For years, Tim Kendall was social media’s golden child. He created Facebook’s first monetization strategy, laying the groundwork for it to become the multibillion-dollar company it is today. Then he did the same for Pinterest as president. “Tim truly had the ‘Midas touch’ for social media companies,” says Marquis Parker, MBA ’06. But somewhere along the way, Tim took stock of his own habits and began to notice the mental and emotional toll social media and cellphone overuse were taking on children and adults alike. Now he’s become a watchdog for the very industry he once championed.
Rather than shun technology altogether, Tim decided to use tech to ameliorate some of its inherent dangers. He left Pinterest, and in 2018, he acquired Moment, an app that helped people track and limit their screen time. After Apple and Google launched their own tools to track screen time, Moment’s popularity eventually waned, and the app closed its doors in 2021. But with Tim at the helm as CEO, one out of every 80 adults in the U.S. was using Moment at its peak, and the app was downloaded 9 million times.
Now, Tim works as co-founder and partner of Common Metal, an early-stage technology investment firm where he has backed the likes of Pandora, Ripple, and Together AI. But Tim’s mission to raise awareness about the dangers of cellphone overuse didn’t end with Moment. He now sits on the Board of UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, using his experience and knowledge to help inform the hospital’s mental health strategy in a screen-filled world. And he was featured in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, sounding the alarm on social media’s dangers alongside other tech experts. “Tim has been very outspoken about the damage that social media has done to children and has advocated for oversight and safer usage of mobile devices,” Marquis says. “He is truly deserving of recognition for his efforts.”
