Biz Stone

Biz Stone was born Christopher Isaac Stone in Boston, MassachusettsMassachusettsMassachusetts (officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital and largest city is Boston. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on February 6, 1788, the sixth state to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 7,029,917.Open the full entry, on March 10, 1974. When he was a toddler, a mispronunciation of his name that sounded like “Biz-ah-bah” gave him the name “Biz.”⁠[1][2]

His father, Christopher Stone, was a mechanic in Boston, and his mother was Marjory Pugh; his parents divorced when he was young, after which he stopped using the name “Christopher.” He has three sisters and grew up in Wellesley, Massachusetts.⁠[2]

Speaking of his early circumstances in 2016, he said: “I grew up on welfare and was in debt until I was 37.” The organizers’ introduction to an online conversation in March 2026 states that he grew up on “government cheese” outside Boston, in a household he describes as violent, and that he has worked since the age of eight.⁠[3][4]

He graduated from Wellesley High School, and the Wellesley Free Library’s list of local authors records him under the year 1992; while at the school he founded its lacrosse team.⁠[5][2]

He then went to Northeastern University in Boston on a scholarship, intending to study English, and left after a year; he next enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Boston on a theater arts scholarship and also left after a year. As of 2009, high school remained his highest level of education.⁠[2][1][6]

After leaving college he took a summer job moving boxes at the publisher Little, Brown and Company; a book cover he designed was chosen, and he moved into a design role. When the publisher moved its design division to New York, he stayed in Boston as a freelance graphic designer and taught himself web design. The 2026 conversation’s introduction states that he left college to apprentice with an art director he loved.⁠[2][1][4]

In the late 1990s he moved from print to web design, and he wrote many web development articles for publications including Web Review and Web Techniques.⁠[7]

In 1999 friends invited him to help form the blogging community Xanga, where he was creative director from 1999 to 2001; Xanga launched in 2000.⁠[1][2]

In 2001 he moved to Los Angeles and wrote his first book on blogging, Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content, which was published in 2002. He then returned to Massachusetts and wrote software for the Wellesley College alumni association.⁠[2][1]

In 2003, shortly after GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry had acquired the blogging software Blogger, Evan Williams invited him to join the Blogger team and help revamp it; he worked there until 2005. BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry’s article on Evan Williams gives a different account: that Stone developed the Blogger tool with Williams while both were at Pyra Labs. The 2026 conversation’s introduction states that he left Google before its IPO, walking away from a fortune, because he would rather follow a friend than stay for stock options.⁠[1][2][8][4]

In 2004 his second book, Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs, was published.⁠[1][2]

In 2005 he left Blogger to join Odeo, a podcasting company founded by Evan Williams and Noah Glass, and helped shape it.⁠[1][8][2]

In 2006 he co-founded Twitter with Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey: when the podcasting company Odeo needed a new direction, Evan Williams set its staff to brainstorming, Jack Dorsey approached Williams and Stone with an idea combining text and instant messaging with dispatch-style software to keep friends in touch, and the three built a prototype of what became Twitter. Jack Dorsey, Stone, Noah Glass and the engineer Florian Weber were assigned to build version 0.1, and Noah Glass, with the help of a dictionary, came up with the name “Twitter.” On March 21 Jack Dorsey sent the first message, “just setting up my twttr,” and the service launched publicly on July 15. The Reuters report carried by Fortune (2017) also lists Noah Glass among Twitter’s co-founders.⁠[1][8][2][9][10]

The Wellesley Free Library’s author profile gives a different account: that while he was working in the IT department at Wellesley College, he and his friend Jack Dorsey came up with the idea that became Twitter.⁠[5]

In October 2006 he joined Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and a few others from Odeo in forming the Obvious Corporation, which held Odeo’s assets, including Twitter.⁠[2]

After Obvious acquired Odeo, it spun Twitter off as a separate company in 2007; when Twitter became a separate company in April 2007, he became its creative director.⁠[8][2]

On April 30, 2009, TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry magazine’s “2009 TIME 100” included him and Evan Williams; the accompanying essay, “The Twitter Guys,” was written by Ashton Kutcher and credits the creation of Twitter to Stone, then 35, Williams, 37, and Jack Dorsey, 32. The same year GQ named him its “Nerd of the Year.”⁠[11][2]

