Beyond Oblivion: How a Promising Music Startup Imploded
evolver.fm
evolver.fm
I read things like this all the time, but it's a completely different thing when it's actually you (or relating so closely to you). I put a lot of time and effort into the product, and my piece was something I was personally really proud of. It's really unfortunately to see it fail in such a big way. I still debate putting my involvement on my resume, even though its demise had nothing to do with me. I interviewed at a Y-Combinator company I was really interested in, and didn't get the job... I still wonder if that had anything to do with it. Anyway, nothing to say or learn from the experience really, just thought I'd say that.
Besides, a startup that wouldn't hire you because you worked as an engineer at a failed startup would be insane. I'd be more afraid to hire engineers from startups that did succeed, because I doubt they'd be as motivated the second time around after the big windfall.
Yea, that's why I haven't removed it yet. But the thought crosses my mind all the time.
I'd be curious to hear your definition of a killer product. Personal a killer product to me is one that sells though I understand it's just one perspective.
If you read the article, this isn't a B2C product. We were working with manufacturers and high-dollar contracts ($100m+ I think). A lot of different hands are involved, lots of due diligence, it had to match the manufacturers strategy, and laws and regulations are all questioned. Since a majority was mobile, we also had to involve the carriers. We also had to work with the labels and publishers when dealing with manufacturers in different regions. A lot of that work was over my head (since as I said, I just built the product... I'm also not sure how much I can talk about publicly, so I'm trying to keep it sort of vague). We had to work a deal out with everyone so they all get paid what is fair to them (we want to negotiate the lowest price, each one of them wants to negotiate the highest price), and those kinds of things take time. All of this happens over a period of months, while other parts of their (everyone mentioned above) business may be moving in other directions -- acquisitions happening, strategy changes, budget projections, layoffs, massive hiring -- you name it. In Y-Combinator land it is really that simple, but when dealing with big business, it's not.
EDIT: Just realized I didn't answer the question. A killer product, to me, is one that I would routinely use, and that my wife uses as well. She liked to use the app (I can't say that for everything I've built). I did too. We also proved it would scale, and yada yada. I'm afraid of saying more, but yes it was a solid product.
Burned through $20 million of its $33.2 million in the final ten months, less than $1 million of which was paid to employees. I wonder what's the justification for such spending ratio.
At 90 employees, that averages U$1.111,11 / head. How is that possible?
As such it is rather confusing for native english speakers when commas and dots are swapped. Which makes sense since it is essentially like speaking a different 言語 halfway through your sentence.
Interestingly, your sentence is perfectly understandable because of context, doesn't the same happen with the swapped marks?
They never managed to score another contract and ran out of money within a year. It was shameful how much money these guys grabbed for themselves and drove the company into the ground.
It seems to me that certain people think that they can pay themselves whatever they want once they get investment money. Its like free money.
The business model for pretty much every music-related startup sounds horrendous from every angle. Mostly due to the ridiculous fees and constraints imposed by the labels and partly due to relatively high infrastructure costs.
Most of the products in the space operate on the premise of reaching "exit velocity" as fast as they can. The goal is to either get bought by an established player, or to make ends meet on the razor things margins by the virtue of mass market scale (which in turn gives you leverage to negotiate slightly less ridiculous deals with the labels. slightly.).
I want music. I want a phone. I want cell phone service. I don't want Verizon selling me a phone. I don't want them selling me music. Or ringtones. I want them to provide me with quality, economical cell phone service. These multi-tier one-off annoying-to-negotiate media deals boggle my mind. It's the reason that despite having Amazon Prime, Netflix and more, I still can't watch half of what I want to, let alone where I want, when I want (actually, I'm on Linux, so I'm screwed either way).
It just reeks of absurdity and politics. Maybe I'm just naive.
Unfortunately, by Verizon (and lots of other players with their own interests) inserting themselves into all of these deals and processes and platforms, it creates an absurd burden on consumers who just want to watch the damn movie/transfer media files between devices/get a phone or computer that's not preloaded with crap.
It's no wonder that consumers gravitate toward companies that minimize these pain points (Apple, Spotify) or continue to download pirated media content.