Chris Barton
Chris Barton – An Audacious Idea Ahead of Its Time
Chris Barton
Keynote Speaker
Founder and Creator of Shazam, Entrepreneur, Inventor, and Tech Investor
Believe in the impossible with inventor Chris Barton. Best known as the creator of Shazam, the app that changed the way the world discovers music, Chris also played key roles in the early days of Google and Dropbox. His positive energy, captivating story of his journey and innovative Start From Zero thinking, inspires audiences to create magic in defiance of the obstacles.
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Chris Barton's speaking fee: $40K - $70K
Chris Barton is the renowned tech pioneer who invented the Shazam music app. His creation, the first mass-consumer AI product in history, changed the way the world discovers music and is pure and absolute magic. Chris has a history of delighting people by using technology to make seemingly impossible ideas come to life. Shazam is just one of them. In addition to creating Shazam, Chris holds twelve patents and played key roles in the early days of Google and Dropbox. Chris’s newest venture, Guard, aims to use AI to detect drowning in swimming pools – a never-before accomplished effort. In his speeches, Chris’s story and storytelling completely captivate audiences. He inspires people to make big things happen in their organizations – to create magic in defiance of the obstacles.
Chris grew up with a French mother and British father – both of whom were university professors. Academics were a struggle for him, and Chris would come to realize he had undiagnosed dyslexia. Chris flipped this challenge on its head and learned to embrace what he now calls his superpower. Chris believes that dyslexia has allowed him to overcome barriers to achieve his many accomplishments.
When Chris had the idea to identify music using a mobile phone, no technology existed to achieve his goal. He was told by Professors at MIT and Stanford that the necessary pattern recognition algorithm was impossible. Even after inventing a new technology that didn’t yet exist, he had to build a search engine supercomputer from scratch, create the world’s largest music database, and create a user experience on very basic mobile phones. Did Chris ever think the experts were right? “No way,” he says.
When Chris came up with the idea for Shazam in 2000, it was three years before iTunes and eight years before the App Store. Shazam launched as a phone number that you dialed, and the service struggled, teetering near bankruptcy for six years until the App Store launched in 2008, allowing Shazam to unleash its full potential on the world.
In 2018, Shazam was acquired by Apple for a reported $400 million, making it Apple’s 6th largest acquisition of all-time. Shazam has been downloaded over 2 billion times and is used each month by over 300 million people, making it one of the world’s most popular apps. It has become an integral part of our everyday lives, with its ability to instantly identify songs and provide a range of music features such as lyrics. Shazam has become a verb, and it has changed the way the world discovers music.
Chris has also played a key role in tech history as a founding member of Google’s Android Partnerships team where he created Android’s mobile operator partnership framework. He also spent four years at Dropbox where he led carrier partnerships and was one of the first 100 people at the company.
Holding 12 patents, including one found within the Google search algorithm, Chris has made significant contributions to the tech industry. He also invests in a wide range of start-ups, including artificial intelligence for heart health and inflammatory disease therapeutics.
Today, Chris spends much of his time building his third startup company, Guard, an artificial intelligence system that detects drowning in swimming pools.
Chris has spoken at events all over the world, sharing lessons learned from his experience creating a new technology by overcoming what were thought to be impossible obstacles. He inspires audiences with firsthand stories that highlight key take-aways across technology innovation, persistence, removing friction, and entrepreneurship. Chris gives audiences a new framework for making big things happen and inspires them to take action.
Prior to his technology career, Chris was a strategy consultant and earned two master’s degrees from UC Berkeley and Cambridge University.
When he isn’t working or speaking, you can find Chris enjoying the outdoors and spending time with his son, Jude.
“On the other side of the wall of assumptions lies the fountain of possibilities.”
Chris Barton
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Chris Barton – An Audacious Idea Ahead of Its Time
Chris Barton’s Speech Topics
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Bring Impossible Ideas to Life
Technology & A.I. are dramatically changing what’s possible in our world. Our challenge as we create new things is to dislodge from the comfort of what we already know. Chris Barton created Shazam after being told by every “expert” that his outlandish idea was impossible. It was an idea far ahead of its time — eight years before iPhone apps even existed. In this presentation, Barton helps audiences imagine and then create new visions for the future. He inspires with jaw-dropping stories about creating Shazam and shows how innovation comes from not just an idea, but from a series of insights to overcome obstacles along the way.
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Overcome Obstacles with Imagination
A great idea gets you nowhere without tenacity. True disruption requires both persistence and creative solutions. In creating Shazam, Chris Barton faced obstacles, many thought were insurmountable. Most would have given up, but he refused. Instead, Barton challenged every assumption about the obstacles he faced. He shares stories and actionable lessons that inspire audiences to pursue their dreams. He urges audiences to question the status quo and to sweat the details on the path to redefining the future.
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Build the Vision You See (But Others Don’t)
Entrepreneurs have passion, ideas, and desire but can get stuck on the difficult journey to achieving their dreams. They want to bring something truly new to the world, but need to learn how to overcome big obstacles, choose their priorities, and convince others of their vision. Chris Barton inspires and teaches entrepreneurs using the story of Shazam’s creation, including the scrappy and creative hacks that transformed an idea into a product with two billion customers.
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Eliminate Effort to Unlock Explosive Growth
We all know simple is great, so why don’t all organizations create amazing things just like Apple? The reality is that friction permeates almost everything we do. This “extra effort” frustrates our customers, partners, and colleagues. In creating Shazam, Chris moved mountains to make one thing very easy – identifying any song. Shazam changed the way the world discovers music. Chris Barton combines stories from creating Shazam with his twelve years at Android (Google) and Dropbox to provide concrete examples of how we can all push boundaries to eliminate friction.
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