On June 8, 2009, he accepted a Webby Award for Twitter in New York City, and in this period he became the company’s public face in media appearances. That year he and Evan Williams were jointly ranked No. 5 on Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list; both were then married, and Twitter had reached 21 million monthly unique U.S. visitors in under four years.⁠[2][6]

On May 14, 2011, he gave the address at Babson CollegeBabson CollegeBabson College is a private nonprofit college in Wellesley, Massachusetts, United States. Founded by Roger Babson in 1919 as the Babson Institute, it took its present name in 1969 and concentrates on business and entrepreneurship education.Open the full entry’s undergraduate commencement and received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He was then an Associate Fellow at the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry and a Visiting Scholar at Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry, and in 2011 he became Social Impact Advisor at AOLAOLAOL is an American internet brand offering a news portal, email, and membership services. Its history dates to an online-services company founded in 1985.Open the full entry.⁠[12][5]

On June 28, 2011, he announced on his blog that he was leaving his official role at Twitter and would stay involved only as an adviser, and that with Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, Twitter’s former vice president of product, he was relaunching the Obvious Corporation, the business that had first developed Twitter, to build systems that “help people work together to improve the world.” He wrote: “the most effective use of my time is to get out of the way until I'm called upon to be of some specific use.” Dick CostoloDick CostoloDick Costolo is an entrepreneur and investor who was chief executive officer of Twitter from 2010 to 2015, earlier co-founded the feed service FeedBurner, and is a co-managing partner of the venture firm 01 Advisors.Open the full entry remained Twitter’s chief executive.⁠[13][2][1]

The same day he and Evan Williams spoke with Walter IsaacsonWalter IsaacsonWalter Isaacson is an American biographer and journalist, born in New Orleans in 1952, and a history professor at Tulane University. He formerly led TIME magazine, CNN and the Aspen Institute. His biographies cover figures including Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna and Elon Musk. He received the National Humanities Medal in 2023.Open the full entry at the Aspen Ideas Festival. On Twitter’s role in the Arab Spring he said that “Twitter was a tool that helped them realize that others felt like them,” and compared it with the telephone: “The telephone was a big part of bringing down the Berlin Wall, but the telephone didn't bring down the Berlin Wall.”⁠[14]

He said in the conversation that Twitter “must remain a neutral technology, not picking sides,” and that during the 2009 Iran protests the company had moved a maintenance window because its users wanted it, not because the State Department asked. He also said that at Blogger his team had fought its parent company to keep the service free and open and tried to “err on the side of freedom of speech,” and that when working on Twitter he felt it had the potential to have the same kind of impact in the world.⁠[14]

He was a co-founder and the chief creative officer of the online publishing platform Medium, which he founded with Evan Williams and which launched in August 2012.⁠[2][15][8]

In 2012 he began work with Ben Finkel, an engineer and close friend from Twitter, on Jelly, a search app in which people answer questions; the idea came to them on a walk, after which Finkel quit Twitter. AxiosAxiosAxios is a US digital news media company founded in 2016 by former Politico executives Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz and launched in January 2017. It is known for short news items and industry newsletters in the “Smart Brevity” style, especially for its Washington political coverage, and publishes local news newsletters in cities across the United States through Axios Local. Since 2022 it has been owned by Cox Enterprises.Open the full entry gives a different start year, writing that the two began Jelly in 2013.⁠[1][2][3][16]

