Building DISCO: Revolutionizing Music Sharing and Discovery

A problem to be solved. People addressed, I listened to the interview there with Serdif, he had a problem to be solved and BandLab, that's transforming the way in which people think about creating music and so on. But it's still at the heart of it. It's like being driven by creativity.

The guest on this episode has what I call a longevity mindset. He has built two successful companies, one being the Disco, a world renowned product in the music industry. And as he says on this podcast, they're soon getting to the starting line. What an interesting way of talking. Carl, we've been talking for a few minutes and welcome to Sound Connections podcast, by the way. But what I think what's going to be really interesting about this episode is we've been writing a big back and forth. And this podcast for me has become quite special because it's a place of, quoting yourself, vulnerability within music and business. And I hope that's what we're going to expect of today,

But thank you, Colin, and welcome. I just set the scene. I'll just ask you to do a small introduction of yourself as well, but you are the founder of Disco and Level 2 Music. You are, according to everything I can read, the largest music supervisor in Australia. And then Disco is, well, everyone knows Disco, but just to make a small introduction of yourself, to make some sort of formal intro, call WhoAreYou. Yeah. Well, I'll keep it to the super short one and then you can work out how much of the story you want to hear from behind that. But yeah, I'm the founder of Disco.

Disco is a platform that's used for managing and sharing music files and is the, has... growing over time to be the industry standard, I guess, particularly in the world of sync and now beyond that. Disco was born out of Level 2 Music, which is the largest music supervision company in Australia that has been going for 22 years or so. And then prior to that, I worked in A&R. So worked at...

A company called Mushroom Records here in Australia and also set up Zomber Australia, helped set up Zomber Australia before it was sold to BMG. So that's part of the story, I guess. Something struck me about creativity that hasn't been spoken on the right way, like the flow. And even though BandLab is still the product, there's something about...

It's, it's just, it's, it's interesting. It's really interesting. I think creativity can sit at the heart and really should sit at the heart of most businesses that are at the intersection of tech and music. So you've got a background in publishing, you've got a background in production and songwriting and so on. So what is that?

Where does that then sort of like translate itself into business? And I think that. You know, there's this really uncomfortable relationship between venture capital and investors and the music industry. They either don't understand the music industry and then people from outside the music industry, they're saying what should be changed or should be different. But you kind of need to live inside the music industry and you need to be, I think anyway, I think sort of like driven by an abstract notion of what does creativity mean.

And bring that to whatever it is that you're building. So some of the common themes that I've heard from the people that you've talked about is like, what is in the DNA of their product? And I think, you know, the, the idea of creativity in the DNA of product is much more interesting and much more sustainable and something that's, that's going to grow as opposed to a rush to a financial transaction.

Or something that is there to immediately make money. And at the same time, that's in this tiny little market, relatively speaking, that is the music industry. So there's a whole heap of different challenges when you look at actually setting up a startup inside the music industry. And a lot of the common themes that I've heard on your podcast is it was, okay, a problem to be solved.

People, you know, addressed, I listened to the, the interview there with, um, Sertif, you know, like he had a problem to be solved and, and BandLab. There's a, um, that's transforming the way in which people think about creating music and so on, but it's still at the heart of it. It's like being driven by creativity. Um, so yeah, it's, it's an, it's an interesting.

It's an interesting moment. So to have someone like yourself who has that background and then also has an interest in startups, I think is super useful. Um, certainly it wasn't there, you know, when, when we went and, you know, had a crack at setting up disco. I'll ask you a direct and interesting question because when we started talking together 15 minutes ago, um, and we've been in email before you mentioned that you listened to five, six, seven, eight.

