The Journey of Dmitry Gurski: Founder of Flo Health
A conversation with Flo Health founder and CEO, Dmitry Gurski
In a conversation with Kyriakos, CEO of Terra, Dmitry Gurski lays bare how a single $60 million flop early in his career became the crucible that forged Flo Health’s disciplined, experiment-first DNA. Speaking live at Imperial College London, he traces the ups and downs that turned Flo from a simple period-tracking app into a global women’s health powerhouse valued at over $10 billion.
Dmitry’s wake-up call came when his first startup imploded—not for lack of vision, but for overconfidence. He realized that even the smartest founders can fail without a system to test assumptions and learn fast. From that day on, he embraced a mantra he now shares with every new hire: “Smart founders fail.” That ethos underpins Flo’s core process—no feature, design tweak, or growth hack ships without a controlled experiment or clinical validation.
Over the past few years, the Flo team has run more than 300 distinct experiments. They’ve A/B-tested dozens of onboarding flows to find the few that boost 30-day retention by double digits. They’ve trialed new cycle-prediction models against real-world data to reduce false-positive alerts. They even ran split trials on notification timing, discovering that a simple change in reminder windows lifted user re-engagement by a third. Each win, big or small, feeds back into the roadmap—and into investor conversations that celebrate repeatable, data-backed growth.
Flo’s experiment engine was stress-tested during its most critical moment: a near-death cash crunch when growth plateaued. Rather than panic, Dmitry’s team zoomed in on rapid hypothesis-driven tweaks—streamlining signup, sharpening content personalization, and refining premium-feature upsells. Those fast, small bets reignited user engagement and unlocked a pivotal funding round, keeping the company on track to hit unicorn status.
As Flo scaled, Dmitry distilled his management philosophy into a rallying cry: “Fast decisions beat smart decisions.” In a space where user needs shift with every new health study, speed matters more than perfection. Whether launching mental-health check-ins, fertility trackers, or COVID-symptom modules, Flo moves in days, not months—always ready to iterate based on the latest data and user feedback.
On the fundraising front, Dmitry credits a laser-focused pitch for fueling Flo’s rapid ascent from $1 billion to $10 billion valuation. By weaving together proof points from clinical partnerships, community testimonials, and clear unit-economics, he crafted a narrative that turned investor curiosity into competitive term sheets. Strategic inflection points—like hitting 50 million downloads or demonstrating ROI in pilot medical trials—became powerful milestones that accelerated each funding round.
Today, Flo serves over 200 million women worldwide with personalized insights on menstrual health, pregnancy, menopause, and overall wellbeing. Behind every recommendation is a culture of relentless testing: biometric integrations with wearables, daily symptom check-ins, and peer-reviewed medical content that Flo vets through partnerships with leading research institutions.
Dmitry’s story shows how personal grit, underpinned by data and a bias for action, can build not just products but movements. As Flo continues to push into deeper clinical territory—think predictive health analytics and AI-driven wellness coaching—its experiment-first engine remains the secret sauce.