Opinion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Williams: Tony Stubblebine is running Medium better than I did

Ev Williams · Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams · May 6, 2024 · at 1:11:44

Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Medium, reflects on handing over the CEO role at Medium to Tony Stubblebine.

0:00 / 0:03exact quote · 3.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“He's doing a great job, doing a better job than I was doing running Medium.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Ev Williams

Insight
Founders should build for themselves unless exceptionally skilled at user research
“One of my fundamental rules, I can believe, is if, unless you are really good at user research, Build, build products for yourself.”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 38:12 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Disclosure
Williams claims he did not plan to take over as Twitter CEO
“He was pushed out, and then I became CEO, which It's hard to believe, but it wasn't actually my plan. I still didn't necessarily want to be CEO. And we talked to a few other candidates, but then I was like, okay, maybe I'm the best person to be CEO.”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 58:11 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Twitter's conflict-averse board never gave Williams negative feedback before firing him
“Somewhat ironically, the board of Twitter had a lot of conflict aversion. Because they never, never gave me that feedback to my face. I didn't know I was going to be fired at all, because no one ever told me I was doing a bad job. So there was a whole culture …”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 1:05:35 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Insight
Williams recommends founders work at an established company before starting one
“Thinking, maybe you should work at a company before you start a company. Yeah. Which is a tip that I would recommend to most people.”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 14:11 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Initial Twitter hackathon prototype included an audio feature that Williams removed
“I do remember a conversation where at first there was a version of what became Twitter presented that had audio, and I remember asking, what if it didn't have the audio piece?”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 41:10 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Insight
Williams: Intuitive product feeling matters significantly more than early usage metrics
“It felt like a thing, which has, I've come to realize, is the most important thing, and like, it's, feeling is much more important than metrics early on.”
Ev Williams May 6, 2024 ▶ 45:15 Twitter, Medium and Blogger: Ev Williams
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 800 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.