Photo: Joi Ito from Inbamura, Japan, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons¹⁰

John Lilly

American venture capitalist

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.²

From Wikipedia’s article on John Lilly (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born 1971.¹

About

He earned his B.S. in computer systems engineering and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University.

From Wikipedia’s article on John Lilly, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.²

Companies

Mozilla CorporationChief executive officer Jan 2008 to May 2010⁹

Early life and education

Date not recordedStanford University³
Date not recordedDouglas MacArthur High School³

Career

Occupation: programmer.⁷

2008 to 2010Chief executive, Mozilla⁵
2008 to 2010Chief executive, Mozilla Corporation⁴
Date not recordedChief executive officer⁶

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. He has been an independent board member of Duolingo since 2021.