Things A Little Bird Told Me

by Biz Stone

  Marc, a true friend, complied instantly and without question. Soon he was wearing my black T-shirt, and I was wearing his yellow T-shirt. I scampered out of sight, then turned around from a safe distance to watch as the vice principal grabbed Marc by the shoulder, whipped him around, then apologized when he realized he had the wrong kid.

  During that confrontation, Jay slipped into the safety of the crowd, where we reconvened.

  We’d made it.

  We got right down to business. That evening, I managed to dance with all three of the girls I had crushes on but had been too intimidated to talk to the whole time I attended high school. I even got a little kiss from each one. Jay had a similar experience, and I felt vindicated. High school was ending, and for the first time in my life I didn’t know what was next. The too-blank canvas of my future would underwhelm me, but at least I was making the most of tonight. The dance had turned out to be everything we wanted. Whatever punishment we got would be worth it.

  On Monday, it was time to face the music. Jay and I were summoned to the principal’s office. He told us that we would be placed under “in-house” suspension. That meant that we would sit in separate rooms all day; we wouldn’t attend classes; and of course this would go on our “permanent record.” (Was there really such a thing? And if there was, I couldn’t help but wonder in what terms it chronicled my No-Homework Policy.) We also had to write an essay about what we had done wrong, after which we would each pay a mandatory visit to the school psychologist.

  This all sounded perfectly reasonable to me. In fact, it was a much lighter sentence than I had anticipated. I was especially pleased by the essay component. I loved writing essays. Indeed, when I sat down in the empty detention hall to write it, I realized in a flash that this essay was the perfect forum for me to explain why, in this case, our breaking the rules had been fully warranted and totally worth it. Rules are meant to serve a purpose, but the “9:00 p.m. doors closed” policy was pointless as far as Jay and I were concerned. To us it was an abuse of power. We weren’t troublemakers. Our tardiness had had no impact on anyone else. The dance was important to us, and in the face of the vice principal’s inflexibility, we had seen no choice but to defy him and risk the consequences. Now we were willingly serving our punishment. For good measure, I threw in some civil disobedience references from my political science class. I crossed my fingers that Jay was doing the same thing.

  Later that day, it came time for me to visit with the school psychologist. I knocked on her door. She told me to come in and take a seat. I sat down. There was a beat of silence. Then she launched into how convincing my essay was, and how she couldn’t help but agree with the decisions I’d made.

  When I met up with Jay at the end of the day, I was delighted to learn that he had taken the same approach in his essay. Breaking the rules wasn’t the end of the world. We had stood our ground against the administration, and we had won. No harm, no foul. This was a small disobedience but a significant moment for a teenager. I knew the difference between right and wrong. But now I saw that I could trust my own moral code. The rule makers were fallible, just like me, and I had every right to challenge them. If I was willing to face the consequences, I could play by my own rules.

  Trust your instincts, know what you want, and believe in your ability to achieve it. Rules and conventions are important for schools, businesses, and society in general, but you should never follow them blindly. And it always helps to have a like-minded partner in crime.

  Sixteen years later, I was still the same kid who didn’t think he had to listen to the vice principal. Following my instincts now didn’t just mean blowing off my homework, crashing high school dances, and setting the value of our company by making a joke while wearing a bad shirt and riding shotgun in a Porsche. It meant growing a company I could believe in. As I said, I was truly passionate about the product, but I was also passionate about who we were as a company—what our culture was and how we could sustain it as we grew. It wasn’t a matter of breaking the rules; it was about creating our own rules. I made Twitter into a company that was true to my beliefs.

  The unofficial internal motto at Google is Don’t Be Evil. The idea is that the company should do good in the world even if it means forgoing short-term gains. It’s not the worst motto—I mean, there’s always Be Evil—but there’s wiggle room in Don’t Be Evil. The motto sounds morally aboveboard. It implies, “We have the power to be evil; let’s not use it.” But aphorisms phrased in the negative are weak. Nike’s motto is Just Do It— not Don’t Just Sit There. With its motto, it appears that Google is measuring its actions on a scale of evilness rather than on a scale of goodness. To that I say, congratulations. You haven’t been evil. Now let’s see how good you can be.

  Another thing I noticed when I worked at Google was that we had a different approach to the intersection of people and technology. Google is made up of geniuses. They are awesome at developing technology. They’re making self-driving cars. Seriously, it’s a car driving around all by itself. No driver. Quite a feat, but also representative of Google’s world, where technology can solve any problem. On my breaks while working there, walking around the campus, I liked to peek into rooms. Once, I peeked into a room and saw a guy with no shoes on. He was sitting in the middle of the floor surrounded by disassembled DVRs and TVs.

  I said, “What are you doing?”

  He said, “I’m recording everything being broadcast on every channel in the world.”

  “Okay,” I said, “Keep up the good work,” and backed slowly out of the room.

