YouSaid · the spoken record

Biz Stone

lines on the record: 38
first: 2021-01-08
most recent: 2021-01-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Mucha for putting up with me, Stan, for joining me. So, I really appreciate it. Well, thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me. It's been great.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They know all the risk. And it's like, well, you know, I think you're missing a first word here of the venture capital. It's nothing venture, nothing gained. How do you think about the next five years for you? What does that roadmap hold? Well, I think I'm going to continue to do what I've been doing anyways, which is advising and mentoring and coaching and helping. I really enjoy that. It's something I think that's something that I would do for free. And I've figured out that if we put together a fund, that's a way of officially doing it for a real job. Because I often tell Jake, my son, that, oh, I'm helping this person do this or helping that person do that. And he says, you help a lot of people. And I'd like to just do that as my profession as well. I might accidentally come up with an idea that we'll see. And”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We would make money on here because that's not until way down the line because it depends on the success of this first before we even try to monetize anything. And so obviously we need to do all these things first. Okay, that makes sense. It's a grand vision. Let's go for it. And then in the UK, it's how do I see some revenues in the first year and all this stuff. And I'd like to help transform that by really getting behind the entrepreneurs in the UK and Europe. And like you said, I've started to do that and I've been going to the UK every year for almost 15 years now and I've invested in several startups there. It's kind of a slow moving thing, but eventually I think it'll catch on because like I said earlier, I think these great ideas can come from anywhere. That I described is like in the UK there's a lot of focus on”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. It's funny because I do feel like in the UK and maybe in Europe, this isn't true of everything or everyone, but I do feel in general there's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy happening there where VCs don't really want to take that much of a risk. And so contrary to what it's like in the States, I feel like they often will offer something like 100 or 200,000 in exchange for a healthy ownership percentage of the company because they don't really love the risk or they'll want to say, I don't want to invest until I see a brand name investor leading. Or call me when it's just the rest of the investment. And as a result, I think the entrepreneurs are trained not to ask for more and also trained not to swing for the fences like crazy. You know, in the US, we'll see people saying, here's my deck, and obviously I don't even put how.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Best board member, you know, I really like working with Don Thompson. He's the former CEO of McDonald's and he is on the Beyond Meat board with me. And he's just like, it's amazing. If he was a baseball player, every time he went to bat, he would hit a home run. It's everything that he decides to take on. He just does an incredibly stellar job at following through on those things and the impossible happen every time. He's also, I always love being around him because he's like laughs and he's joky and he feels like a buddy. It's just fantastic.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That'll probably be square because it's something like a thousand X return or something. And that's just because it was Jack and I knew that Jack was going to build something really cool.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe this perception that it is only for insiders, you know what I mean? Because I think Silicon Valley is more like a mindset than a geographic place. So anyone can participate is what I mean. So it doesn't matter if you're in the UK or Europe or Latin America or wherever you are. I think this idea of Silicon Valley is open to anybody with a great idea and a vision to execute it.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I feel like most people would say. A lot of my friends want to grab me for brainstorming. But then I think maybe my greatest weakness is something that seems attached to that, which is on the flip side, I can have a low attention span or a short attention span and want to, because I think part of that thinking creatively is just you can jump around, you can think really laterally or jump ahead in time or back in time and reach for all these things and make all these crazy connections. But then as a result of that, my brain is also doing that when I'm just trying to go through a bunch of email as well.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, that was a long time ago. That was Stephen Johnson's emergence. And that really made me realize a couple things. One, that science is so much like magic. And then also I just realized that this concept of something being greater than the sum of its parts was applicable not just to slime mold and ant colonies, but to the internet and to people's brains. I started to see it everywhere and it explained a lot of things for me.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess the thing that's common is it's usually just how I'm so surprised at the vision of this person even before there's any kind of product traction, maybe even product, but I was just talking to someone the other day who said, I don't have any sense of what this is going to be, but here's what I'm trying to go for. And then we'll backwards engineer whatever the product is based on this vision. And usually when I want to invest, I find myself stunned by the enormity of the vision. And it's like, oh my God, did anyone would even think of that is impressive, let alone whatever this product's going to be and whatever this journey is going to be like. And every time you hear it, it's an amazing thing all over again.