Different episodes of the podcast and your comment was that when you weren't around starting Disco, having the perspectives of starting a company where they're at least not very visible accessible, could you expand on your point of how it felt starting Disco that time ago? Was it just a wilderness? Like how did you feel and how did you do to navigate it? Yeah, it was almost, well, first of all, it was a problem that we needed to solve. So I'd lost my iTunes collection maybe like two or three times. Back then, what supervisors would do is manage most of their collections on iTunes and then be receiving box links or

WeTransfer or whatever else, all being forced to go to major labels and forced to download from their websites. And iTunes was set up as a product that was essentially there as a... a consumer product, not a B2B product. And then I could see basically all of the busy time that was being lost by the team in uploading and downloading files. And then it's not about actually losing the songs themselves. You can go and find that data, but what you do lose is that IP that you've generated in

Your thoughts on responding to briefs and what does a playlist look like. We, uh, well, I went out and had a look to see surely there must be a pride that's been made for the service. Um, and particularly music supervisors in mind. And, and the reality was, was that the things that were there. Kind of just pissed me off. Like they were, uh, they, they clearly didn't understand the workflow of what we needed. Yeah. They were insanely expensive.

And it kind of outraged me so much. I was like, you know what, let's just make something for ourselves. So, um, and it was really only like a couple of, you know, maybe like 18 months or so after that, maybe two years after that, that was like, we've actually spent a lot of money on this. Um, maybe there's other people that would like to use it as well. So the, it was never entered into in the notion of, oh, I'd like to do a startup.

It was even after that I discovered Y Combinator and this whole world that was probably very US-centric. And then really the podcasts and the books and the things that were there that then supported that really informed on me on, okay, well actually I've created something that solves a problem for myself.

That actually really validates this. We have, because of our position in Australia in the marketplace, we could go and talk to rights holders and say, we'd really like you to upload into our disco inbox and maybe it's something that you could use as well. And then that idea of, hang on, here's a product that's been made for a whole heap of SMBs, sort of smaller businesses like ourselves.

Maybe this is something that's going to be useful and empower the gatekeepers that are the supervisors that are then generating and unlocking the value in copyrights. And up until then, no one had actually thought of them. Lots of people had said, hey, come and work over here. Come and look at this marketplace. We want to ensure that we can take a clip on the way through. But no one had actually just created a tool that would be useful for them per se.

It was something for ourselves. It was then something that we felt could be used outside of Level 2 when we first of all tried it with local partners and then when we worked out that it was, that we, that people liked it, then we could go and start, you know, went to LA and that's really where the engine room of the international sort of sync industry is. But again, a series not really of...

With my let's go out and do a startup. It's interesting, a lot of the conversations I'm having these days with my own team or with other founders is the concept of bootstrapping versus getting capital and scaling. This is not exactly what you're saying, but there's this interesting point about creating something out of your own need within your own system, it's been a couple years on it.

To then realize it has a potential for someone else without the intent of building some scalable product right away. And the time and experience that goes into creating that product might, you know, speak to the success of it. I don't know and this is something yet to be discovered what the right approach is. And obviously it's individual for every single person, but like generally speaking, what is the right approach to...

Building a product that serves something really well. We had Ames API that also works within the sync world here on and they sort of have a similar-ish story to Disco of having this internal problem developing and everything was natural, it was cashflow positive from day one, just because they build a business within a sector they know so much about, care so much about, and know exactly how the solution's gonna look and feel.

There might be a point to that, I don't know. But that's how you did it. But... Did it at any point start to feel like a startup? Did you have that now I'm a founder kind of thing? Yeah, look, I think there's a couple of things to unpack there. One is that what we were doing was completely illogical. So how do you get 1,200 users around the world onto the one platform and to there as a tool that is gonna help them? It makes no sense. And we, because of...

Um, I guess, you know, like the position of level two, we're able to bootstrap, you know, up to like a, we went out for our seed round at like a million dollars ARR and there were already 19 people working on the business. It felt like a stuff then. Like, you know, and that's at, but at that point we'd made a whole heap of very illogical decisions that you really just couldn't explain. But uh, it was because we intuitively understood.

