Evan ("Ev") Williams is an American internet entrepreneur who co-founded three influential digital publishing platforms. He co-founded Pyra Labs, whose Blogger platform was acquired by Google in 2003, helping establish blogging as a mainstream medium.

He then co-founded Twitter, serving as its CEO from 2008 to 2010 and remaining on the board until 2019. In 2012 he founded Medium, a subscription-based publishing platform, leading it as CEO until July 2022 and continuing as chairman.

Williams's estimated net worth of $2.0B places him at Forbes rank #2052 in 2026, a fortune built primarily from his early Twitter ownership stake. He co-founded Obvious Ventures in 2014, a venture capital firm investing in what the partners call "world-positive" startups — companies addressing climate, health, and economic challenges.

Business Relationships

Williams co-founded Twitter in 2006 alongside Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass. He co-founded Medium with Biz Stone and Jason Goldman. At Obvious Ventures, Williams partners with co-founders James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth.

Ownership

Williams co-founded Obvious Ventures in 2014 and serves as partner and adviser across its five funds. He previously held approximately 3.9% of Twitter's shares as of April 2018, a stake he substantially reduced through sales and donations to the Someland Foundation before stepping down from the Twitter board in February 2019. He continues to serve as chairman of Medium.

Family & Heirs

Williams is married to Sara Williams. Together they founded the Someland Foundation (formerly the Sara and Evan Williams Foundation), a grantmaking foundation funding education, civil rights, and community organizations with a focus on the San Francisco Bay Area.

The couple donated more than USD 100M in Twitter shares to the foundation in November 2018 alone, and have made joint philanthropic gifts including a USD 10M contribution to San Francisco public schools for distance-learning access in 2020.

The foundation has backed the Democracy Frontlines Fund supporting Black-led social justice organizations and has a documented history of funding civil-liberties and reproductive-rights nonprofits including the ACLU.

Evidence

2014-12-08 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures co-founded for world-positive investing in climate, health, and sustainability

2017-01-04 - 😈 - Williams lays off roughly 50 Medium employees, one-third of workforce, closing NYC and DC offices in business model pivot

2017-05-21 - 😈 - Williams acknowledges Twitter's role in Trump's election as 'a very bad thing,' admitting the platform harmed public discourse

2017-10-05 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures participates in Recursion Pharmaceuticals USD 60M Series B for AI drug discovery targeting rare diseases

2018-02-09 - 😈 - Williams admits Twitter failed to address harassment during his CEO tenure: 'We weren't thinking about it enough'

2018-12-09 - 😇 - Williams donates more than USD 100M in Twitter shares to Someland Foundation for philanthropic giving

2019-05-21 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures' stake in Beyond Meat advances plant-based sustainable food systems, valued near USD 350M at IPO

2020-01-14 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures closes USD 271M Fund III for world-positive startups in electric transportation, climate, and health

2020-04-22 - 😇 - Someland Foundation gives USD 50,000 to SF New Deal for COVID-19 meal relief for San Francisco residents

2020-08-07 - 😇 - Williams and wife Sara give USD 10M to San Francisco public schools to close digital divide for low-income students

2020-09-18 - 😇 - Someland Foundation joins Democracy Frontlines Fund backing Black-led social justice movement organizations

2021-03-24 - 😈 - Williams hires union-busting firm at Medium and personally discourages union vote; workers lose by one vote

2022-02-02 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures backs Gandeeva Therapeutics USD 40M Series A for AI-driven precision drug discovery

2026-02-09 - 😇 - Obvious Ventures closes USD 360M Fund V focused on climate, planetary health, and sustainable systems

Analysis

Williams built his career on the belief that open, free expression would improve the world — a conviction that proved both transformative and costly. The harassment culture that developed on Twitter during his tenure as CEO, and the platform's documented role in amplifying political extremism, reflect the consequences of those foundational design choices. Williams acknowledged this publicly in 2017, calling Twitter's role in Donald Trump's election "a very bad thing," and in 2018 admitted that Twitter's predominantly male leadership team failed to address harassment.

His conduct at Medium adds a different dimension. When employees organized to unionize in early 2021, Williams hired a union-busting firm and personally held coffee chats discouraging workers from supporting the drive; the union lost by one vote.

This sits uneasily alongside Williams's public advocacy for amplifying human voices. He and Sara donated USD 10M to San Francisco public schools to bridge the digital divide during COVID, backed the Democracy Frontlines Fund for Black-led social justice organizations, and through Obvious Ventures — founded in 2014 before impact investing became mainstream — he has deployed capital toward plant-based food, electric transportation, AI-driven drug discovery at firms like Gandeeva Therapeutics, and climate infrastructure across five funds totaling USD 1.2B or more.

Taken together, the documented record leans toward sustained, personally directed giving and impact investing that spans more than a decade, alongside a smaller number of serious lapses concentrated in his platform leadership and labor practices.

Questions

Can a founder who built wealth on a platform that enabled harassment and political extremism meaningfully make amends through philanthropy and sustainable investing?

Does Williams's unusually candid acknowledgment of Twitter's failures — rare among tech founders — change the moral weight of the harms his platform produced?

How should readers weigh the defeat of worker organizing at Medium against Williams's substantial philanthropic commitments?

Redemption Arc

Williams has progressively stepped back from direct platform management — departing the Twitter board in 2019 and stepping down as Medium CEO in 2022 — while directing resources toward climate solutions through Obvious Ventures. His 2024 launch of Mozi, a private social network designed to prioritize real-world connection over engagement metrics, represents an attempt to build social technology differently than Twitter's growth model. The gap between his expressed values and his response to labor organizing at Medium remains the clearest unresolved tension in his record.