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I made one error in judgment because when I started to get some wealth, I hired advisors and I thought, well, the advisors know what they're doing. So I'll let them be in charge of my investments too. And then they're thinking was, okay, well, this is 10x with seller. And I let them do that with one of my investments. And then I, you know, a couple years afterwards, I actually checked and didn't realize we had sold that. And I thought, well, I wouldn't have sold that personally. And so then I actually just took everything back over for myself in regards to the investing.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, I can't invest if I think that. If I think, well, we'll probably lose this million and a half. So, you know, let's go ahead and do it anyway is not the scenario. But you still have to be quick and you still have to be tuned in to whether or not this is a fantastic entrepreneur or management team and product, which I think years of doing it can tune you into the character and the savviness of the product itself. You can pattern recognize those things pretty quickly.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because, like I said, I don't have the rational belief. I actually go into it figuring that the money is probably going to go away. You know, the most likely outcome here is I lose my 25K.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think then venture capital investing with other people's money because in that scenario, there's a similar criteria I might pick, like, oh, the management team is fantastic. I really like these folks, and I think they can go all the way, no matter what, even if they have to pivot. And also really love this product. I would use this product or I really need to see this product existing in the world. And so I'm going to help them. And then I think when you talk about venture capital investing, you need to also make sure that there's a strong deal memo and there's a really good, great reason why you wanted to put all of this money in rather than just some personal money, which you could be okay with losing, but you can't be okay with losing somebody else's money. So you need super high conviction and you need to be able to defend it back up everything you did.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's funny because I never really thought of myself as an investor or any kind of person that knew anything about money because I guess I thought of it more like, I don't know when I started thinking about this, but I started, I guess it's in my entrepreneurial life. I started thinking of money as a tool to, you know, how do you get things done? Well, you need this capital to do this and that. And so personally investing wasn't until I had a little bit of money, a little bit more money than I need to follow the bills. And the way I did that was I felt like I was helping my peers, helping my peers and contributing back to the ecosystem rather than, oh, I'm going to try to make some money off of this. In fact, I think the healthy way to think about angel investing is you have to be okay with all of that money disappearing and still be happy about having done what you did. And so that's the mentality that I approach for just personally investing my own money in things. And that's why I also don't tend to sell those things and just kind of keep hold of them. And that's a little bit of a different mentality.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do that too. I do that too, but I've learned to be very honest and say, you know, I want to say yes to this, but if I do, then it's going to be like the 13th thing. And I might end up not doing as good of a job as I could have. So because of that, I just can't commit to it. Or I'll say something like, I can't take any kind of equity or something to mentor you or to advise. But just call me anyways. What's the difference? I'd help you either way. And that's my excuse to be able to flake out.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I guess I do. I really hope that people think that it's okay to ask me for help and it's okay to be themselves around me. And I think I do what you do in terms of, well, what can I do right now to make them more comfortable and help them? And then I have friends who are saying, I need to be your agent because you're just being way too giving to all these other folks. And there are some people that are just takers and you don't realize that, et cetera. But I guess I'm okay with it.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's very difficult. And the only way I can get through it usually is by is kind of like writing a script and then playing a part. I feel like that's what I have to do in order to get through it because it does seem really out of character. And I guess part of me feels like it's going to come across as made up or fake if I act this way.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I kind of barged in like a bullying china shop. I was advised that you're under a magnifying glass. You should really be careful. And I thought to myself, oh, yeah, I know what that's like. Don't worry about me. Yeah, we've been in 100 magnifying glasses the whole time. But I didn't realize that what it meant is be careful within the company. Everyone's very sensitive right now and every little thing that you might think is funny or okay to say probably isn't. And for sure, that's what I did right away. I was like, oh, I'm getting last. Let's just keep doing more of this. And then I realized how much I was just crashing into people left and right. And so I think it took about six months before I really realized that and cleaned up my act.