In May 2013 Jelly disclosed a Series A round of undisclosed size; its investors included Spark CapitalSpark CapitalSpark Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in Boston in 2005, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Its early-stage and growth funds back technology businesses across fintech, enterprise software, AI and consumer products. Investments have included Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus, Plaid and Anthropic.Open the full entry, SV AngelSV AngelSV Angel is a San Francisco venture capital firm cofounded in 2009 by angel investor Ron Conway and former Google executive David Lee. It typically writes small follow-on checks in seed rounds and has invested in companies such as Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox; in 2018 it said it would no longer raise new funds from outside investors, and from 2022 it set up growth funds.Open the full entry, Bono, Al Gore and Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, and Reid HoffmanReid HoffmanReid Hoffman is an American entrepreneur, venture investor, author and podcast host, co-founder of LinkedIn, Inflection AI and Manas AI, and a partner at Greylock. A former PayPal executive, he has built and backed businesses in professional networking, artificial intelligence and drug discovery. His co-authored books include The Startup of You and Blitzscaling.Open the full entry was among those he persuaded to invest. He later recalled that before Jelly had spent its first round, Josh ElmanJosh ElmanJosh Elman is an American product manager and venture capitalist who has been a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) since June 2026, focusing on consumer technology and AI investments. He has worked in product roles at LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Robinhood, and Apple, and was formerly a general partner at Greylock Partners.Open the full entry of Greylock Partners asked to join the next one and that he accepted, adding: “in retrospect, it looked like I was a genius.”⁠[17][9][3]

He was photographed applauding at Twitter’s initial public offering on the New York Stock ExchangeNew York Stock ExchangeThe New York Stock Exchange is a securities exchange on Wall Street in New York City. It traces its origins to the Buttonwood Agreement signed by 24 stockbrokers in 1792, has used its present name since 1863 and has been owned by Intercontinental Exchange since 2013.Open the full entry on November 7, 2013. In January 2014 he said that his Twitter stake was too small to appear in regulatory filings but that he still owned a substantial amount, without saying how much.⁠[18][9]

On January 7, 2014, he unveiled the previously secret Jelly app in a blog post, free on iOS and Android: users ask questions with photos, and friends and friends of friends answer them. He said the app was meant to get people to help one another and to make the world more empathetic; the name comes from the jellyfish, whose decentralized nervous system gives it a brain that is “more 'we' than 'me'.” He was 39 at the time.⁠[17][9]

He said at the time that two years after leaving Twitter he still advised the company, met weekly with Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey and passed ideas on to chief executive Dick Costolo: “I still have my Twitter badge and my email.” He said that he had only skimmed Nick BiltonNick BiltonNick Bilton is a technology journalist, author and documentary filmmaker who wrote books including “Hatching Twitter” and “American Kingpin,” and who has served since 2026 as executive producer of the CBS News program “60 Minutes.”Open the full entry’s book Hatching Twitter and that he thought it was unfairly harsh toward Jack Dorsey.⁠[9]

On January 23, 2014, Jelly announced a Series B round of undisclosed size led by Greylock Partners with participation from Spark Capital; Josh Elman, a Greylock partner who had worked with Stone as a product manager at Twitter, joined the board, where Spark Capital general partner Bijan Sabet already sat. Other investors included Bono, Evan Williams, Jason Goldman, Al Gore, the director Greg Yaitanes and the entrepreneur Roya Mahboob. He described Jelly as a “small team with modest capital requirements” and said it planned to stay that way.⁠[19]

The first version of Jelly was not very successful. In late 2014 he shifted the company’s focus to Super, an app for making and sharing colorful collages built around a superlative, such as “My favorite animal is the pug.” At South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2015 he spoke on stage about Jelly’s failure and announced that the company was abandoning the app.⁠[15][3][16]

He and Ben Finkel had discussed shutting Jelly down to focus on Super but decided to keep it. In January 2016 he announced the decision, which he called an “un-pivot,” in a post on Medium, and said: “It was kind of embarrassing because we had to announce an 'un-pivot.'” In March 2016 he returned to SXSW to talk about it.⁠[15][3]

On April 28, 2016, the company announced the new version, which he called “Jelly 2.0,” free on iOS and the web: users could ask questions anonymously without an account, and questions went to people with expertise in the topic rather than through social networks. He said: “We think the future of search in general is no results,” pointing to AmazonAmazonAmazon is a publicly traded U.S. technology and retail company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, with its principal corporate offices in Seattle. Its businesses span e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment, digital advertising, membership and entertainment services, consumer electronics, and Amazon Web Services cloud computing.Open the full entry’s Echo as an example of a next phase of search without pages of results, and added: “There's a huge percentage of queries that are better answered by a person.”⁠[3]

In March 2017 Pinterest acquired Jelly in a small, all-stock transaction of undisclosed value. He joined Pinterest as a special adviser to Evan Sharp, the company’s co-founder and head of product, and Ben Finkel joined its growth product team. He later wrote that the deal “did not require me to work at the company we sold to.”⁠[16][2][10][20]