  Another time, I stumbled across a vast roomful of people operating what looked like foot-pedal sewing machines. Each machine emitted a sequence of florescent flashes and whirs. The place resembled a high-tech sweatshop. I looked closer. In between the flashes of light, these “tailors” were turning the pages of books, which were being scanned by the lights. When I asked the workers what they were up to, they told me they were scanning every book ever published. Again, I backed slowly out of the room. I backed out of a lot of rooms at Google.

  Google has a strong focus on technology, and it serves them well. My experience there was that they ordered technology first and people second.

  I believe the opposite. It isn’t all about how many servers you have or how sophisticated your software is. Those things matter. But what really makes a technology meaningful—to its users and its employees—is how people come to use it to effect change in the world.

  I don’t mean to throw Google under the bus. Obviously they’re brilliant. It’s just that my priorities are flipped. People come before technology.

  As Twitter expanded rapidly, I decided that the best way to indoctrinate new employees to our culture was to give them a set of assumptions I wanted them to carry with them as they went about their work.

  We make assumptions all day long about the world we live in and the people who inhabit it. The guy who cut you off on the highway entrance ramp is an asshole. The colleague who didn’t deliver what she promised is incompetent. If I spent all week working on a problem, my proposal is better than that of the person who waltzed in late to the meeting and threw out an off-the-cuff alternative. What matters most, at any company except a nonprofit, is the bottom line.

  If we probe what’s behind our assumptions, what we find isn’t knowledge or wisdom. It’s fear. We’re afraid that other people’s ideas will make us look less than. We’re afraid that if we make a change, a product won’t come in on time. We’re afraid that the guy who cut us off is going to hit our car. We’re afraid if we don’t maximize our profit, the company will fail. Some of these fears are reasonable. Who wants to be in a car accident? But fear in the absence of knowledge breeds irrationality. Think about the old, universal belief that thunder meant the gods must be angry. This assumption could get people only so far. Maybe they’d avoid being struck by lightning. But were they about to discover how to channel electricity? Not so much.

  When I was little, I was afr
aid of the dark. I signed on to the classic childhood fear that there were monsters under my bed. For a while I had an agreement with the monsters. I totally believe in you, I told them telepathically. No need to come out and prove it to me. I’m on board. This seemed to keep them at bay, but even I could see it was only a temporary fix.

  After some months of dread, I had an idea. I decided to put an end to my suffering. My plan was simple. I would go into my room and leave the light off, thereby exposing myself to all the terrors the dark might hold. If there were monsters, this was their big chance to attack me. My thought was that if they attacked me—well, that would be pretty bad. On the other hand, I mused, if monsters attacked me, then that would mean that monsters actually existed—which would be awesome. Initially scary, sure, but then, imagine! The thrill of discovering the existence of a whole supernatural world out there was right at my fingertips. All I had to do was endure a monster attack of unpredictable proportions, and this knowledge would be mine—possibly only for a fraction of a second, before I was torn to shreds and used to make little boy stew, but still. That night, I walked into my room without flicking on the light switch. I stood in the dark, waiting. Nothing. No monsters. No attack. No world-altering discovery of inhuman life forms. And also, from then on, no fear of the dark.

  We should always seek knowledge, even in the face of fear. And so I gave the Twitter employees a set of assumptions that I hoped would replace their fears, reminding them to keep their minds open, pursue knowledge, and see the bigger picture.

  When new employees joined Twitter, Evan and I met with them. We took the time to tell the story of how the company got started, and we shared and discussed the following six assumptions.

  Assumptions for Twitter Employees

  1. We don’t always know what’s going to happen.

  2. There are more smart people out there than in here.

  3. We will win if we do the right thing for our users.

  4. The only deal worth doing is a win-win deal.

  5. Our coworkers are smart and they have good intentions.

  6. We can build a business, change the world, and have fun.

  WE DON’T ALWAYS KNOW WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN.

  If we think we know what will come next, we’ll fail. Instead, we need to leave the door open for unknown developments and surprises. Some of Twitter’s most popular features—hashtags, @ replies, retweets—were by and large created by users. We didn’t know they were going to emerge. By being open to the unknown, by not forcing our will or vision just because it was ours, by watching what people were doing and looking for patterns, we were able to build a service whose function matched the way people wanted to use it.

  The core element of this assumption is humility. Just because you work for a successful business doesn’t mean you know everything. As individuals and as companies, we see our fortunes rise and fall. Neither success nor wealth makes you omniscient. The ability to listen, watch, and draw lessons from obvious and unlikely places breeds originality and growth.

  THERE ARE MORE SMART PEOPLE OUT THERE THAN IN HERE.

  This assumption also speaks to a core humility—don’t think you’re such a genius (even if your business card claims you are). But it also considers the sheer fact that, at the time we came up with these assumptions, there were forty-five people in the offices of Twitter and six billion people outside its walls. It was an absolute truth that there were more smart people outside than inside.

  What this implied was that we shouldn’t look only internally for answers to challenges. I instructed our employees to look elsewhere. Ask people. Look around. Research. Keep a level head. Don’t think you’re so great. Don’t assume that we’re the only people who can solve our problems. Should we build a data center, or has someone already built a better one?