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I mean, identity and then what you do, I think, can be separated because if your goal every day is to make yourself obsolete and design the company so that if you were to leave the next day, it would operate just fine. The parts of your personality that you share with the company that it ends up adopting are the best ones, I think that's a good way to leave the company. If you rule with an iron fist and you insist that everything passes by you for decision, don't delegate and you also imprint the company with your own personality, then I do think it ends up being broken when you leave because it's looking for that shape of a personality to fill whatever's the void. I think if you instead share whether your best traits and make sure that you are delegating properly and people have the tools to make decisions without you, then that's the right way to go.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A soulless if everyone just said, I'm going to bring half myself to work and it's going to be the political side and I'm not going to share any of this or that.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I think a lot of people think and say if you, you know, it's a healthier work environment and you're better at your job if you can bring your full self. There might be downsides, but I do think that companies end up with a personality similar to the way people do. And it's kind of like an emergence. If you don't do anything about it, you could just end up attracting a certain kind of culture for your company. If you take more purposeful steps, then you end up building something that you like. And it's like a personality. So I think it's fine and it's worth it to bring your full self. And then be able to do all these things that you can do. But there is a downside, I think, in that, especially if a founder attaches their personally so heavily to the company. Then if they leave, they're going to leave a big space there. So at the very least, what they'll need to do is have a long transition period. You know, I think there are trade-offs either way. But I think it would become...”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, Google always had organized the world's information to make it universally accessible. That attracted a certain kind of employee that wanted to do that forever job. It's not something you just, okay, all the world's information is now all orange because you keep getting more and more and more. And so we did that. And then what it really helped to do is get everyone on the same page, maybe not 100% of everyone, but most of the people. We're on the same page and it told us what we shouldn't do anymore. Well, if that's the purpose, then we shouldn't do any of these things. And it also tells what we should be doing and why we were there, why we worked there.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one thing that comes to mind is something that I did do when I got back, and it wasn't there since the beginning, but there was something that still pushed the team and pushed the team and people just believed in Twitter who worked there. But then the more that focus came in and the more of a real big company it seemed and where people would come in for their career and then leave, it was harder for folks to go based on faith given that scenario. And so what I did when I came in is Jack and I hammered out a purpose statement for Twitter. The answer to the question why do we exist? Because before that, if we asked around at the company, what's the purpose of Twitter's existence? People would say free speech or they would just kind of make something up and it was a different answer for everyone. And when we came up with, we served the public conversation, folks can argue about whether or not that's a good one. But the idea is that missions can be completed or failed, but purposes.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that was weird, but because Jack had just been named not interim CEO anymore. So, okay, we're going to go ahead and have you as the real CEO, even though you're also CEO of Square. There was a committee of the board that was. Some stupid thing like filling in a bit shaped hole or something like that or just made fun of that. But it was kind of awkward not to be able to say anything. But the company was not doing well. I mean, sort of ethically, the company itself is shrinking. There was a brain drain. And there was also the user base was shrinking. There wasn't revenue or profit. And nobody felt like Twitter was a special place to work. Whereas back in the day, that did. So we said, I need to bring all that back. And I feel like we did.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, it's weird because I don't know why this is true. It's kind of uncomfortable even to say this, but it seems like a kind of like crisis. In fact, I get kind of calmer during emergencies and time slows down for me. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but I've definitely been stressed out and lost by cool. I mean, I remember distinctly in the early days when Jack was CEO of Twitter the first time, I finally just got frustrated and said I was upset that the site was down yet again. And I said something like, why can't we keep this site up? I shouted something. And then Jack asked if he could take a walk with me. And we took a little walk around South Park and he said, I need you to be the guy that's happy with things and helping everyone else get along. And it felt good to me because I realized that's what I'd been doing except for that one moment and that it was actually something and it was helping. So it made me feel a little bit better about myself, which helped me to be more calm and think.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's funny as I get older, everything's kind of more concrete to me. But, I mean, I joked about this all along. I said, well, Future Biz will get current biz out of whatever Jamie's getting himself into. And I guess it was kind of an excuse to do crazy things because I did sort of say out loud that, well, no matter what I do here, if it doesn't work, my future self will figure out how to make everything right again. And so it was almost like having a safety net without having a safety net. I sort of tricked myself into thinking, it doesn't matter what happens here because future self will take care of it. So go ahead and take this crazy risk or do this thing that doesn't in the short term look like it helps you at all, but it's something you can try because you'll be okay. And I think that in a weird way helped me do things that I might not have done accomplished about trying to save money or save face or reputation or something like that.