The workflow of our users and also understood the importance of workflow. So if you can create something that is incredibly productive and empowering for your users, and then you find that the one shared problem that both the music supervisors and the rights holders have is actually managing and sharing music, then you've discovered...

An abstract notion that's very hard to explain until you've actually brought everyone together. As soon as you do, it makes sense. So yeah, that was something that we really needed to explore. And there's one patent that is there that's attached to disco, and that is about the breadcrumb trail. That idea of capturing and create, capturing.

The creative IP choices that have been made previously by your team. And so the ability to be able to very quickly go through a catalog, now it's obviously supported by AI and machine learning and all of the good stuff that we have also on the platform. But it's this sort of combination of creative choices that then define who you are as a creative.

As that you work in the way that you identify with. So it's, DISCO stands for discovery, intuitive search, creative organization. It's meant to be, you can either be incredibly organized, incredibly disorganized. It's up for you to what it, you know, what is that you do with it. And so that insight around, you know, certainly with creatives is you define yourself by the way in which you work. And once we'd kind of, I guess, seen the way in which people just love the platform, then we knew that we, you know, it's kind of like INR. It's like, and you know,

That's my background as well. It's like, it's INR where the most successful bands are the ones that actually like the fans support and the fans actually talk about. And, and so if you can get your users championing your platform, then you know that you're in a good place. Um, and that, and that, that sort of idea of customer success and customer service and, you know, being the humble servant for all of the other people that, you know, you're there to serve, um, that goes back to, you know, that goes back to the roots of level two and being a music supervision agency and dealing with all of the sharp elbows and all

The stakeholders and all of the people that are involved in any process supervising. Um. All of that gets pulled into the platform. It's really interesting. I'm curious about one thing. It might be a weird question. Um, when I talk to you, whenever you read your emails, even your looks being somewhat similar to Rick Rubin, uh, it seems to be a calmness over you. Uh, which is, it's very delightful. Was that also the journey or was it the traditional startup stress? Uh, I need to understand like how, how you have a successful company. You develop a product.

For your own needs, discover there might be users out there. And then you start a startup journey, raising capital. The intensity, the feeling changed, like what happened in that space? Yeah, that's, it's interesting. Um, I think, I think I'd, I don't know, like level two, when we set up that as a music subdivision agency, we upset a lot of people because this is really early on. This was when you either went to a major label and you paid them six figures for a track or you, or, you know, a sound house tried to make something that sounded like the thing you couldn't afford.

And I, I spent a long time working with independent bands. It's been a long time on community rodeo. I had this and, and essentially level two was first of all, uh, you know, a label that after choosing not to go and work at, uh, you know, I had the chance to go and work at like a major heading up their own and I was like, no one did my own thing. Turns out that my taste in independent bands isn't necessarily the best basis for a business. Um.

So, it was, but what I did, I was sharing space with a production company and they were asking me for music. And then I was able, I still remember like the first, you know, $1,500 placement that I had. And the first time that I put like a metal band in as a joke into an ad. And so that really, I guess, but then that introduced me to advertising.

And you think music industry is challenging when you've got the pressure of not just the large budgets or not large budgets that might be attached to licensing, but also then the media buys that sit behind that and the personalities every step of the way. That's a kind of pretty fiery furnace to be in. And you have that plus then you're upsetting the majors because early on it's like, Well, no, we can actually just go and use an independent artist and we probably prefer to do it. Now along the way you discover allies and friends and people, and we have, you know, a wonderful relationship with a number of the majors, but we really challenged a lot

Of people. So, um, there, it was kind of born out of a failed record label, a really challenging time to then create really. music supervision in Australia and we changed the way in which music supervision worked. And then to move from that into actually there's something that we, the next step up that is creating a product and what do we, and the challenges that are based around that. But every step of the way it's kind of like you have one set of challenges, then you have the next set of challenges and then you look down and you go,

Jakob Wredstrøm (19:13.354)Um, it doesn't, it, it's kind of like strong conviction is lightly held. You need to be able to absorb all of the, there, there is nothing more stressful than a bootstrap startup like that is. And it's the responsibility that you have. Not just, it's not about just the, the burn and everything else, but it's being that, that consciousness of, as you start bringing people into your start, into, into that bootstrap, you are a responsibility to them.

