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Ev Williams on what he admires most in founders like Reed Hastings, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page

November 16, 2023

In the clip below, Ev Williams (founder of Twitter, Blogger, and Medium) is asked who inspires him.

“When I think about a commonality of companies and leaders I admire, it is those who—whether they have a bunch of resources or not—come from a position of confidence and an abundance mindset.”

When he got to Google, the thing that most struck him was how big they thought. They would ask things like: “Why not index the whole Internet?” or “Why wouldn’t we map the whole earth?” or “Why wouldn’t we scan all of the books?”

“It didn’t all work, but their approach to everything was: ‘we can do this better.’ Sometimes it was arrogant and sometimes it didn’t work, but that had a big imprint on me. And I’m still impressed by a lot of the Google folks like Larry and Sergey who think that way and that’s probably what I’m most impressed by with Reed [Hastings], and obviously Bezos, and some of these people who think that way. That’s something I’m still working on”