Biz Stone
Biz Stone
Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone is a co-founder of Twitter, Inc and also helped to create and launch Xanga, Odeo, The Obvious Corporation and Medium. In 2012, Stone co-founded a start-up called Jelly Industries where he serves as CEO. The release of the Jelly app, a Q&A platform that relies on images, was officially announced in January 2014...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth10 March 1974
CityBoston, MA
CountryUnited States of America
The two things I use the most are the MacBook Air and my iPhone. Those are my two most-used gadgets that are dented, scratched and smashed.
I got an idea: people like news why don't we write the news down on a piece of paper, and we'll gas them up and drive them to everyone's house. I mean, if you were going to say that now, it doesn't sound like a great idea, because there are other ways you can distribute the news.
When I studied graphic design, I learned a valuable lesson: There's no perfect answer to the puzzle, and creativity is a renewable resource.
We hired a CSR person at Twitter, years before we hired our first sales person, to make sure we had a culture and impact of doing good.
Doing startups is all about making mistakes.
Twitter provides a great amount of timely information, but we still need those people to fill out the rest of the story and the context.
Positive culture comes from being mindful, and respecting your coworkers, and being empathetic.
You don't have to spend the entire day hunched over your computer consuming this information. Maybe, it is as simple as once in a while glancing down at the device that's invaluable to you or many reasons, catching up, or it lets you know when you should know something. But as these things get better and we get more connected in it, it will get more sophisticated.
We didn't have anything before Twitter that allowed a group of people roaming around a city to communicate instantly, in real time, and in a coordinated way, in a group.
I think Twitter has brought something totally new to the table.
You curate information that you want to receive. It's a lot different because I'm not asking you if it's okay, I'm just saying I'm following your updates. That's why I don't think of Twitter as a social network.
I knew Mac pretty well. I'd used them when I was younger.
I started designing book jackets, which was great because I was good at it. And then from there I decided to become a freelance graphic designer and I needed to expand beyond book jackets, so I taught myself web design, and then in 1999 some friends of mine decided to start a company called Xanga.com, which was a very early kind of social network slash blogging community.
I'd dropped out of college to start design thing.