On May 16, 2017, he announced in a post on Medium that he would return to Twitter full time in a couple of weeks. He wrote that Twitter had revived its Friday-afternoon “Tea Time” for employees, that Jack Dorsey invited him as a “special guest” and asked him on stage whether he wanted to come back, and that Dorsey confirmed the offer in private afterwards. He said that he had worked at Twitter for about six years, that his main focus would be guiding the company’s culture, working with Jack Dorsey and chief marketing officer Leslie Berland, and that he was not replacing anyone. Dorsey tweeted: “Excited to have Biz's energy and heart back at Twitter!” Twitter’s shares rose about 2% on the news.⁠[20][21][10]

He went on to guide Twitter’s culture until 2021. The 2026 conversation’s introduction states that when he was called back to a company in crisis, he framed its purpose as “We serve the public conversation.”⁠[2][4]

In 2019 he co-founded the multi-stage investment firm Future Positive with Fred Blackford, its founder and managing partner, whose investments include Pinterest and Beyond Meat. In October that year he announced an investment in the AI Foundation, an artificial-intelligence media venture.⁠[2][22]

In 2023 he criticized the changes Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry had made to X, formerly Twitter, and said he was spending his time on MastodonMastodonMastodon is free and open-source decentralized social networking software created by Eugen Rochko in 2016; based on the ActivityPub protocol, it forms a federated network of independently run servers. Its user base grew sharply in 2022, and Rochko stepped down as CEO in November 2025.Open the full entry.⁠[2]

In 2023 he and Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp founded the social app company West Co, with Sharp as chief executive.⁠[23][24]

On April 27, 2024, Mastodon’s chief executive, Eugen Rochko, announced the formation of Mastodon, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the United States, with an unpaid board made up of Esra'a Al Shafei, Karien Bezuidenhout, Amir Ghavi, Felix Hlatky and Stone. The announcement says that as a Twitter co-founder he has experience scaling a social media platform to its first few million users.⁠[25][26]

In November 2025 West Co launched its first app, Tangle, on an invite-only basis, presenting it as a social network “designed for intentional living”: the app asks users each day, “What's your intention for today?” and encourages them to share their answers with a small circle of friends. A regulatory filing showed that West Co had raised $29 million, with Spark Capital leading the seed round.⁠[23][24]

Speaking about Tangle in January 2026, he said: “It turns out that creating something to help people navigate their lifetime is difficult work, but I think it's worth it.”⁠[23]

On March 4, 2026, he and Evan Sharp talked about their careers and West Co in Awakin Call, a weekly online conversation series run by ServiceSpace and published on DailyGood. The introduction states that at Twitter he accidentally invented the follower count one afternoon. Summing up his career choices, he said: “Each time, I found a person I really liked, that I thought I could learn from.” Asked what matters most, he said: “The most valuable thing we have is our lifetime,” and “The way you honor that gift is to live it a little more on purpose.”⁠[4]

In June 2007 he married Livia McRee, an artist and author who later became a wildlife rehabilitator and worked at WildCare, a wildlife center in Marin County, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, where he was an honorary board member. They have a son, Jacob.⁠[2]

He lives with his wife and son in Marin County, California, near San Francisco. He is a vegan.⁠[2][27]

He is the author of three books: Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content (2002), Who Let the Blogs Out?: A Hyperconnected Peek at the World of Weblogs (2004) and Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind (2014).⁠[1][2]

He signed with Grand Central Publishing for Things a Little Bird Told Me in 2012; the hardcover appeared in April 2014 at 240 pages and $26 (ISBN 978-1-4555-2871-4), and the paperback followed on April 14, 2015 under the subtitle “Creative Secrets from the Co-Founder of Twitter.” Drawing on his early life and his work at Google and Twitter, the book discusses creativity and argues that opportunity can be manufactured, that creativity never runs out, that asking questions is free and that empathy is central to success.⁠[2][28][29][27]

