give it an appropriate shot
→ When companies say 'YouTube doesn't work for us,' it's remarkably often because they never set it up to succeed
→ Growth channels should be evaluated on whether they were properly tested, not just whether they worked

Notable Quotes

"The only thing worse than a channel not working is when you didn't give it an appropriate shot and prematurely concluded it doesn't work. It's remarkable how often that's the case."
— On the most common growth failure mode he sees across companies

"'Oh, YouTube, we tried it. It doesn't work.' I look at what they tried and it was not designed to even have a shot at working from the get-go."
— On why companies wrongly dismiss growth channels

Want to know how you compare?

Take the Assessment