SoundCloud's Collapse • Hacker News Board

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#181

Post by tjr225 » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #108

Myrmornis wrote: post #25

This seemed to me a very sad story. The time during which SoundCloud as it was known and loved really existed was the era before they were really worrying about their "business model". As soon as they contemplated how they could exist long term, they started copying mainstream music services in a way that no-one loved. The real question is: given how much amazing free content there is, how are we going to nurture val…

The problem with the music business is the problem with the art business in general. There are way too many people producing art and music these days and not enough consumers. The price of music is negative in that people have so much music available that you'd have to pay people something or massively promote to get people to spend time listening to a new band. Companies like distrokid seem to do ok because they cha…

May be a problem with the business but I think it is great for art and music, not that you disagreed with that sentiment.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#182

Post by bogomipz » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:48 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #86

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…

When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth startup. We don't make millions, we don't "disrupt" the industry, yet we solve our customers' problems and delight them. We won't ever run out of money, as we carefully check each and every expenditure, and have growing savings in the bank. When I read stories like these, I actually feel good about my bootstrapped, down-to-earth…

>"Then it's not a startup. A startup is designed to grow quickly. Everything we associate with startups stems from the fact that the successful ones do make millions within a decade. For it to be a startup, you have to have a large target market."

I am sorry but where is that criteria codified? This is nonsense. Here is an article with 14 founders being asked what defines a "startup" and only one of them mentions market size:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2013/12/16/what...

>"Everything we associate with startups stems from the fact that the successful ones do make millions within a decade."

No, that's the sensational media coverage that associates that. Further what is meant by "make millions"? Millions in revenue when you are losing millions is not really an indicator of success is it? Also Uber, Spotify at 8 and 11 years old respectively both have millions in revenue but lose money. Are they "successful"?

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#183

Post by bogomipz » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:54 PM UTC

jameskegel wrote: post #168

bogomipz wrote: post #166

Not showing up to company retreats, circulating pictures of yourself taking private jets and hanging out with celebrities in Ibiza, doing a Ferragamo ad - CEO Alexander Ljung sounds like Erlich Bachman. It's easy to write those things off as petty gripes but I think they are important in that illustrate a CEO who doesn't understand that those are bad "optics" for employees who are seeing layoffs and lack of funds ava…

We aren't doing "optics" anymore; that was more of a mid-election phenomenon. CEOs are largely just figureheads these days- one could argue that in this music industry it is important to have somewhat of a splashy rockstar image to exude legitimacy.

Except that this usage of the word "optics" in popular lexicon predates the U.S. election by at least 4 years. See this "word detective" entry from 2012:

http://www.word-detective.com/2012/01/optics/

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#184

Post by keypusher » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:57 PM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #141

xfer wrote: post #10

> According to one former SoundCloud Berlin employee, a lack of direction from Wahlforss, who served as chief technology officer, made things worse, with some engineers going rogue and rebuilding their colleagues’ work in their preferred programming language. Does this happen at other startups?

I've literally experienced this exact gut reaction two times in the last couple of months at two different companies. Code that is working fine, might need a bug fix here and there, is deemed worthless and should be rewritten. These we're tiny dev team: 3, 4 people max, so it happens everywhere I guess.

It does not happen everywhere. It happens in companies lacking sufficient years of experience building software, without good management. It's so common as to be almost universal in engineers with less than 5 years of experience to encounter some important piece of software that they think is ugly and poorly written and embark on a massive rewrite that they think will fix all the problems.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#185

Post by erikb » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:58 PM UTC

thinbeige wrote: post #31

erikb wrote: post #12

If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: There is some actual content there. One just needs to get through the first third which basically just repeats the headline. TL;DR (without my opinion added): Top Management started too late to think about making actual money. They also hired an asshole for their US offices. When they got an opportunity to be bought by Twitter they asked for way too much money. An…

> If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: The writing style is just fine, it's surprisingly high quality considering this is coming from Buzzfeed (even if it's the new serious branch).

Don't tell anybody but this was exactly my thinking. "Oh, Buzzfeed no wonder. Well, at least they really try to become serious."

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#186

Post by jameskegel » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 2:59 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #183

jameskegel wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren't doing "optics" anymore; that was more of a mid-election phenomenon. CEOs are largely just figureheads these days- one could argue that in this music industry it is important to have somewhat of a splashy rockstar image to exude legitimacy.

Except that this usage of the word "optics" in popular lexicon predates the U.S. election by at least 4 years. See this "word detective" entry from 2012: http://www.word-detective.com/2012/01/optics/

It does not seem prudent to debate 2017 popular social vernacular with a publication from 2012. (Although your article goes on to support my argument of Optics being a term reserved for political discussion) Optics is a term largely reserved for the stage of political theatre, that is not my assertion, that is the zeitgeist of popular opinion.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#187

Post by keypusher » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

tjr225 wrote: post #177

whofailed wrote: post #67

Contrarian here: Soundcloud is an incredibly valuable property. They have obviously had a few managerial cock-ups, but in reality they have massive user buyin, huge network effect, and anyone who can get some equity in them during this current time of massive negative sentiment is going to do VERY WELL. I wish I had a way to buy in at this point.

SoundCloud is still the only place, as far as I know of, where underground and loft electronic music is shared and recognized. It's a pretty big scene and I genuinely don't understand all of the huge negative words surrounding SoundCloud right now, but I guess as someone who uses it every day I don't really pay attention to their business decisions.

MixCloud seems to be doing pretty well on the electronic music front. I don't know exactly what qualifies as underground anymore, but there are tons of great electronic mixes on there and a pretty active community.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#188

Post by erikb » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 3:00 PM UTC

mailshanx wrote: post #56

erikb wrote: post #12

If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: There is some actual content there. One just needs to get through the first third which basically just repeats the headline. TL;DR (without my opinion added): Top Management started too late to think about making actual money. They also hired an asshole for their US offices. When they got an opportunity to be bought by Twitter they asked for way too much money. An…

Maybe he already cashed out? We increasingly hear of founders taking money off the table by selling a part of their share when it comes time to raise a series-B or later round. SoundCloud was likely well past the series-B stage, and i wouldn't be surprised if the founder already has a few million in the bank.

Yes he already cashed out, but apparently too early. For a normal life with a house and a little travel here and there his money is enough, but for this from-burning-man-to-private-jet lifestyle he will be broke in 5 years. A Twitter buyout would have made his lifestyle probably viable though.

Now it will produce shaming news for 1-2 years before someone buys it for a few million, drops 80% of the staff and then turns it into a low-level cash cow to fund his own private jet.

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#189

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 3:01 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #178

elmar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you could argue that WhatsUp is even more impressive because it can be considered much latter stage and aquisition value also reflects that being 19x more than Instagram.

Where do I sign up for WhatsUp ? Sounds cools.

[deleted]

Re: SoundCloud's Collapse

#190

Post by erikb » Sun, Jul 30, 2017, 3:02 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #60

erikb wrote: post #12

If anybody else is also put off by the writing style: There is some actual content there. One just needs to get through the first third which basically just repeats the headline. TL;DR (without my opinion added): Top Management started too late to think about making actual money. They also hired an asshole for their US offices. When they got an opportunity to be bought by Twitter they asked for way too much money. An…

Actually, I could see an argument that SoundCloud has to have a presence at burning man... It's the ground-zero meat space for their content corpus.

I really like this argument. And if judge the CEOs personality correctly he will have told 500 people that he's the boss of SoundCloud BEFORE even telling his name once.