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John Lilly (computer scientist)

American venture capitalist

Summary

American venture capitalist

Field	Value
name	John Lilly
image	John Lilly of Mozilla.jpg
known_for	Mozilla Corp. CEO (2008–2010)

occupation	Board Chair, Code for America

Lecturer in Management, Stanford University<ref name	"stanford" /

Venture capitalism

Lecturer in Management, Stanford University

John Lilly is a venture capitalist and former CEO of Mozilla. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Applications Foundation and Code for America. He earned his B.S. in computer systems engineering and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University.

Career

Reactivity

Lilly co-founded and served the CTO for Reactivity, a start-up focused on consulting on technically difficult websites and incubating new companies. Cisco Systems bought Reactivity in 2007 for $135 million.

Mozilla

Lilly was the chief executive officer of the Mozilla Corporation from 2008 to 2010. The corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, coordinates development of open-source Mozilla Internet applications, including the Firefox web browser. Lilly, previously Mozilla's chief operating officer, succeeded Mitchell Baker as CEO in January 2008.

In May 2010, Lilly announced he would step down as CEO. Lilly was succeeded by Gary Kovacs on November 8, 2010. Lilly left Mozilla's board of directors in March 2014, reportedly over the appointment of Brendan Eich as CEO.

Venture capital

Lilly joined the venture capital firm Greylock Partners as a partner in 2011. His investments include Instagram, Dropbox, Tumblr, Quip, and MessageMe. Lilly left the firm in January 2019 to dedicate himself more to activism, explaining "it’s crystal clear that 2019 & 2020 are crucially important years — certainly the most important time in a generation, but maybe much longer than that." Lilly has been a board member of Figma since December 2014, representing Greylock.

References

"Code for America names new CEO".
"Board members".
"A top investor nails why Microsoft is getting more respect in Silicon Valley these days".
"John O. Lilly".
(2002). "Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation". Simon and Schuster.
(2010). "Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best... and Learn from the Worst". Grand Central Publishing.
Nguyen, Tuan. (February 21, 2007). "Cisco Buys Reactivity Inc. for $135 Million".
(2013). "Humanizing the Web: Change and Social Innovation". Springer.
(11 May 2010). "Mozilla CEO John Lilly plans to step down".
"Mozilla names Gary Kovacs as chief exec".
(28 March 2014). "Half of Mozilla's board reportedly resign over new CEO choice".
(4 June 2012). "Investment Hunting With Greylock Partner, Instagram Backer John Lilly".
(22 April 2016). "A Top Silicon Valley V.C. Explains Why Slack Drives Him Crazy".
(17 May 2013). "MessageMe nabs $10M from Greylock, Google, & others to take on WhatsApp".
(18 January 2019). "The investment firm famous for its early bet on Facebook has been losing top talent".
(July 31, 2025). "Here's who's getting rich from Figma's blockbuster IPO".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

mozilla-people douglas-macarthur-high-school-(san-antonio)-alumni stanford-university-school-of-engineering-alumni living-people american-chief-executives-of-financial-services-companies american-chief-executives-in-technology american-chief-operating-officers open-source-advocates year-of-birth-missing-(living-people) 21st-century-american-businesspeople

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