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
I never even graduated college. I never finished learning, as it were, and I have a psychological need to be in a learning environment at all times.
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 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.
We actually created Twitter and Odeo at the same time. When we realized we didn't really want to be running Odeo anymore we looked around for anyone who wanted to buy Odeo, but not acquire us as a technology. But people aren't as interested in that.
Creativity comes from constraint.
We did Twitter, and Twitter grew so fast, and in 2006 we spun it out into Twitter, Inc.
Both my wife and I have a lot of compassion for animals in general.
Even the simplest tools can empower people to do great things.
It's important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star.
With Twitter, it's as easy to unfollow as it is to follow.
I mean, even when it's really simple, there's so much amazing beautiful creativity that can come out of that.
You have to have an emotional investment in what you're doing. If you don't love what you're doing, failure is pretty much guaranteed.
The normal press cycle is to put a company on a pedestal and then knock it down. It's much more interesting that way.
The most rewarding thing for me has been this affirmation for me that people are basically good and smart, and if you give them a simple tool that allows them to exhibit that behavior, they'll prove it to you every single day.