From working at Google to co-founding Twitter @Biz and now as Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Obvious Corporation, Biz Stone shared 9 entrepreneur success assumptions as a keynote speaker at EO Alchemy’s first western region conference in Hollywood, CA, on Thursday. To bring you the behind-the-scenes scoop, we captured the Twitter ah ha moment at South by Southwest (Film and Interactive Festival), how they came up with the Twitter brand and insights on how Obvious Corporation is focused on helping others.
Jason Nazar, CEO and Co-Founder of DocStoc introduced Biz Stone as someone who has been named Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc Magazine and highlighted, “Most importantly, he is really known amongst entrepreneurs as just being someone who is incredibly humble, thoughtful, always wants to help out, and he is someone that I aspire to be more like…..Biz, we all thank you so much.” And if you heard his speech or met him (I felt fortunate to meet him right before his talk and discuss the Tweethouse at the Sundance Film Festival), you'd see his sincerity to help other aspiring entrepreneurs. He’s set up the Biz and Livia Foundation with his wife that helps with education and conservation in the Bay Area, and emphasized the importance of entrepreneurs making the world a better place.
The first learning lesson that Biz shared came when he left Google to start a company to build the next big thing and how they overcame the roadblock that eventually led to Twitter. Biz confessed, “We were coming from a place where we were bummed out because I had left Google to work with my long-time collaborator Evan Williams on something cool and new. And what happened was, we started working on this project that we thought other people would like. And we didn’t use it ourselves, and that is a really bad idea because if you’re not emotionally invested in a product that you are spending all your time on, you’ve raised money from other people to build, etc. If you’re not actually interested in using it yourself, that’s terrible.”
When Evan Williams recommended that everyone stop working for 10 days, and partner with someone to come up with something cool tied to their passions, that’s when the concept of Twitter started. Biz shared, “I paired up with an engineer that I had a close relationship with Jack Dorsey @Jack, and we created the prototype of Twitter. The idea was, can we build something cool off this emerging technology of mobile texting that is compelling?”
And then the real ah ha moment was when they went to South by Southwest (SXSW.) Biz shared that there were two “mind-altering” things that happened there that pushed them forward to create Twitter Inc. Biz explained his observations at SXSW in 2007, “I was sitting in the audience of a panel… and all these people started getting up and leaving, and I’d never seen anything like it. It was almost like a PA system had announced to leave, but there was no PA system. What I realized was happening was people were using Twitter on their mobile phones and laptops… to share the fact that the lecture across the hall was way more interesting, and they were just going over there.” And then when everyone hit the parties and bars in Austin for networking that night, a guy sent out a tweet changing where to meet to other entrepreneurs and founders, Biz explained, “And in the 8 minutes it took him to walk to the other pub, it had completely filled to capacity… so his plan totally backfired. But the amazing thing about it was, he sent out his 1 tweet to his 50 followers, they got it, they sent out the same tweet to their 20 followers, and it resulted in this instant swarm of people arriving at this bar.”
And it was this visualization of people flocking who “behave almost as if they’re one living organism” that made them come up with the brand, Twitter. Biz added, “The reason why this made the hair stand up on the back of my neck was, yeah, this was a party, but what if this had been an emergency or some other equally important or meaningful event, and I was just totally amazed. We actually went back immediately the next day, and founded Twitter Incorporated.”
When building Twitter Inc, Obvious Corporation and other organizations, Biz shared the following 9 business success assumptions with a room packed with entrepreneurs.
1. Assume opportunity can be manufactured. – “Opportunity can be manufactured. Opportunity is a set of circumstances that are arranged in such a way that you can seize them and take that opportunity…so many people think they have to wait….what occurred to me is that you can actually create those circumstances and then just take the opportunity.”
2. Assume creativity is a renewable resource. - “I ask people to assume there’s a creative answer to every problem.” Take a crazy look at it first. You could ignore it. It may sound crazy, but just go for it.
3. Assume failure is part of success. – “To succeed spectacularly, you need to be ready to fail spectacularly.” And when it happens, the success key is how fast you get back up.
4. Assume smarter people are outside the company. - “I also encourage people to understand that there are smarter people outside the company than inside. When I worked for Google, everyone was geniuses, I was like, I guess we’ve collected all the geniuses. I think there was a mentality that we’re all the smartest people so we don’t really need to ask anyone because we are them, but of course that’s not true…it’s extremely limiting….Look elsewhere, get a variety of thoughts.”
5. Assume you can win if users come first. - “I think it’s really important to assume that we’ll win if we always do the right thing for our user…Ask yourself, is this going to be useful and interesting for our users?”
6. Assume the best of coworkers. - “Assume your co-workers are smart and they have good intentions.”
7. Assume win-win deals. - “I also ask people to assume that the only deal worth doing is a win-win deal.” If you’re in a relationship, and you’re not getting a ton out of it, you’re relationship is probably doomed. It’s the same thing in business.”
8. Assume business success includes three key things. - “I ask people to assume that the definition of success is we can change the world, we can build a business and we can have fun. We can do all three of these things. If we’re not doing all three of these things, then we’re not succeeding.”
9. Assume the need help others now versus later. - “There is a compound interest in helping others. Start doing something now because that 10 years it took to me to make what you think is enough ends up being way more both for you and for other people than you could have given if you just threw some money at a problem later.”
Biz continues to give back through his foundation and Obvious Corporation that builds systems to make the world a better place. Many thanks to EO Alchemy, Reza Bavar and your committee for organizing this special keynote address and long list of dynamic and inspiring speakers such as Magic Johnson, Former Governor Gray Davis, Marcia Wieder (Dream University) and John Paul DeJoria. We will all be dreaming bigger, creating jobs and giving back more as a result of this conference.
© Liz H Kelly @LizHKelly, National Digital Entertainment Columnist, Sunrise Road Media, http://sunriseroadmedia.com
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