Evan Williams

“America first does not mean America alone. And so I'm here to suggest that the transatlantic relationship in particular, but relationship with your businesses and the business that can result from investments and other kinds of economic activity is to America's benefit as well as to yours.”

— From Evan Williams: Capital markets and competitiveness-The "fine print" of the transatlantic cooperation, Economist Impact SE Europe Events (June 20, 2025)

“It is the business connections that drive our countries forward. It is the work of business and the success of capital markets, global capital flows that allow us to find ourselves in a situation where we're even thinking about what transatlantic relationships look like.”

— From Evan Williams: Capital markets and competitiveness-The "fine print" of the transatlantic cooperation, Economist Impact SE Europe Events (June 20, 2025)

“As you think about news related to tariffs or trade, I would encourage you to also remember that America is thinking about the role of business very carefully. And business is the thing that connects countries together.”

— From Evan Williams: Capital markets and competitiveness-The "fine print" of the transatlantic cooperation, Economist Impact SE Europe Events (June 20, 2025)

“All the value my teams have ever created comes from someone saying, 'Wouldn't it be cool if...?' If you're lucky and can execute that cool thing, inevitably you get money and employees — and then the job becomes 'make the numbers go up.'”

— From Lessons on co-founding Twitter, Medium and Blogger with Ev Williams, The Eric Ries Show (April 22, 2025)

“The Google deal happened purely because of relationships: Tim O'Reilly invested in Blogger, knew Larry and Sergey, and introduced Blogger to them — it would not have happened without those relationships.”

— From Lessons on co-founding Twitter, Medium and Blogger with Ev Williams, The Eric Ries Show (April 22, 2025)

“Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned — I recommend this to a hundred people. The premise is: if you're trying to do something that hasn't been done before, you can't plot it; if you try to plot it you cut off possibilities and shoot yourself in the foot.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“Mosy is an app for finding out where your friends are and getting together — it's actually a social app because it's really about getting together with friends by knowing where they are.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“Sometimes it doesn't make sense to keep beating your head against a wall — it's okay to quit. People underestimate opportunity costs; sunk cost fallacy keeps them doing things longer than makes sense.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“I just build products for myself — some people build products for other people, but personally I wasn't a podcaster, so I didn't believe in Odeo long term.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“Social used to mean getting together in real life; now 'social' is a catch-all that often just means the internet. Twitter we never saw as necessarily 'social' — I was personally more focused on information and ideas.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“We try to invest in things that address big problems — climate is one area we've been focused on, and more specifically I'm long psychedelics for their therapeutic potential, though there are important questions about how they fit into healthcare and patent business models.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“Getting fired from Twitter felt like the biggest possible failure at the time — I was devastated — but in retrospect it freed me from a role I was in over my head for parts of and set me on a long path of personal growth.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“Medium prematurely scaled — I hired too many people and tried to build too many things at once; the lesson I tell founders a lot is: do less.”

— From Co-Founder of Blogger, Twitter, Medium, and Mozi — The Art of Pivoting, Strategic Quitting, and More, Tim Ferriss (March 19, 2025)

“I paid a lot more than I needed to because if they were going to get back 60% of their money I got them back 100% of their money and then that enabled me to just own it and do what I wanted with it.”

— From Ep. 136 - Ev Williams: A Co-Founder of Twitter Speaks, James Altucher (January 27, 2024)

“I'm a huge fan of the open web and I think it's important, but the fact is the majority of content and attention is going to go to networks. You give up some flexibility and freedom and you trade it for convenience.”

— From Ep. 136 - Ev Williams: A Co-Founder of Twitter Speaks, James Altucher (January 27, 2024)