Evan Williams
Evan Williams
Evan Clark Williamsis an American computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur who has founded several Internet companies. Williams was previously Chairman and CEO of Twitter, one of the internet's top ten websites...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth31 March 1972
CityClarks, NE
CountryUnited States of America
choices-made focus lessons
Our problem wasn’t that it blew up and was impossible to scale, but there were some bad choices made. One of the biggest lessons time after time was to focus. Do fewer things.
skiers skis very-good
I tried to be a ski bum when I stepped away from Twitter, and I wasn't a very good skier.
talent entrepreneurial bigs
I suspect there's a lot of validity to the premise that big companies aren't going to attract entrepreneurial talent.
along itself
The only reason Twitter itself would be a fad is if someone comes along and does it better.
belief blogging bubbles create information likelihood truth trying twitter voices
My strong belief - in being in blogging before Twitter - is that in trying to create more information out there, in trying to create the democratization of media in general, is that the more voices there are out there then the likelihood is that the truth bubbles up to the top.
five opportunity screw six time
Every time you start a company - and I've started five or six - you have the opportunity to screw up in whole new ways.
except sort
I like to think of the world as a sort of a casino, except the house doesn't have the advantage. If you're smart, you have an advantage. It behooves you to place a lot of bets.
people
I've always had a tendency to be much more optimistic about people than I should be. I'd like to be a little shrewder.
designed information twitter useful wanna
Twitter was designed to be this system that you just scan for information that's important or useful to you and then walk away, and if you wanna take a break you take a break.
donuts fans finding following people relationship thousands twitter using value
People are fans of Dunkin' Donuts. They have a relationship with the company, they go there every day. Dunkin' Donuts is using Twitter to communicate with those people. There are people who are finding value in that. There's thousands of people, I don't know how many thousands now, following Dunkin' Donuts.
life series suffered
My life has been a series of well-orchestrated accidents; I've always suffered from hallucinogenic optimism.
basically boom bust companies competing grew ignoring invest radar time
Google started out when the dot-com boom was happening. It grew under the radar of big companies that were competing in but basically ignoring search. Then they were able to really invest during the bust for a long time.
bad hope majority point vast wrong
If you look at the Internet, the vast majority of start-ups are not successful. But the ones that are, are very very successful. So you can't point to the unsuccessful ones and say, 'There's no hope for this field.' It's just that they had the wrong idea or they had bad execution.
connect easier enable form good groups people showing
People want to do good things, they just need a prod sometimes, and what Twitter and other technologies that connect people are showing us is that if you make it a little easier for people then you will enable them to do what they want to do, to help people out, to form groups and do good.