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Tag: Obvious

  • Twitter Co-Founder Evan Williams Launches Obvious Ventures

    Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger, is back with his third version of Obvious, the previous versions of which spawned Twitter, Medium, and Twitter co-founder Biz Stone’s Jelly and Super.

    This one is called Obvious Ventures, and running the show with Williams are investors James Joaquin and Vishal Vasishth. The firm is what it sounds like – a venture capital fund, but it focuses on what they refer to as “wold positive” startups. A message on the Obvious Ventures website says:

    We’re entrepreneurs. We’ve helped a lot of companies launch, grow, and generate great financial returns. A few of these companies also deliver positive social and environmental benefits with every dollar of revenue they earn. We want to fund and build more of those. That’s what we call #worldpositive venture capital.

    Why should these companies work with us? We’re experienced investors, with several IPOs under our collective belt. But we’re product designers and company builders first, and we are on a mission to help fuel startups that combine profit and purpose. Startups that create new solutions to big world problems in a profitable and scalable way.

    Obivous Ventures has invested in eleven companies so far, but has only revealed nine of them. These are: Olly, which makes nutritional supplements; Beyond Meat, which makes meatless protein foods; Breezeworks, a business operations app; Flux, which makes architectural design tools; Loup, a ride service; Magic Leap, a screen interface developer; Miyoko’s Kitchen, which makes plant-based cheeses; Workpop, a work marketplace; and ZenPayroll, which makes payroll software.

    Image via Obvious Ventures

  • Biz Stone Working on Mobile Startup Called ‘Jelly’ [REPORT]

    Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is working on another startup.

    According to Kara Swisher at All Things D, Stone’s new project is called “Jelly,” which her source called a “native mobile” effort.

    That’s pretty vague, and the only other tidbit provided was that the product will likely “be aimed and smartphones and tablets.”

    Apparently, Stone has already hired four or five employees to work on Jelly.

    In 2011, after leaving his day-to-day role at Twitter, Stone put his attention into Obvious, which says that they “do various things.”

    Obvious, which Stone launched alongside other Twitterites Evan Williams and Jason Goldman, is involved in blog platform Medium, as well as Lift, Branch, and a handful of other products.

    Biz Stone was recently granted inventor status when his name, along with Jack Dorsey’s, appeared on an approved patent for Twitter. Yes, the entire concept of Twitter wasn’t patented until earlier this month.

  • Obvious (Twitter Co-founders) Announce Lift

    Obvious, the company that Evan Williams and Biz Stone left Twitter to work on has announced its first official partnership called Lift.

    Earlier this month, Stone posted an update on what the company is doing at the company, which originally incubated Twitter itself. At the time, he said they had signed up their first “Obvious Entrepreneur”.

    Now, Stone writes,”It’s important never to delude ourselves into thinking that technology changes the world. People are responsible for change—technology just helps out. At Obvious, our goal is to foster systems that help people work together to improve the world. Our approach is threefold: Build, partner, and invest. We’ve started working on some ideas ourselves, we’re researching how best to create an investment vehicle, and today we’re thrilled to announce our first official partnership.”

    “Tony Stubblebine and Jon Crosby have created an interesting new application for unlocking human potential through positive reinforcement,” he adds. “We love this software for what it does, and because we’ve tried it and it works. Our plan is to build something extraordinary together. The Obvious Corporation will assist the talented Lift team with strategy, design, funding, recruiting—in general, we’ll be helpful wherever possible. In exchange, Obvious will own some equity in Lift.”

    Not much has been revealed about Lift so far, but Stone says that will change soon.

    @biz
    Biz Stone    Lift.do is founded by @tonystubblebine and @jcrosby—Obvious is helping out. Not much details yet but more to come, we promise! 11 hours ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    Unfortunately, the Lift site at lift.do isn’t much help in the details department either. It just indicates that it’s invite-only right now and you can give them your email to get updates as they become available.

    Once you sign up, you’ll be send an email from Stubblebine, which says:

    Hey there, thanks for signing up for the Lift Beta!

    We’re not ready to let people in yet, but when we are, we’ll make sure you get an early invite.

