Co-founder of Twitter, Obvious Ventures
Search every verified Biz Stone interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has spoken about the company's evolution and his philosophy of building products. He stated that Twitter's purpose is to "serve the public conversation" and that the company has a responsibility for the health of that conversation. Stone said he articulated this purpose statement after returning to Twitter, noting that it helped align the company's efforts. He has also discussed the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify toxic content, disinformation, and hate speech on the platform. Stone has maintained that freedom of speech is a fundamental human right, but added that "the freedom to have your speech amplified by Twitter is not a fundamental human right" and that users should "earn that right." Stone has reflected on the early days of Twitter, describing it as a project built for fun that he and co-founder Jack Dorsey were emotionally invested in. He recounted a moment during the prototyping phase when a tweet from Evan Williams made him laugh, which he said was the moment he realized the emotional investment was there. Stone has also discussed his approach to entrepreneurship, stating that he believes in starting somewhere, even if it is usually wrong, and then watching for patterns. He has advised that if a product is fun, people are more likely to use it, and that importance can follow from widespread use. Stone has also spoken about his early life, noting that he started working at age eight and that his family was on welfare.
“Social responsibility should be taken into consideration at the very beginning; startups are uniquely positioned to build 'doing good by doing well' into their model. I hired a corporate social responsibility person two years before we hired our first salesperson — the future of marketing is philanthropy.”
“Twitter wasn't the cause of the Arab Spring — it's about the brave people who were willing to fight and who reached for the nearest technology; Twitter is a triumph of humanity, not technology. Even if you're uncomfortable with some content, you can be proud that you're supporting freedom of speech.”
“Twitter exists to serve the public conversation.”
“I got a sense from that place that if they had an ordered list a very short one it went number one technology number two people — and that wasn't my thing.”
“We like good conversation — it's not about technology, it's about people.”
“I'd love to talk about the importance of mobile phones around the world — the number of mobile phones far outpaces the number of people who are on the internet itself.”
“Over the years we realized Twitter wasn't just a fun little side project — it could actually be potentially a very important world-changing service, but it took four years before it began to really fully realize.”
“Jack and I built the prototype and we took two weeks — we built a working early model of Twitter and we showed the rest of the team.”
“What if we build a system on top of SMS — the SMS international limit is 160 characters; that's why we have the 140 character limit (name plus the message).”
“We really had no intention of even selling it; we wrote a note saying thank you for the visit but we really have no intention of selling this company — we're just getting started, we think we can build a business and have a positive global impact.”
“Right now our advertising is invite-only with partners — we hand-select companies like Starbucks for an innovative promoted suite (promoted trends, promoted tweets, promoted accounts) and we're experiencing more than a five percent engagement rate.”
“Everyone who works at Twitter owns a part of the company; the three founders own percentages and the venture capitalists own percentages — we didn't take money until we had started growing very rapidly, and at that point we had our pick of the venture capitalists.”
“The reason we created verification in the first place was because we had celebrities joining the service who were being impersonated — we couldn't constantly chase down every single imposter, so we just said let's verify the real one.”
“We err on the side of freedom of speech at all times — we have strict policies for things like specific violent threats or unlawful acts, but otherwise we believe open exchange of information can have a positive global impact.”
“We were really poor, so I had to give the money to my mom and help support my three sisters and everything — we were on welfare, we had the big government block of cheese and all that stuff, so that money was needed.”
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Co-founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, and Co-founder of Pinterest, Evan Sharp deliver the annual Rewley Lecture on the topic 'Reconnecting with the Sacred in a Technology-Driven World'. They discuss their childhoods, adolescences, and the unintentional choices which led them to become titans of tech. This inspiring event end with a message to look up and appreciate the magic that is all around. Subscribe to our channel ➤ / @oxfordsbs Visit our website ➤ https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/?utm_source=... Follow us on social media: LinkedIn: / oxfordsbs Instagram: / oxfordsbs Facebook: / oxf…
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Biz Stone is a co-founder of Twitter, Medium, and Jelly. A progenitor of social media, and early Google employee, Biz has spent over 15 years developing large scale systems that serve the global conversation. As an investor, Biz has backed many notable startups including Square, Slack, and Beyond Meat. Today, Biz has co-founded the venture capital investment firm Future Positive, focused on backing startups that are improving the future of health, work, wealth, and helping Twitter lead the company's strategic vision and internal culture objectives. GLOBAL CONFERENCE: https://www.startupgrind…
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter in conversation with Larry Vincent, Executive Director, UTA Brand Studio at Live Talks Los Angeles discussing his book, "Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind." The talk took place at the UTA Theatre on April 9, 2014. For more information on Live Talks Los Angeles -- upcoming events, podcast and videos -- visit livetalksla.org and subscribe to this channel.
Biz Stone & Dame Carolyn McCall discussed online safety, fake news and filter bubbles at our Oxford Saïd Distinguished Speaker Seminar. What are the societal roles and responsibilities of media organisations today? Twitter's co-founder & ITV's Chief Executive explored the importance of being proactive and the growing realisation amongst some media companies – both old and new – that there needs to be a deeper conversation and more nuanced understanding of the complexities of the new media environment. See our upcoming events: https://oxsbs.link/Events
The One Young World 2018 Summit took place in The Hague, Netherlands, from 17-20 October 2018. The Summit brought ...
Biz Stone is an American entrepreneur known best as co-founder of Twitter, Medium, and Jelly. This is his keynote presentation at ...
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