StarZero All shows Try the podcast clipper →

Tim Brown

Co-Founder & Chief Innovation Officer, Allbirds · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveathleteoperatorLinkedIn ↗allbirds.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Tim Brown is a former New Zealand international soccer player who co-founded sustainable footwear brand Allbirds with Joey Zwillinger in 2015. He developed the brand's signature merino wool "Wool Runner" sneaker and served as co-CEO through its 2021 NASDAQ IPO before transitioning to Chief Innovation Officer in 2023.

13statements → 4claims → 1claims resolved → 4/5average certainty → 1.54/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 6said about them ↓

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 1 opinion · 7 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Tim argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Brown: Allbirds precursor Kickstarter raised $120,000 in four days before being halted
“Ah, and then it went on the Kickstarter's homepage, and on their mailing list, where they send out sort of interesting projects, and, ah, it went to a hundred and, you know, 20,000 dollars in four days, and I had to stop it.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 29:20 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Tim Brown on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Tim Brown said on How I Built This that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Brown: Consumers do not buy sustainable products; they buy great products
“People don't buy sustainable products. They buy great products.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 47:08 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: Design is a problem-solving process, not just an output
“The design was actually not about the output. It was a process of problem solving, and if you applied it, you could apply it to all sorts of different things.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 6:55 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Opinion
Brown: Late 2000s footwear was overly complicated and dominated by excessive logos
“It was a design observation about a category that I thought was super Complicated and overcrowded and over-logoed.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 17:39 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: A minimalist design alone cannot sufficiently differentiate a physical product
“I realized too, in the process of selling the shoes, the design story was one part of it. I think it resonated with people, but it needed something more, both for me and for the product. The product was okay, but it wasn't differentiated.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 20:34 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: Consumers buy shoes for comfort, but equate comfort with ugly design
“Comfort is the number one reason why people buy shoes, and comfort often is equated with ugliness, so if your dad tells you he's got a comfortable pair of shoes, you assume they don't look very good”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 47:44 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: Founding a business brings more sustained pressure than professional sports
“It's like when you start something, this thing embeds six inches in your brain, and you don't shut it off, and it's a voice that's there, 24 seven all the time, and you're constantly thinking about it, and I, you know, I retired from sport, and I, That, that h…”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 1:01:07 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: Founders greatly underestimate the complexity of manufacturing shoes
“And I had greatly Underestimated, as I'm sure Joey would attest, how complicated it is, actually, to make a shoe.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 18:08 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Disclosure
Brown secured a New Zealand government grant to engineer woolen shoe textiles
“With the help of you know, some friends at the time put together a grant on a whim to develop a woolen textile for making the upper of a shoe out of.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 21:11 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Assertion Supported
Brown: Allbirds precursor Kickstarter raised $120,000 in four days before being halted
“Ah, and then it went on the Kickstarter's homepage, and on their mailing list, where they send out sort of interesting projects, and, ah, it went to a hundred and, you know, 20,000 dollars in four days, and I had to stop it.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 29:20 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Factory erroneously produced early Kickstarter shoes in identical men's and women's sizes
“The factory's made the men's and women's shoes exactly the same size.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 31:44 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Portuguese supplier went bankrupt shortly after delivering the initial Kickstarter order
“The factory in Portugal decided to go bankrupt right at the end of this shortly after we just delivered it.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 32:52 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Insight
Brown: Americans view wool as scratchy, so marketing must emphasize merino
“Well, first of all, I realized that wool to Americans meant hot and scratchy. So all of a sudden you actually had to talk about merino. It's a different shape. And it's a finer material and it's softer and then you also had to talk about not just the material,…”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 26:36 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brown earned more playing pro soccer than his peers did in consulting
“I was being paid a good living, better than my friends that had gone to university and were getting consulting jobs, and it became a job for the first time.”
Tim Brown Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 15:08 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger

The other half of the tape: Tim Brown's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 4 episodes on How I Built This. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Guy Raz 4

Statements about Tim Brown, by other people (2)

Insight
Zwillinger: Better to co-own a big business than solo-own a small one
“Doing it alone is really lonely, and I'd always been of the opinion that if I was gonna do a business, I wanted to do it with someone, cause I knew my shortcomings were substantial, and that I would much rather have a piece of something big than a lot of somet…”
Joey Zwillinger Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 43:07 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger
Assertion Supported
Allbirds co-founders met because their wives were Dartmouth college roommates
“Back in maybe, 2000, early, early part of that decade Lindsey and Liz, my wife, were roommates and doormates in college at Dartmouth.”
Joey Zwillinger Jun 10, 2019 ▶ 23:26 Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00112220192020episodesmentions
01220192020episodes it came up in
000.511220192020episodesmentions per episode
2020 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Allbirds: Tim Brown & Joey Zwillinger Jun 10, 2019 24m
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 800 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.

Try the podcast clipper Learn more