Kirkus Reviews described the book as an effective blend of memoir and guide with perceptive, motivational advice for technical and non-technical readers alike, written in a chatty, amiable tone; the book sums up the 140-character limit as “constraint inspires creativity.” Publishers Weekly’s review judged it effusive but callow and found its portrait of Twitter sketchy and idealized; it described Stone’s own role in the book as vague, brainstorming the bird logo and handling angry customers but mainly embodying the company’s spirit, while praising his self-deprecating humor, including his portrait of Mark ZuckerbergMark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook, Chairman and CEO of Meta, and a co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. His work spans social networking, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry.⁠[29][28]

He has been an angel investor in and adviser to Nest, Pinterest, Square and Slack. In August 2015 GifYT, the startup that had taken over gifs.com, announced at launch that it had funding from Biz Stone, Binary, Foundation CapitalFoundation CapitalFoundation Capital is an American early-stage venture capital firm founded in 1995, with offices in Palo Alto and San Francisco. It invests in enterprise software, artificial intelligence, fintech and crypto, and was an early backer of companies including Netflix, Solana and Cerebras.Open the full entry and 1517; one of GifYT’s co-founders was Rory O’ReillyRory O’ReillyRory O’Reilly is an entrepreneur who, with his brother Kieran O’Reilly, co-founded GIFYouTube, a website that turns clips of YouTube videos into animated GIFs (later moved to the gifs.com domain), then the fintech company Millions and Knot, which provides card issuers with an interface for updating card details, of which he became chief executive officer. He left Harvard University without graduating and was a Thiel Fellow of the 2015 class.Open the full entry.⁠[5][30]

In February 2021 the fintech startup Millions disclosed a $3 million seed round in which he invested alongside Giant Ventures, 8VC, Supernode and others; the two names listed in its Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the federal securities regulator of the United States. Created during the Great Depression by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and led by five commissioners, it has a three-part mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.Open the full entry filing were Kieran O’ReillyKieran O’ReillyKieran O’Reilly is an entrepreneur who co-founded GIFYouTube, a website that turns clips of YouTube videos into animated GIFs, with his brother Rory O’Reilly; the company later moved to the gifs.com domain. He left Harvard University without graduating and was a Thiel Fellow of the 2015 class.Open the full entry and Rory O’Reilly. In June 2021 he took part in a $12.5 million round led by Atomico in FabricNano, a London biomanufacturing company that Emma Watson had also backed. In June 2023 Config, founded by James ProudJames ProudJames Proud is an entrepreneur who was selected for the first class of the Thiel Fellowship in 2011; he founded, in turn, the live-music listings site GigLocator, Hello, the maker of the bedside sleep monitor Sense, and the hardware development management platform Config.Open the full entry, raised $5 million in seed funding from angel investors, including Stone.⁠[31][32][33]

In 2010 he and his wife established the Biz and Livia Stone Foundation, which supports education and conservation in the San Francisco Bay Area, with priority for underserved children; its first fundraiser, in September 2011, raised more than $50,000. He gave the foundation his fee for a Stolichnaya vodka advertisement. The couple were named Huffington Post “Game Changers” for their philanthropy.⁠[2][12]

He has served as Strategic Advisor for Social Impact at AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group.⁠[2]

His other honors include Inc. magazine’s “Entrepreneur of the Decade” and a place among Vanity FairVanity FairVanity Fair is a magazine and digital media brand owned by Condé Nast, covering politics, business, arts and culture, entertainment and fashion. The title traces back to Dress & Vanity Fair in 1913, ceased publication in 1936 and was relaunched in 1983; it has since built a historical digital archive and hosts events such as its Oscar party.Open the full entry’s ten most influential people of the information age; on Twitter’s behalf he accepted the International Center for Journalists’ 2010 Innovation Award in Washington, D.C. The Wellesley Free Library’s author profile adds that he received The EconomistThe EconomistThe Economist is an English-language weekly newspaper founded in 1843 and published by the London-based Economist Group, covering financial and political news.Open the full entry’s Innovation Award and an Emmy Award and that he directed a film with Ron Howard.⁠[12][5]

Google: Official website: https://about.google/ (opens in a new window).⁠[34]

Medium: Official website: https://medium.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[35]

Mastodon: Official website: https://joinmastodon.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[36]

X: Public account: https://x.com/biz (opens in a new window).⁠[37]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/BizStone (opens in a new window).⁠[37]