Quick Facts
Biography
John Lilly (born 1971) is an American-born venture capitalist and currently serves on the board of directors of the Open Source Applications Foundation and Code for America. He earned a B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and is the (co)-inventor on seven US patents.
Lilly was the Chief executive officer of the Mozilla Corporation from 2008–2010. 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. He was one of the co-founders of Reactivity which was sold to Cisco Systems for $135 Million in 2007. "Reactivity Mafia" also produced other notable entrepreneurs such as Mike Schroepfer, CTO of Facebook, Aaref Hilaly, Partner at Sequoia, Oltac Unsal, Super Angel, Akash Garg, Co-founder of hi5, Dave Ashton, Founder of SnapCar to name a few.
In May 2010 Lilly announced he would step down as CEO. Lilly was succeeded by Gary Kovacs on November 8, 2010. Until March 2014 he was part of Mozilla board of directors.