You are a responsibility to everyone around them. And then when you take money, different founders have different ways. But for me personally, I then know a responsibility to the people that I take money from. And so that stress, it's like you should be stressing as a music supervisor, you should be stressing about whether or not you have that approval.

And so you start living with it and then it becomes a little bit addictive and then it becomes like the thing that's almost like the thing in your life. And so in a funny kind of way, all of those experiences then lead up, turns out leads up to being not a bad run up to then sort of going and, and starting to build a B2B SaaS platform that sits at the intersection of music and tech.

So it almost didn't feel like a huge jump to some degree because you've been through the stress and the responsibilities and the pressures of the Lyraean. Yeah. Yes. And at the same time, I'm pretty stubborn and I'm also, and at that point as well, I think we're in some of our communication, we talked about that idea of being both an insider and an outsider in the music industry. And so by that point...

You know, there's a challenge in knowing the inside of the music industry, but there's also some observations that you can make if you're not working as a label manager or you're not working in A&R or so on. And there's also observations that I'd had that I could make not working in advertising agency, but being a bridge between the two. So in a way, if you're building a product that takes some of the rigor and some of the, you know, the core metrics and the learnings about What does it mean to cross the chasm? What does it mean about a low churn rate? What does it mean around, you know, some of those key metrics that are really important that are based around a SaaS product? If you can connect that and you can sit sort of

Inside the music industry and outside it, then you're in a really interesting place, I think. And you kind of need all those things to be able to deal with the stress and the challenge that comes next. Is that where you are still? Every day. So my presumption reading you as a calm man, is that true of the outside, inside? Like what's happening? Yeah, it's interesting. No, I think it's a good question. I'm loving the fact that we're going philosophical and, it's, uh, again, you always requested it. You always know. No, I was hoping this

would become like a therapy session, you know, which is great. Um, I think, uh, I don't know. I think that there needs to, you need to have a fierce, a fierceness and a rigor around, um, around the business that you build in and you're also.

I don't know, you don't want people to take food off your table. There is a competitiveness here and there is something that, we were lucky, I guess, in a way that we've spent eight years building a moat, building out a thesis, building out a philosophy.

The riga, you cannot for a moment stop being, being paranoid, being observant. And it's this really, it's this really important thing of being able to focus on the granular, then be able to look at the big picture. And that is, that's really, that can be very draining. And it also then just becomes, yeah, I think it was Seth Godin that just said, it's not about a work-life balance, there's just life. And so it's your choices, what do you do with that? Do you get an

email daily? Do you get something from Stoic Daily just to be able to remind yourself of, what do you use as your foundations on to be able to absorb that stress that is there every day and if it's not there, then you should be really worried about it. You know, I looked at, there's other examples of startups here in Australia. So like I know the guys at Linktree for example. Now they were making amazing money from day one. Yeah, that everyone is on their own particular journey and at some point stress is going to kind of come in and

It should be something that you, you know, wreck your arms around really. Yeah. For me, stress levels, personally, are always really high. And that is the world we operate in. And for me, it's been about how to, first of all, keep it at bay so it doesn't overload, but then also accepting it or loving it to some degree. Like it's the constant struggle

that you need to get used to. You talk about fierceness, you talk about having that fierceness. What is the source of consistent fierceness for you the last 22 years, you said, that you've been on this founder's journey with first level two music and then disco? What is the source? The source of that fierceness, I think it comes down to making conscious choices about you know, not

making conscious choices about setting up your own business. And then the response and then the buck stops with you. And that never goes away. And at the same time, you can have incredible flow, you can have incredible moments that you can, you can bring people with you and you can build things. And so there's an outsize return on that. But I also think that as, you know, once you've decided that, no, you're not going to go and work at a larger company, and there's absolutely

nothing wrong with that, in actual fact, often that experience can help inform on, you know, joining a startup at a different stage. But I think that if you start up your own small business, then you need to make sure that the lights are on. You need to know your PNL as like this living, breathing entity, and you need to be able to instinctively talk to the house of the company in which you're running. And if you're not being fierce about that, then eventually someone else will come and step into that space.

