
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is returning to the company - sloanesturz
https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/16/twitter-co-founder-biz-stone-is-returning-to-the-company/
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rabble
I know a lot of the early history, I worked there when we hired both Jack and
Biz. I can tell you that it's a really good thing that Biz is back on board.
Biz was able to articulate what twitter was as the human voice of the company
in both directions. From day one the question was always, what does Biz do.

Biz bounced around but when he was there things were better. Kind of like the
basketball player that Nate Silver likes to love, who doesn't have any stat
which makes them star, but everybody else around them plays better when
they're there. Biz isn't a business guy, nor product, nor code, nor support,
nor really marketing. But when he's in the room, working with people,
everybody's better at all of those things.

He can play a kind of court jester role, which is disarming, but he's super
damned sharp. He uses stories and humor to bring people forward.

Having him there, working on twitter means there are now two people in senior
roles who aren't afraid of breaking twitter, because they created it in the
first place.

In recent years, talking to twitter employees you get this amnesia over the
company's culture and history. People don't know where things came from, they
don't know the story of how the came to be. The myth's are complicated and
messy. And eventually go so messy the company stopped telling the story of how
twitter came to be where it is now all together.

With Biz back, he can take on that internal story telling, creating a hero's
journey that the company can believe in. Because he's there, as an equal to
Jack in understanding the origin, he can tear things down without fear of
destroying somebody else's house of cards.

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rco8786
Thanks for your post. I'm curious about what you mean by "I was there when we
hired Jack and Biz" though. Were they not founders?

~~~
ebcase
Rabble was the first Eng hire at Odeo, the podcasting startup founded by Noah
Glass and Evan Williams. When Odeo didn't gain enough traction and they were
figuring out what to do next, a small Odeo team (which included Jack)
prototyped Twttr. And the rest is history.

~~~
evanweaver
Well, we still had to scale it.

~~~
rabble
Yeah, huge amounts of work from prototype to world changing platform happened
after i left. Nobody created twitter, rather it was the collective work of
many.

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thomasjudge
"Stone explained that his top focus will be guiding company culture. 'It’s
important that everyone understands the whole story of Twitter and each of our
roles in that story. I’ll shape the experience internally so it’s also felt
outside the company.' – Biz Stone

Of the things twitter needs - strategy? product direction? revenue? - is
"guiding the company culture" really that high on the list?

~~~
ProAm
> Of the things twitter needs - strategy? product direction? revenue? - is
> "guiding the company culture" really that high on the list?

This is very typical in dying large companies, you bring back the old guard to
try and save the day. Rarely works, but at least it's an attempt.

~~~
abraae
Steve Jobs.

~~~
LeoPanthera
I dispute this. Steve Jobs didn't save Apple. Apple saved Next. Today's Apple
is not the Apple of the 90s - it is Next with an Apple logo on the box.

~~~
setpatchaddress
Nonsense. NeXT had largely failed in the marketplace. The best the NeXT people
could do without Steve at the helm was Rhapsody, which Steve hated. And Jony
Ive worked for Apple, not NeXT.

That said, I fail to see what unique vision either Twitter founder brings to
the party.

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aaron-lebo
Semi-related. Does anyone know how accurate _Hatching Twitter_ is?

~~~
evanweaver
It has many correct facts, but rarely the correct interpretation.

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pdog
Twitter's market cap moved up $200 million on the news that Biz is back.

~~~
mabbo
Alternatively, twitters market cap went up 1.4%, which is well within the
usual ups and downs of normal trading throughout the day.

Maybe it was because of this. Maybe it was because some analyst put out a
piece on a private feed that said "Twitter might make more money someday".

~~~
fred256
" _more_ money"? They've yet to make _any_ money.

~~~
nikanj
Looking at their financials, they make tons of money. They just spend gigatons
of money. The revenue side of the equation is looking quite healthy, actually.

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s73ver
I have to imagine he wouldn't be going back unless he felt he could do
something to improve the company's fortunes. It'll be interesting to see if he
does have something up his sleeve.

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colbyh
It's possible the role is fluid because he's being groomed to take the company
over from Jack. I don't think anyone can argue that Jack is doing a good job
as CEO but Biz would carry some of the same goodwill that put Jack in the role
and might actually be better equipped to turn the company around.

Or he's just "putting the band" back together and next month they will launch
their own version of Snapchat's filtered selfies. Who knows.

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powera
I hope this is a predecessor for him taking over from Jack Dorsey.

I don't understand how anyone thinks Dorsey can run both Twitter and Square at
the same time.

~~~
bobsil1
Lieutenants. Elon.

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franzen
What skills does Biz have exactly? It always seemed like Ev was a product
genius, Jack was the business brains, but Biz?

~~~
devopsproject
Cool name. "The Biz is back, baby"

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shahzeb
Net positive for twitter. Net negative for Medium.

~~~
fourstar
Ev Williams started Medium, so this is completely unrelated.

~~~
giarc
Biz is a board member and investor of Medium.

[https://angel.co/medium](https://angel.co/medium)

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paulcole
Just what Twitter needs-- another employee.

