Biz Stone

Biz Stone is an American entrepreneur known best as the co-founder of Twitter, Stone has been developing large scale systems that facilitate the open exchange of information for more than fifteen years. Originally from Boston, Stone moved to California to work as an early Google employee. Stone is an active angel investor, board director, public speaker, and a prominent philanthropist. Biz sold Jelly to Pinterest and he now serves as a Special Advisor for the search company in early 2017. Later that year, he announced he would return to Twitter, where his focus would be to guide the company culture.

Biz has been honored with the International Center for Journalism Innovation Award, INC Magazine named him “Entrepreneur of the Decade,” TIME listed him as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and GQ named him “Nerd of the Year.” In 2014, The Economist recognized Stone with their annual Innovation Award. In 2015, Stone’s Twitter won an Emmy and Biz received CIPR’s most prestigious accolade for his leadership at the forefront of developing new forms of media.

In addition to being a technologist, Biz is a Visiting Fellow at The University of Oxford, an Executive Fellow at Berkeley, a filmmaker, and an author. Stone, 34, is a native of Boston, Massachusetts and teaches an annual master class at Oxford's Saïd Business School. In the fall of 2008, Stone debated and won at Oxford Union against the proposition, "The Problems of Tomorrow Are Bigger Than The Entrepreneurs of Today" along with his esteemed teammates including Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn. Stone’s recent book is titled, Things A Little Bird Told Me. It’s a humorous memoir in the business category. Having started out as an artist, Biz stresses creativity, learning from mistakes, and celebrating the triumph of humanity with a little help from technology. Stone lives near San Francisco with his wife Livia and son Jacob.

Serving as an advisor to startups such as answer community Fluther.com, travel service Trazzler.com which he co-founded, content encouragement service Plinky.com, and the non-profit organization Justgive.org, among others allows Biz to share much of what he has learned over the past decade. Biz lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife, Livia.