interpreted it comes from an intellectual place of making conscious choices and then protecting those conscious choices. The way that I experience fierceness myself is sort of the opposite. I it's it in a way that I can't help it and then I need to rationalize why is it like this. And it's two interesting ways of coming about it. But do you feel like it comes from like your intellectual conscious choices first and then your response to that.

I wish I could say that there were intellectual conscious choices, but it was, I think it's more about just, it's also about being in the moment, right? If you've got the luxury of being in the moment and working in the moment and being absorbed by the moment, then you actually almost have to force yourself to kind of like

step back and go, am I taking an intellectual conscious choice here? Um, so yeah, I, uh, I think the fiercest just comes out of, um, I think once you have a sense of something that needs to be done, you can't do anything but do it. You know? Um, and that's, and, you know, I don't know it and, you know, maybe, maybe passions, the word, I'm not sure, but there's, it's also something where it's completely illogical. It doesn't make any sense at all, but you just end up that, that you, I guess. And also then it's also about what is it that drives

you? Are you someone that likes to either help others or are you there? You know, my background really was working with independent artists. And so with music supervision, what drove me was, um, it was always like this extreme sport of A&R of being able to put bands that should have been discovered, be able to turn up and knock on their door and say, why, I've got enough money for you from TV commercial to record a new album or go on the road or build a studio or do whatever. We're talking dollars, not pennies. And once you get a little taste of that, that then becomes like a driver, an important part of your life.

Um, and so it's an emotional thing as well. And you miss it if it's not there. Is that, is that the base, the embedded of the living conditions of artists? Or was that like, what is the base? You know, starting a record label, going from major system, A&R into that. That must've been it. Is it still that? Is that what still drives me? Yeah. The, the livelihood of artists or like, have you changed sort of the base?

I'm incredibly proud of the fact that we have an artist product now for Disco where someone can pay $12 a month and have themselves and a manager or partner and unlimited songs and be using the same software platform that's used as the frontline to manage a major rights holder.

But it also then empowers, it means that the best song wins as well. Like that's the interesting thing with supervision is the best song wins. It's not about necessarily the profile of the artist, it's about that process of sourcing, you know, of almost what is the character, what is the extra person or the personality that's going to be in this picture.

and what is the song that walks into that space and what is the role that they play. Now, if that can be a song that comes from an independent artist, then basically allows them to continue to create their art. Or it can be a vintage track and this has happened with placements that we've had where up until the time that we've done that placement, that artist hasn't has had no commercial success.

They might, there's been ones where, you know, like they've passed away and we come to their family or their estate and say, actually, we have this for you. And that's almost like the first time that their music and their art is recognised. Someone might have put it out on a private press. But there's been nothing beyond that has sort of signified in a commercial sense the importance of the art they've created. Now, if you can

For me, both the process of A&R and the process of identifying music, but then also the opportunity to democratise discovery and to be able to, through synchronisation is one way, but there's a whole heap of different ways that I think discovery and democratisation is going to work.

