About Biz Stone
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.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Biz Stone's recent appearances.
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Transcript (13 segments)
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Don0:00
I am excited to kick this off, everybody. Thank you so, so, so much for joining us. My name is Don, I'm the founder and the CEO of this product, which is called Room Key. It's a free product, so you're allowed to use it at any time you want. You can create as many rooms as you want and you can host as many conversations in there, so definitely encourage you all to do that.
And then just to give a quick, quick company history: we started the company in 2018. Obviously a really hard product to build and to get the experience right, so we've asked everyone from our team to come here today as well. It's a holiday, a national holiday, and it's six o'clock on a Friday, but they've all showed up. So can we give a big, big, big round of applause for the team because they have built something that is incredible.
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Biz Stone0:44
Keep it up, they deserve a lot, yeah.
D
Don0:53
All right, most importantly, the bar in the back is not currently selling drinks. The bartender got stuck in traffic, so I'm sorry. The virtual bathrooms are out of order. We had a data leak and it's overflowing. And of course, the virtual air conditioning's out, so we turned this fire on. Other than that, this is an incredible product and I hope that everyone really enjoys today. So with no further ado, Biz, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. How are you?
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Biz Stone1:24
Thanks for having me, Don.
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Don1:27
So yesterday we talked... oh yeah, let me become purple or blue with Twitter. So we talked yesterday about your son, and what I was curious about today was what were you like at his age of nine? It's always interesting to understand how someone becomes successful and what was kind of the mix of nurture and nature that created that. It'd be really cool to start there and hear that story a bit about yourself.
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Biz Stone1:55
Sure. Well, first of all, I'm old, so you know, I wasn't on a PC or anything like that. I was just in the backyard. But by nine, I already had a job because I started mowing the neighborhood lawns when I was eight. And so I was like, I would just push my mower all as far as I could go if somebody needed a lawn mowed. So I started working when I was eight and just never stopped.
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Don2:23
And you started that company?
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Biz Stone2:28
Yeah, that's funny that you mentioned. It's not really a legitimate company, but eventually I did end up calling it Stone's Weekly Lawn Care. I continued doing it all through high school. I had other jobs as well, but it actually paid a lot because I started learning the tricks of the trade. I would charge like 20 bucks to mow a lawn, but then I would say, 'Oh yeah, your lawn has got like a 30-degree slope, so that's gonna be 30 bucks.' And also, the mower makes a lot of mess, like the grass clippings go everywhere, so if you want to sweep up, that's 10 bucks. Because I didn't want to bag the stuff because then I'd have to empty it and everything's too slow. Anyway, I would do a lot of stuff and then I was making some pretty good money. And then I also worked at a deli and all those things. But yeah, no, I was just a kid, you know, riding my bike, doing stuff, but also working and just having a very work mentality.
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Don3:30
Was that for money because you wanted to buy something specifically, or you wanted to help out?
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Biz Stone3:37
It was for money, but it was for food. We were really poor, so I had to give the money to my mom and help support my three sisters and everything because we were on welfare. We had the big government block of cheese and all that stuff, so we needed it. I just had to work, that was just part of life. But then as I grew up, I guess it makes sense. You read my book, you saw how I was able to do things, and I thought it was just fantastic. It was probably just a great school system. I was able to start my own lacrosse team because there was no boys' lacrosse team at Wellesley, and I didn't know how to do any sports, but I was pretty athletic. So I got the school to agree to, if I found a coach and enough kids, could I start a lacrosse team? They let me do that, and I ended up being the captain of that thing for four years. And because I wanted to be on some kind of team, then I also was able to produce and star in a play in senior year, even though I wasn't in drama class, just because I heard that there wasn't a budget for a senior play that year. And I was like, 'Is that a normal thing? What are you talking about? How hard can it be to do a play?' It turned out it was kind of hard, but we pulled it off and it was a ton of fun. And like when I got to college, I was like, 'Okay, so here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna produce a play.' And they're like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? You do what we tell you to do.' And I was like, 'Oh, why did I do this?' Anyway, I think that was the end of college for me.
B
Biz Stone5:12
That combined with being offered an awesome job. But I guess maybe from a young age, it just sort of made me want to do my own thing. Like, do not do somebody else's thing. It just seemed natural for me to do my own thing.
