Ev Williams is no longer the CEO of Medium, leaving his job to his longtime friend Tony Subbblebine.
Twitter co-founder Ev Williams steps down as CEO of Medium. He announced his decision very recently, writing on Medium, of course, that he leaves the company in the hands of Tony Subbblebine, CEO of Coach.me.
Ev Williams is no longer CEO of Medium
Tony Subblebine may not be part of the Medium family, but the two men share a common history. Before Ev Williams started Twitter with Jack Dorsey and a few others, he and Tony Subblebine worked at Odeo, a podcast startup that Ev Williams co-founded in 2005 with Noah Glass. “Tony is an artist, a writer, an open-minded thinker and a kind businessman,”writes Ev Williams of his replacement. “I have every confidence that Medium will greatly benefit from his vision, honesty, energy and pragmatic leadership.”
Ev Williams will continue to advise Medium as chairman of the board: “To be absolutely clear, Medium’s story is far from over,”he wrote. “Today’s team is probably the most capable I have seen in this company. I can’t wait to see what they do.”
He leaves his seat to his longtime friend Tony Subblebine.
As for knowing what the next adventure of this natural-born entrepreneur, dubbed Ev by many of his peers, is going to be, he doesn’t seem to have any concrete project in the near future. He plans to “learn as much as possible about things [he] doesn’t know much about”. Whole program. And for this, Ev Williams would like to launch a new holding or research laboratory.
Retiring, he leaves the company in full search, and above all himself. In an interview with The New York Times in 2014, he promised that his startup would change the Internet. “The Internet currently rewards speed and quantity, and we wanted to make it a place where quality matters,” he explained to the American newspaper.
And for a while, Medium seemed to manage to create a place where people posted thoughtful, thoughtful content. However, a series of questionable strategic decisions, especially around the business model, and the emergence of competitors like Substack have caused Medium to lose some of its luster. Tony Subbblebine’s main mission will be to restore Medium to its former glory, so to speak.