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Biz Stone: Here’s What’s Going On With Obvious

In late June, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced that he was stepping back from Twitter to join colleague and fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams at Obvious. They’ve been pretty quiet on...
Biz Stone: Here’s What’s Going On With Obvious
Written by Chris Crum
  • In late June, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced that he was stepping back from Twitter to join colleague and fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams at Obvious.

    They’ve been pretty quiet on just what they’re doing over at Obvious, but a message on the site read:

    The Obvious Corporation makes systems that help people work together to improve the world. The proliferation of technology can seem superfluous, but with the right approach, technology can benefit individuals, organizations, and society. We are relaunching the company that originally incubated Twitter with a high level of commitment to making a difference and developing products that matter.

    In more than a decade of developing large scale systems on the Internet, we’ve never been more excited than right now. The possibility to reach and connect expansive numbers of people fundamentally changes the nature of what’s possible when it comes to building businesses on the Internet. Also, there’s room for innovation in how businesses measure success and more meaningful definitions of ambition.

    Now, Biz Stone has sent an email out providing an update on what’s going on with Obvious. Sorry to disappoint, but there’s not really a whole lot in the way of juicy product details. They have, however signed up their first “Obvious Entrepreneur.”

    Stone says they’ve hired a few people, and are up to seven bodies now. Other than that, they’ve been fighting about calculus and sitting around a kitchen table in a San Francisco apartment “tapping away at laptops”. They’ll be moving to a “fancy” office downtown this fall, Stone says.

    He says that in addition to building meaningful products and services, Obvious partners with entrepreneurs. “While the projects we’re working on are not yet worthy of your attention, we can share that we’re building something internally and we’ve already signed up our first, ‘Obvious Entrepreneur.’ Investing is still nascent at this point,” Stone says. “Our definition of success has three ingredients—positive impact, happiness, and financial reward. We love building products that benefit society in a fun environment that we look forward to heading towards every day.”

    “When entrepreneurs move their budding team into our space, we help them finance, design, build, and market their company and product. When they are ready to move to the next step, we’re there to help them move forward,” he says. “There are only so many products we can directly build or foster, so our third effort is to invest in early to mid stage startups that share our vision. Investors are like employees you can never fire, so we are conscientious in this regard.”

    Stone does mention in the email’s conclusion that they’re looking to hire engineers and designers.

    Will Obvious be able to produce another Twitter? What do you think?

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