Our Investment in Medium: Right Tool, Right Network, Right Time

In 2008 I made my first investment in Evan Williams, not with my money, but with my future. I had spent the previous decade working on the promise of mobile and now it seemed like the stars were aligning.

The iPhone was more than a toy, text messaging was exploding, and social media was looking like it could be the killer app. I had become obsessed with the mobile DNA of Twitter and was fascinated to see where Ev would take it given his experience with Blogger.

I was living in Colorado at the time, but as soon as I signed the job offer, my wife and three children under four dropped everything and moved back to San Francisco.

Today I am excited to announce another investment in Ev. This time in his company Medium and this time with my partners at Spark Capital. We feel incredibly fortunate to be leading this round of investment alongside our friends at Andreessen Horowitz, GV, and Ev himself.

As my partner Jeremy Philips said, “He is literally the best person in the world to work on the next great publishing network. It’s like Larry Page starting the next great search engine.”

Social media has come a long way in the last decade. We don’t need convincing anymore that it is fun to share things on the Internet. In fact we have become so sophisticated with sharing, friending, and following that we are now demanding the right tool for the right job. Not just the right tool, but the right network too.

It shouldn’t be that surprising though, as markets (cars, TV networks, PC’s, etc.) mature so do people’s appetite for specialization. We start with one or two options and then we want segmentation.

Facebook is as powerful as ever, but people’s capacity for more social media, especially verticalized experiences, is also expanding. For example, you see the impulsive, ephemeral nature of Snapchat on one end of the spectrum and the thoughtful, timeless nature of Medium on another. Not to mention, Instagram, Periscope, Pinterest, etc.

This is why we are excited about Medium. The hardest thing for companies to do is focus, but when you do it aligns everything. Medium is solely focused on being the best place to read and write interesting stuff. A single purpose publishing tool, network, and ecosystem built to share the written word. Ev says it better,

Medium has become an ideas exchange, where thinkers, creators, and those with a story to share come to find their audience, move people, and move us all forward.

Increasingly, people come to Medium to find the most diverse thinking on issues they care about. And they don’t just find it, they read it. And they don’t just read it, they respond, they share, they highlight the best parts. When you read on Medium, you’re reading and thinking with others — others who share your views, as well as those who don’t (which makes you smarter).

I can’t wait to continue the journey with Ev and the amazing team he has assembled at Medium.