Chris Barton

Chris Barton is the co-founder and inventor of Shazam, the revolutionary music identification app that has been used billions of times worldwide. He created Shazam in 2000, three years before iTunes, seven years before the iPhone, and eight years before the App Store, at a time when everyone said the technology was impossible.

Building the Impossible Before the World Was Ready

Barton’s story is one of extraordinary persistence and creative problem-solving. He conceived and built a technology to identify music through a phone at a time when smartphones did not exist and mobile internet was barely functional. The journey from idea to global phenomenon required years of technical innovation, fundraising, and the refusal to accept that it could not be done. Today Shazam has been acquired by Apple and is one of the most recognized apps in the world.

Innovation Lessons from the Inventor of Shazam

Barton’s presentations inspire audiences with the real story behind one of the most innovative technologies of the digital age. His keynotes deliver compelling insights on turning seemingly impossible ideas into reality, persistence and creative problem-solving in the face of overwhelming doubt, entrepreneurship and building technology ahead of the market, and the innovation mindset that produced one of the most widely used apps in history.

What does Chris Barton speak about?
Chris Barton speaks on entrepreneurship, disruptive innovation, and the persistence required to build a category-defining product from a contrarian idea. His keynotes show audiences what the earliest stages of a billion-dollar company actually look like — and what it takes to keep going when no one believes in you.

What is Chris Barton’s background?
Barton founded Shazam — the music recognition app he invented and scaled to hundreds of millions of users before Apple acquired it for approximately $400 million. He previously worked at Google and holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Cambridge.

Who books Chris Barton to speak?
Meeting planners book Chris Barton for technology conferences, innovation summits, and leadership events where the audience includes entrepreneurs, product teams, or executives driving digital transformation.

Disrupt Your Thinking. Defy Barriers. Inspire Delight.

From the moment Chris Barton dreamt up Shazam, he was told identifying songs out of thin air was impossible. His path from a dream to a $400 million acquisition by Apple is a story out of a Hollywood movie. Meanwhile, Shazam has racked up over two billion downloads! Chris’s story and insights give people the inspiration and tools to accomplish big things within their own organizations. Chris customizes the emphasis of this presentation for each individual audience. He introduces lessons learned from founding Shazam, as well as his pioneering involvement with Android at Google and mobile partnerships at Dropbox. Concepts like “creative persistence” and his Start from Zero methodology are new ways of thinking and overcoming barriers. Startups use these concepts to tackle insurmountable obstacles, and you should too. Make big things happen and create Shazam-like magic in defiance of all odds.

The format can be a presentation or moderated conversation. Chris can tailor an inspiring message on creativity, innovation, leadership, resilience, collaboration, and more. Audiences learn how to make big things happen by:

• Questioning the familiar to distill to the basic truths
•  Overcoming barriers with creative persistence
• Remaining focused on core insights despite resistance
• Making things simple and friction-free
• Replacing “uninspiring” with “delightful” by connecting to emotions