  There are corollaries to this belief. Your first idea isn’t always the best. Your idea isn’t always the best. Our group’s ideas aren’t always the best. It’s easy to agree with this notion in concept, but it’s much harder to swallow your pride when you have to let go of an idea you’ve championed. I wanted our company to acknowledge and appreciate those sacrifices as much as we applauded the great ideas.

  WE WILL WIN IF WE DO THE RIGHT THING FOR OUR USERS.

  I don’t love the word users, because it sounds so software-y, but the Twitter staff was pretty software-y, so I was speaking their language. I wanted them always to keep in mind what would make the service better for the folks who used it. It was the positive spin on Don’t Be Evil. Every time we made a decision about what to add, change, or take away from the product, the big, simple question was: Does it make the experience better for people?

  After I left (which I will get to later), Twitter acquired Vine, a mobile video-sharing service. I thought it was a great acquisition. If the question is: Will this make the service better for people? The answer is obviously yes—sharing videos through Twitter makes it more fun, more engaging, and easier for people to express themselves.

  Often, when product managers are hashing out whether a product should do a certain thing, if they can’t come to a decision, they make that thing a setting that users can turn on or off. But this is wishy-washy. We know—all developers know—that more than 99 percent of people just leave the settings on the default. How often do you go into your TV settings to increase the contrast? Making a feature optional is like throwing it into the junk drawer. You’re keeping it, but it’s essentially useless and lost. Instead, it’s our responsibility to decide what makes the most sense. If we’re going to build it, let’s use it.

  The place where companies most frequently lose sight of what’s best for their customers is when it comes to monetization. Should we make ads 50 percent bigger so we can make more money? It makes the page ugly and hard to read. Is that good for users? No. Should we split our company into two separate buildings because we can’t afford one building? It leads to confusion and poor decisions on the product end. Is that good for our users? No. Should we deceive the user into clicking on an ad? Obviously not. Should we trick our users into clicking on anything? Hell no! These can be tough choices, especially if you really need the money. But there’s got to be another way. Creativity is a renewable resource. Don’t sell out your product. Keep thinking. Consider whether the average person is going to benefit. Measure every decision against that requirement.

  Our failure surrounding the release of our platform for developers in 2007 is a perfect example of this. If we’d kept the user experience foremost from the start, we would have saved ourselves, users, and developers a lot of trouble.

  However, when we launched sponsored Tweets, we did it right. Our ads were monitored by an algorithm that used starring, retweets, and clickthroughs to measure how interested people were in a given ad. If an ad wasn’t getting a positive response, it could be pulled. This meant we could give our users ads they liked. Ads were good for our users, because if Twitter made money, then Twitter would continue to exist.

  THE ONLY DEAL WORTH DOING IS A WIN-WIN DEAL.

  There’s no such thing as a good deal in which one party gets the short end of the stick. Deals are like relationships. We want deals that are going to last. I’m not just talking about acquiring another company. I’m talking about partnering with another company, or divvying up tasks within your group, or getting married. Think of the toll that derivatives took on this country in the mortgage crisis. Derivatives are a zero-sum game—when one party wins, the other loses. There’s no net benefit. It’s win-lose. This is of course oversimplifying, but generally markets rely on gains and losses. However, in a business deal, if the terms aren’t mutually beneficial, a short-term win will turn into a long-term loss. You lose that company’s faith in you and its willingness to do another deal. You lose your colleagues’ willingness to stay late and help you out on a deadline. To some extent, in every deal your reputation and your business are at stake. Think of it like scuba diving. There has to be equal pressure inside and outside your
body, or your lungs and eardrums will start exploding. Full disclosure: I’ve never scuba dived—but trust me on this, imbalance is bad.

  Kevin Thau, a colleague at my current company, Jelly, used to run all things mobile for Twitter. While there, he did all the deals with the carriers. He recently got a message from someone who runs a major mobile carrier in the United Kingdom. It said, “I don’t know what Jelly is, but if you want us to pre-install it on our new phones, call me.” Nobody gets that kind of thing unless they have a history of doing fantastic deals together.

  Another example of this would come later, when I left Twitter and started Jelly. Two of the people who helped me develop the idea left their company to join me. One of them happened to be on his company’s list of engineers they couldn’t lose at any cost. When the engineer told them he was leaving, they offered him the moon regarding stock and salary. They told him he could work on any project and have any team. Then one of the most important executives from Twitter joined me. I didn’t set out to poach anyone—it happened by accident—but when this happened, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s CEO (and my friend) had a professional obligation to meet me for a drink and chew me out.

  When he was done busting my chops, I said, “Can I offer you a little advice?”

  He said, “Oh, geez. What?”

  I said, “If you have a list of people that you don’t want to lose at any cost, don’t wait until they quit to offer them more money and more stock options.” He agreed. Then we ordered another round and made up.