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We should just clarify that's Fred Blackford, my partner, not my life partner, but my business partner Yeah, I have a son and it's funny because I never had to learn what the value of money was. I mean, I was working since I was eight years old because I was mowing the neighbor's lawn. He started out doing that. And so I never had to be taught that. It's so foreign to me to think I'm going to have to teach it to my son. But I started early and just to the point where I think last year I said I was going to stay home and work that day. And my son asked me, if we'd still be able to pay them mortgage. And then my wife gave me a little bit of a hard time saying, you know, I think you've done what you're trying to do because now he thinks we can't pay for the house. And maybe I overdid it a little bit, but it's just a matter of asking what things cost and trying to fix things and sort of buying new one and making sure that people know what the value of money is. So I do think that's important personally. I'm not sure if everyone thinks how important it is, but I'm keen and cautious not to be flippant about things.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know exactly what you mean. And the reason I don't have that is because I think it's because I know, just like you are, I'm self-aware of that. And so, and I think I've done that. And then I just stopped doing it and said, I don't think that's going to do anything. I think it's natural human nature. Most of my life, I was struggling with money. So I always had this vague idea that I had this goal that I would get a little house and have a little backyard. And if I could do that, it would be fantastic. And so I got that. And I was actually pretty excited that I got that. And then, like I said, everything else, I'm not sure what else to do after that.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's funny because I don't know, it feels like I can't quite get into the groove of being a wealthy person. That may sound humorous to people like, come on, well, if I had it, I'd know what to do. And I wish I knew what that was exactly because, I mean, one thing I know for sure, being able to take care of everyone and make sure everyone's comfortable is fantastic. I mean, that's more than I ever wanted for sure. And then I don't really know exactly what to go to after that. Well, a lot of people sometimes say to me, don't you have a guy for that? And I keep thinking, is there some kind of secret, wealthy person memo I'm supposed to get that tells me these things because I don't have a guy for that. Am I supposed to have a guy for that? And other things like that, I'm just really happy that I can pay the bills and also donate. And beyond that, I don't have any kind of plan.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you get enough money to pay your bills and maybe those little arguments go away, but there's still bigger ones. And you're getting by, but there's tons of things you wish you could do if only you had more money. And then if you're lucky and you get too much money, that's what happens to you. You get amplified who you are. And maybe you're never happy because that wasn't the kind of person you were in the first place. And, you know, then you think, oh, I should move somewhere. That'll make everything better. And then geography really doesn't change your personality at all. So, you know, you still have the same problems when you move.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this is what I've come to understand is that you not changed by great wealth, like too much money. What happens is whatever the type of person you were before is then amplified like a hundred times over. So if you're a really nice, helpful person, then you end up doing philanthropy and setting up programs and everything. And maybe if you're crazy, you end up saying, well, I can afford to let mountain lions loose in San Francisco just for fun. I'm going to do it if you're self-centered or greedy or anything like that. It just comes out so much more. I love shopping. I want to take a private jet to New York City and shop today just because they can. And so I have this whole theory that, you know, first you just don't have enough money. And what happens is every little thing becomes like bone on bone with no cartilage. Every little argument that you might get into over a phone bill or something becomes this epic argument with your significant other about it's your fault. No, it's your fault. And everything's just really difficult to manage.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you love to do and it feels like it's within you and you have to get it done. And you don't hear everyone saying, this is terrible, you should quit because it's almost like everything sounds like some kind of compliment to you, gets morphed into great job. You know, when we were doing Twitter, somebody early on said Twitter is the Seinfeld of the Internet. It's a website about nothing. And the first thing I thought was, wow, Seinfeld's a hit show. And I put it as a testimonial on a rotating testimonial as I put on that website. People were saying to me, I don't think that means what you think it means. And then I've also known people who just stick with something and I can tell they don't really love it and it's not going to work. And they keep thinking it should work. Maybe somebody else did it. And then it's just, then I have to save them. I think you're really just kind of going through the motions here and doing this over and over again. And isn't that the definition of insanity when you do the same thing over and over