Evan Williams

Originally from Nebraska, Evan Williams co-founded Pyra Labs to make project management software. A note-taking feature spun off as Blogger, one of the first web applications for creating and managing blogs. Pyra was eventually acquired by Google. Williams left Google in October 2004 to co-found Odeo. In late 2006, Williams co-founded Obvious Corp with Biz Stone and other former Odeo employees. Obvious has acquired all previous properties of Odeo, including Odeo and Twitter, another project started by Williams. As of Twitter’s April 11, 2018 proxy, Williams held about 29 million Twitter shares, or 3.9% of the company’s stock. He now has about 14.6 million Twitter shares, after giving away nearly 3.7 million Twitter shares, and selling just under 10.8 million shares. Williams is also founder and chief executive officer of online blogging site Medium; Forbes estimates he has a 19.5% stake in the company, which was last valued by investors in 2016 at $600 million. And he is cofounder of Obvious Ventures, an investment firm that makes social impact bets aimed at helping the environment, human health and promoting humane labor practices.