Foundation: Evan Williams on Hatching Big Ideas


In today’s episode of my Foundation series, serial entrepreneur Evan Williams talks candidly about his experiences building Blogger, Twitter, and his latest project, Medium. Ev recounts the early days of Twitter, shares what he’s learned about how to scale fast-growth products, and explains his philosophy about the power of collaboration.

Ev on wrestling with big ideas:

“Any big idea is going to take a while to get there. By definition, if it’s big, and no one has done it before, it’s not going to be 1-2-3, ‘We got it!’ There is going to be a dark period in there, because you don’t know what the key to getting there is. You have to be willing to be in some murky territory, and be prepared to invest, if you really want to do something different.”

Kevin Rose is a general partner at Google Ventures. You can watch Kevin’s prior Foundation episode, an interview with NationBuilder CEO Jim Gilliam, here.