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A co-founder of Twitter has joined the board of Chroma, a startup developing a brand-new genre of audiovisual entertainment specifically for mobile devices. Biz Stone, who co-founded Twitter and Medium and was previously an angel investor in Chroma alongside the founders of Pinterest, joined the company’s board of directors today, according to the announcement. He will bring his experience in fields like design, product development, filmmaking, and brand scaling to the board.
Before helping co-found Twitter in 2006, Stone, an early Google employee, worked on the Blogger team following its acquisition.
He stayed with Twitter for a while as the company expanded and was embraced by millions of users all over the world. As Twitter reached the milestone of 100 million active users in 2011, the entrepreneur left to work on new projects with Obvious Corporation, a startup incubator and investment vehicle that had previously employed Jason Goldman, a former Twitter executive, and fellow Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. The company is best known for helping to launch the blogging platform Medium. But in 2013, Stone and the others decided to concentrate on their own startups. That prompted Stone to develop Jelly, a search engine and Q&A app that was later purchased by Pinterest.
Stone made a public announcement in 2017 that he would be returning to Twitter to lead the company’s strategic vision, brand, and culture, a position he held until 2021.
Additionally, Stone has provided financial support to numerous businesses over the years, including Square, Pinterest, Slack, Nest, Intercom, and Beyond Meat, where he currently serves as chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee.
Stone claimed that the CEO and founder of the Swedish audiovisual company Chroma, Andreas Pihlström, who he met through an introduction from Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, was what initially drew him to the company. At Pinterest, Beats Music, and VSCO, Pihlström had previously held positions as creative director, design advisor, designer, and prototyper.
After Stone’s angel investment, the two got along well and started having monthly calls.
Finding people I enjoy hanging out with, working with, and exchanging ideas with is really important, according to Stone.
The Chroma team considered a variety of concepts before settling on audiovisual technologies and how they relate to music and sound.
According to Stone, the goal was to alter the nature of music and sound and transform it into a more engaging and immersive experience. In actuality, users can explore and interact with a sound-driven digital space made of touchable, dynamic visuals for a variety of purposes.
The first product to test this idea was released last year as a result of a collaboration with the musician Arca to develop the iOS app Lux Aeterna. According to the developer, the app provides an audiovisual experience for listening to music by the Venezuelan producer, DJ, singer, and songwriter in a “meditative digital space.” Flying through a virtual world, users can interact with her music and sounds along the way.
However, this isn’t the technology’s full potential; there are a variety of use cases that Chroma is currently investigating that show different ways users could interact with audio and sound, whether for play, meditation, relaxation, music composition, and more. Stone thinks the technology could get even more interesting when and if Apple releases its own VR/AR headset, even though the company intends to first release a product on mobile devices.
“I believe it will adapt to the metaverse technology really well once that is more widely used. However, I can view it on my Apple TV as well. I would adore for it to be there. Great sound and visuals can be found everywhere, he continued. “Mobile [first] is just what everyone has,” the author explains.
Chroma, a Stockholm-based company founded in 2021, last year secured $5.4 million (5.1 million euros) in seed funding from venture capital firms Singular and Adjacent, Berlin’s SpotiAngels, as well as additional individual investors, including Stone and Pinterest co-founders Evan Sharp and Ben Silbermann. Pre-seed funding for Chroma totaled 1.6 million euros earlier.
In addition to the actual board meetings, Stone anticipates having several meetings a month with the startup. He claims that when making angel investments, he typically views himself as an advisor. This means that, while he welcomes phone calls from founders, he won’t contact the business unless they specifically request it. Chroma acted.
“These guys [at Chroma] are bursting with unique ideas. Because of the small team and the need to accomplish something without doing a lot of things, the challenge has been to focus, Stone said. Right now, the emphasis is on giving sound a sensory experience.
The bigger picture is interactive, like the concept of “sound play.” The nature music is being altered to become richer in a 3D way, but it is also visual and you can alter it, Stone hinted.
The businessman claims he has been “noodling” with a small group of people on something else for himself in addition to the board position. He’s keeping the specifics under wraps because the project is currently self-funded and hasn’t been formally launched. However, Stone claims that he is particularly interested in the rapidly developing AI space and in using AI as a tool.
He claims that he hasn’t shown much interest in some of the other more recent technological trends, such as web3 or certain facets of the metaverse.
“I don’t like the [web3] culture. I feel like it’s off in some way,” Stone said. Regarding the metaverse, “I don’t want a future where kids are up in the room all day wearing scuba gear. That is not what I want to happen. I don’t think that’s good,” he continues.
“Biz brings to our team a wealth of expertise in technology and design. Together, we’ll create the sound of the future by fusing innovation and excellence in the digital realm to change the way that music is perceived, according to Pihlström.
