Hardware Podcasts

Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams

How I Built This · 6 May 2024 · 1h 14m

What this episode covers

Ev Williams, founder of Blogger and Medium and co-founder of Twitter, recounts his journey from a Nebraska farm boy to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, detailing the creation of Pyra Labs, the pivot to Blogger, and the accidental birth of Twitter from the failed podcasting company Odeo. He explains how Twitter’s real-time SMS-based status updates gained traction at South by Southwest, leading to rapid growth and his eventual tenure as CEO, which ended in his ouster due to poor conflict management and scaling challenges. After being fired, Williams returned to his roots by founding Medium, a platform designed for longer-form writing with social connectivity, applying lessons learned about simplicity and user experience from his previous ventures.

Most relevant to

founders before launch, early-stage companies, companies scaling up and large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Pyra Labs, Google, Facebook
Products
Twitter, Blogger, Medium, Odeo
Also
Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah Glass, South by Southwest

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