Slightly OT: I understand how people feel about SoundCloud. But I am surprised that most of us exactly know what went wrong. They know what mistakes the management did and where the product should have gone. They know for sure how to lead employees, in good times and in bad times. They know when you should hire and when you should fire.

I wonder how many of us who are so fast in judging have really run a mid- or late-stage startup and know what they are talking about.

I know just one thing: Leading and managing people is a super tough job. We are not talking about leading a small team. No, it's leading a corporation and worse, managing investors who are chasing you night and day and playing power politics for years while being the nice daddy VC writing witty blog posts. And don't forget the three labels who blackmail you to death but are shareholders at the same time. Stuff nobody knows. We only know that Alex went to Burning Man and fired 173 people. So he must be a bad CEO having no clue of music, product and leadership. Of course.

It's easy to give good advice from outside. But it's so hard to understand what actually happens inside. All of us who managed just a small company know what I am talking about.

Managing machines, code or even a Kubernetes cluster is easy as pie compared to what the SC founders were going through the last years. Machines are predictable, humans are not. Just read Machiavelli's The Prince and get a notion of what people are willing and able to do to deal with other people. Backstabbing is their daily business and Game of Thrones is not that far away anymore from the life of a venture-backed CEO.

Not that I like Alex and Eric very much or what they did. Honestly, I don't care at all, I find SoundClound's products and the repetoire rather mediocre and I don't believe in online music as a healthy business model.

But I don't know any founders in Europe and in Germany who raised that big funds and could keep control for that long and the product still in an ok shape. Look what Travis is going through right now. For some who have never been in such a position, they just can't imagine how high the pressure and extreme the psychological stress is, how many ultra aggressive sharks are floating around you just waiting for one single mistake. Then, loosing control of everyhing happening in and around your organization happens quicker than you can think.