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SoundCloud's Collapse

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Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#41

Post by dzhiurgis »

elmar wrote: post #33
Mikushi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected if discussion had happen beforehand.

I think most of google sucesses outside search were done like that without the CEO having knowledge.

I was about to say the same, but it’s not exactly the same. You are free to build anything, but using existing stack. Not pickup new stack and rewrite something that’s not even broken.

That said, probably more often than not, there’s an actual value in it.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#42

Post by manmal »

yeukhon wrote: post #30
manmal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you have investors, they want their money to grow, and this is not possible by staying small. We have invested in a startup we work with, and given the high risk of failure, I would not be happy with a meager growth rate of I'm a big fan of bootstrapping myself, and it's the best model IFF you can get by without investors. If you, like SoundCloud, have a product that does not break-even, then you will need inves…

Staying small != don't grow business. I would never hire crazy so people in the startup can imagine spinning up new projects new microservice new crazy revolutionary database/big data/ new KV store/new cache layer out of curiosity. Till one point, when the business is so big, growing engineering team to over 100 is inevitable. But plently of really successful tech companies did not overgrow their team size for a numb…

If you don't break-even, how are you going to employ even two people without an investor? Where does the money come from?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#43

Post by sgt101 »

reustle wrote: post #26
Mikushi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happens everywhere. In corp I've seen engineers go behind their manager's back to write something in their favourite language knowing it would've been rejected if discussion had happen beforehand.

That sounds like a reasonable reason to fire someone

It depends on the outcome of the discussion - which depends on your capability as a manager. Sometimes this behavior is because the manager is an arse who can't run a reasonable process of team decision making, and the covert development is a reasonable appeal from someone who is disenfranchised in the decision making process and is making a very valuable point. The employee so doing is highly engaged and valuable and firing them is an act of self harm. In other cases this is an act of aggression by an unreasonable and arrogant individual who doesn't care about the team or the company and is simply doing what they want. You have to judge - call it wrong (either way) and you have a problem that will cost you dearly.

But be aware there are two sides to this coin and you might be the one that needs to learn. My questions are always : is this part of a pattern (conflict, poor performance, bad behaviour?); why don't I want to sit with this person for 2 hours with a coffee and understand whats going on?; why didn't the coffee heart to heart work out?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#44

Post by elmar »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #41
elmar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of google sucesses outside search were done like that without the CEO having knowledge.

I was about to say the same, but it’s not exactly the same. You are free to build anything, but using existing stack. Not pickup new stack and rewrite something that’s not even broken. That said, probably more often than not, there’s an actual value in it.

I think reality is more serendipitous, ny view is that if you have hardworking creativy people working on side projects sometimes magic happens.

For example: Android was a completely diferent tech stack from google.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#45

Post by sgt101 »

WJW wrote: post #40
reustle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a reasonable reason to fire someone

That depends on how well it works. If it blows up and costs the company a million bucks you get fired, if it works extremely well then you are a maverick genius. "Ask for forgiveness, not permission", etc. Not saying that the extent to which it was apparently done at soundcloud should be acceptable though.

The extent indicates anarchy which indicates poor leadership. The issue must have been with the management culture - flat hierarchies don't mean free for alls!

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#46

Post by yeukhon »

manmal wrote: post #42
yeukhon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Staying small != don't grow business. I would never hire crazy so people in the startup can imagine spinning up new projects new microservice new crazy revolutionary database/big data/ new KV store/new cache layer out of curiosity. Till one point, when the business is so big, growing engineering team to over 100 is inevitable. But plently of really successful tech companies did not overgrow their team size for a numb…

If you don't break-even, how are you going to employ even two people without an investor? Where does the money come from?

In case it was not clear, I was talking from getting VC money, meaning you already have some cash to run for some months.

Why would a VC want to see their money burn to the ground if all they see is hiring 200 people when you really just 100 people?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#47

Post by sgentle »

Never do a music industry startup unless you have a billion dollars, can raise a billion dollars, or plan to be acquired by a company with a billion dollars to spare. That's the table stakes for going toe-to-toe with the big three.

They'll bleed you to death with licensing fees, deputise you into their copyright enforcement police, upload their songs to your platform on one hand while suing you with the other, and all the while cry about how extracting monopoly profits is so much harder than in the old days.

Just go disrupt something safer, like organised crime or the international diamond trade. At least with those the law probably won't change out from under you.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#48

Post by jopie »

iagooar wrote: post #14

This shows us, that company valuations are ridiculous and actually mean nothing. Is SoundCloud worth a billion dollars? Well, it might be on paper or in the imaginations of the founders, but what does it really mean? To me, it's worth nothing. The real problem is: these companies start to operate from the perspective of "having" those millions of dollars. This is why they hire too many people for too much money. They…

How does this compare to Spotify which has 3000+ employees, debt financing of over a billion dollars, and an insane valuation? What does the future hold for that company whether it IPOs or not?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#50

Post by snom380 »

thinbeige wrote: post #4

I read this article few hours earlier when crawling through the new section. It's a surprisingly interesting piece from Buzzfeed but there's a lot of bashing of the CEO, the CTO and one recently hired senior for label relations (who seem to be really odd). This is typical: SoundCloud was an iconic company, its founders worshiped and idealized. Once money runs out, people but especially former employees start to backs…

I didn't downvote, but:

- Presumably the people inside the company has tried for years to pressure for a change. When that doesn't work, and especially once a big layoff happens, it's understandable that employees vent their frustration in public. And that might be what it takes for outside people (investors etc) to make necessary changes at the top. It's not about backstabbing.

If these employees didn't care at all about the fate of the company, they would just take the severance package and move to other jobs without saying much. The complaining you hear is most likely from people that _care_ about SoundCloud.

- You're saying that the business model is broken, because you "can't do business with music labels". YouTube is evidence that it _is_ possible, it's just tremendously difficult.

You need advanced algorithms to detect copyright ownership, you need a system to do revenue sharing, you need people to handle complain cases etc etc.

The reason why they failed has to do with poor strategy and execution, and less to do with the business model.

(This reminds be of all the people that said Apple could never get into the cell phone business because dealing with the operators would be impossible. Or that web search was a broken business model back then Yahoo-like portals were all the rage and web search truly sucked.)

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