again and hope for a different result? And so there are definitely times when you should not keep doing that. And so you have to know, I think, in your heart whether or not”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you have to be basically how do you balance between the two realism versus the visionary persistence? Yeah, for sure. Unless you want to work on something for 10 years, at least, I don't think you should make a start about it because it just means you don't have what it's going to take when everything's going really bad. And you're not going to want to see it through. If everyone's telling you it's a stupid idea, it's a terrible idea. It's not working at all. And you'll probably start to believe it if you don't want to stick with it no matter what and love it. Is that a reason? Because we hear these fabled stories of everyone. No, it's not a good reason, but it's a reason. And then also, of course, like the way to do it is to stick with it, you know, like Ethan with Beyond Meat and so many others that just said I have this grand vision and it's going to take me a long time to get there. I'm going to stick it out or this is just people who know when to pivot and can tell. So, I mean, I think it has a lot to do with whether or not this is someone.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most things, and I realize another thing too, which I didn't realize until I wrote a book, and then somebody asked me, how did you know that you should take these risky moves? Of course it didn't. And I wondered what made me do that in the first place. And I realized that what I was doing this whole time, I was doing something, I didn't notice it, which was when I found somebody that I enjoyed working with and liked as a person, I stayed with them, no matter how risky it was. And that was paying off. I did that with Steve Snyder. I did that with Elv, I did that with Jack. I'm doing that with Fred now. And it's just something that I did with Ben Finkel. I mean, it's just something that I do sort of without trying. Can I ask, speaking of kind of sticking with people, I think one big thing that I always think about is sticking with things and sticking with projects. And it's often this kind of difficult balance, which is like when something's not working, we're told of the importance of having the big vision and times are tough and you just have to stick through them. And then others, it's like sometimes it's not working for a reason.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of developing features as a designer because something should go here. What should it be? How about the links to all the other people's blogs and all these interesting things where you could see what people were then doing with what you designed and then double down on that as a feature. Anyway, so I left. I was sorry and then blogger was acquired by Google and I had been using Hire as First Product, which was like a productivity type thing. And then they spun out Blogger and I was using that too. And Ev sent me a note we hadn't met, but he sent me an email saying, how do you like to come work at Google? That's its own long story. But I ended up then moving to the Bay Area to work at Google. And after only a couple of years of that, Evan and I had an idea in the car on the way home from Google because it was before the free buses. And that turned into ODA. That's how I sort of accidentally fell into this world. I wasn't on track to get there, but it just sort of said yes to multiple things and found myself here. Well, I think if there's anything I've learned from investing, it's just say yes to.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do and telling other people how to run their companies. We should start our own company. And Biz, you're the web guy. You can help us start a web company. That's how vague this first idea was. So we started what's called what was called zanga.com x-anga, which is not a great way to name your company. If you have to explain it, it's like a bad joke. Anyway, we started that in that I sort of took the lead on that and morphed it into what we call a web logging community. It was kind of like geo cities meets blogger, but it was all in one place. You know, you didn't have to host anything yourself. So you just went on there and you can customize your page and then start blogging. And that got really popular with young Asian American people. And then after that, what happened was I didn't like the way the culture was going and I was too green at the time to realize that I could have worked to change it and instead I left and then it was immediately sorry because I felt like I was on the wrong side of the screen. I really enjoyed design. I was art directing everything and designing everything and getting in there with the UI and it would just”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So sometimes I think of myself as kind of an accidental entrepreneur because what happened was I was, yes, I was doing book jacket design with my mentor, Steve Snyder. And then I decided to start my own studio because he had filled my head with all these examples of when he had his studio back in the day and what it was like. And so I said, well, I'm going to do that. And then I quickly realized, of course, I'm not going to get all these book covers because I'm not at a publishing company being handed all this work. So there was somebody that one day wanted to meet with me. I met with them and they said this was like early days of the web, the 90s. And this guy said, I have a $5,000 budget. Do you do websites? So I said, of course I do after hearing the amount of money that he had. And so I just figured it out and started doing websites for people. And these were really simple things. It's mostly about the design. My friends who had gone to college and finished college unlike me and gone into highly paid consulting roles and then wondered, wait a minute, we're smart.”
2021-01-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe? · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source