    What is Lift? We’re interested in ways new technology can help unlock human potential, especially through the use of positive reinforcement. That’s all we can tell you right now.

    So, since we don’t have a ton to tell you about Lift the product, here’s a little bit about Lift the company:

    We’re a small San Francisco-based startup. There are three of us full time, Tony Stubblebine (me), Jon Crosby, and Connor Montgomery. We also have some part-time support from the folks at Obvious. If you want to get in touch with us, I’m probably the best person to reach: tony@lift.do

    Look forward to connecting with you again soon!

    Tony Stubblebine
    CEO/Co-founder
    http://lift.do

    Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb was able to dig up a little bit about Lift, in that it was previously called Mibbles, and at that point, he says, “users joined multiple groups with names like Happydog (as in “I want to keep my dog happy”), Love or Home. Then they gave themselves Awards when they achieved accomplishment leading towards the goals they were grouped around.”

    “It sounds like Twitter in its simplicity and from what I’ve seen it looks a lot like Twitter too – but with more structure,” he writes.

    @tonystubblebine
    Tony Stubblebine    @marshallk just curious, what genre of source did you use for that Lift post? Made me wonder if I had an old instance of Mibbles running. 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @tonystubblebine
    Tony Stubblebine    @mdbraber We really tried to stay away from calling ourselves a health app. I don’t think we’re competitive. 3 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @jcrosby
    Jon Crosby    Thanks re: Lift, everyone. Happy to be working with this crew on a meaningful product. 10 hours ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    Whatever Lift turns out to be in its usable form, there’s no indication of when it will actually be available.

  • 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 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?

  • Twitter Co-founders Reunite to Make Obvious Dreams Come True

    A few months ago, Twitter co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams announced that he was leaving Twitter. This came just after it was revealed that co-founder Jack Dorsey was returning to lead product, and six months after Williams handed the CEO reins to Dick Costolo.

    Now, Biz Stone, the other co-founder, has announced that he too is stepping back (not completely away) from Twitter.

    Stone and Williams are trying their hands at a new (or resurrected rather) startup called Obvious, along with former Twitter VP of Product, Jason Goldman. Here’s what it says on the Obvious site:

    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.

    @biz
    Biz Stone    Our new startup, in case you haven’t guessed, is http://t.co/WcL1zUO #excited 17 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    @ev
    Evan Williams    Just (re)launched a new web site. It doesn’t do much yet: http://t.co/i75z1II 17 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    @goldman
    Jason Goldman    Launching @obviouscorp with @ev and @biz. I was eating chicken wings when @ev pushed our new site at obvious.com. Good omen. 17 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    Stone, Williams, and Goldman all used to work on Google’s Blogger team. Then, Williams left, and the other followed him into Obvious, and eventually Twitter was born. Now, it seems that they’re going back to where they can make new things, rather than work on their creation that proved to be a succes, which is now largely in the hands of its other co-founder Jack Dorsey and CEO Dick Costolo (also formerly of Google).

    On his personal blog, Stone writes:

    My work on Twitter has spanned more than half a decade and I will continue to work with the company for many years to come. During this time—especially lately, it has come to my attention that the Twitter crew and its leadership team have grown incredibly productive. I’ve decided that 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.

    Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been very supportive in thinking this through with me so I can focus on new endeavors while remaining a strategic asset to Twitter. My plan is to take a bit more time to focus on helping schools, nonprofits, and company advisory boards as well as The Biz and Livia Stone Foundation. I’ll still commit part of my time to hands on help with Twitter wherever and whenever I can be of assistance.

    As for the bulk of my time day-to-day, I’m thrilled to announce that Evan Williams, Jason Goldman and myself will be relaunching The Obvious Corporation as co-founders. Our plan is to develop new projects and work on solving big problems aligned along a simple mission statement: The Obvious Corporation develops systems that help people work together to improve the world. This is a dream come true!

    When Williams stepped down from Twitter, he also noted that he would remain on the Board of Directors, so it appears both he and Stone will still remain close to Twitter, just not as hands on as they once were.