231–240 of 331 posts
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Ads: doubleclick, bought Maps: bought Youtube: bought Android: bought What else?
Source on Maps please. They bought KeyHole or whatever, fir Google Earth maybe. But Maps itself was started in-house, no?
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.
What does that even mean? Optics as in internal and external perception and politics is fundamentally important to a company. Leadership only works with trust and respect.
> CEOs are largely just figureheads these days
Looks like that's the case at soundcloud but in normal healthy corporations, CEOs do actually make decisions and drive the company. They can and do become the face of the company but that's just part of the role but not the only thing they are.
[0] http://www.thefader.com/2017/07/26/wetransfer-soundcloud-emp...
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You should really count the Premium (paying) users only. The others don't make the company any money.
They do by listening to ads.
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 al…
Well, Spotify managed just fine. They didn't have those billions when they started out in Sweden.
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How should this work? Once somebody is trending on such platforms, labels will come, give them tons of money, a contract and take over. And take them away from these platforms as well.
They'll give them an advance as bait for an exploitative and crappy contract which may well be run in a dishonest way. Given that most sales are downloads or streams now, the only thing big labels can bring to the table is a nuclear level of publicity. And by definition, that's going to be reserved for a tiny handful of multimillion-selling household names. Today's smaller bands and artists - which will be the majori…
Man, now I really want to build what SoundCloud should have been.
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And that is the big loss. Having a place where one could discover new music has so much value over being served the same songs by the same few artists
Does it though? I'd like this to be true, but in practice it seems like most people (me included) strongly prefer hearing songs they already know most of the time, enjoy songs more with repetition, at least up to a point, and are more than willing to learn to like almost anything with high enough production value. Some people are music snobs as a hobby and most go on discovery quests from time to time, but it honestl…
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Actually, I'm using http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html That's like calling a newly established barber shop a startup. It's not. The GP is working on a podcast hosting company. The market for people who want to host podcasts is miniscule. Large enough to sustain a company, sure. But that's not a startup.
Google search defines a startup as "a newly established business". Dictionary.com says "a new business venture, or a new commercial or industrial project". Merriam-Webster says "a fledgling business enterprise". I don't mean to be difficult but it's annoying that some folks on HN insist that PG's definition of "startup" is the only possible one. It's a useful definition, but people who use it the non-PG way are not w…
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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 mar…