But all of those things add up to, I think, are really important things for empowering artists. And that still sits very much at the core of both Disco and is also part of, really important part of the origin story of where Disco came from. You as a founder have been through a relatively long journey of two different companies and Disco is even more relevant now than it's ever been. What is the future for you as a founder? Is it just continuing at this pace? What's your outlook? Yeah, that's a good question. It's

interesting. I saw or listened to you talk about defining yourself as someone that's interested in early stage startups or, you know, like pre-seed and seed and that idea of, you know, being engaged in one idea and then needing to move on and pick up the next. And I think the thing that I would, and it resonated with me, like I understand that, but I think the interesting thing is that once you get on a path and you start building something, it actually opens up that there's

every step of the way is like this new little startup that sort of sits inside the business. And then the business that you are growing and the people around you help define the business. I'm very, it's just really, again, I'm listening to the Surf podcast there. I think that idea of being a servant to the business or a servant to the idea of it.

Um, is something that never really has an end, you know, you can continue to, uh, work for the company. Um, and that's, and, and so that kind of, every day is different. Every next quarter is different. Every year is different. You know, I literally had to, I think prior to this podcast, I had to go back and just remind myself about what I wrote in 2016 around, around disco, just to make sure that, yeah, it was actually an interesting exercise and the tenants there of the job to be done, the people that were helping, the themes that underpin the idea of

being a platform on which the music industry worked, those tenants are still there. But now it's the interesting idea of going, well, how do you connect? workflow with AI, you know, where does that go? And so every, it's not just about the fact that it's like, oh, this goes 55 people and now we have, you know, a hundred million files on the platform and literally, not only do most of the music supervisors around the world use it, but, you know, most of the rights holders do. And then it's not just that, but it's like ANR and.

radio plug-ers and managers. And so every one of those then becomes like a cohort, which you need to think about and go, well, how are we going to make their lives more successful? Um, and that's the, you know, that sort of satisfies that thing of, well, you know, um, it's almost like every one of those is an interesting question about, and, and is its own little startup in its own right.

One concept that I've struggled with or saw a lot about Linkly is the longevity aspect of being a founder. And I'll just elaborate a bit on my point. I get to speak with on the podcast, off the podcast, a lot of amazing people. And I'm trying to dissect what is it that is a common denominator in a, what are different common denominators in successful founder stories?

And one of them that has slowly shown itself, I haven't made like a final conclusion on it, is a longevity mindset. Funnily enough, that's super conflicting with how I do stuff. And I've tried to align that because, as you said, I'm an early stage guy, and I think it's very much due to relatively severely suffering from ADHD, and I've never known anything different. But what I'm slowly realizing is, okay, well, it's a thought I've had.

is the possibility of working the way that I do with, you know, different aspects of different startups and being present, but the sum of that being the longevity. And my point is that's also what I'm seeing in your mindset is the longevity aspect and, and the stimuli you need comes from the operations and nuances and, and experimentations within that longevity mindset.

Am I on the right path on like your own perception of this or I think you are like I think it I think with, you know, I think having it ADHD is actually probably a perfect condition for act if a applying yourself to the numerous things that come at you every day. Um, uh, and, and I think in a way there's a rigor around that, that it's either you, you're up for it or you're not. And that's fine either way. It's either,

do you find that pressure something that feeds you or do you find it something that is too much of a challenge? And what happens if that pressure goes away? Are you bored? You know, that's, and so I think that's only something that you will find out that you will know as you go along. And, you know, it's similar to, are you making a company or are you just making a feature? If you're just making a feature or you're just making a function, you're not really making, you are technically making a company, but essentially that is going to have an end.

It's either going to have an end through an acquisition or it's going to have an end through, it's no longer relevant or useful. And so the more interesting, and that's where a lot of music tech companies end up and there's absolutely no shame in that at all. That's a wonderful thing to go through. That could be a three-year journey. That isn't necessarily around longevity.

gets that brings you to life and the thing that you really feel passionate about, then it doesn't matter that the idea that you thought was going to take three years actually takes 10 years. And when you're 10 years in and you look back and you go, well, or you look up to the first time and go, Jesus, it's been 10 years. You know, then it doesn't feel like 10 years. And really, and at that point, all of the different things that might feed you, taken on a different form, and you're still passionate and you have purpose with what you do. I think it's finding a pathway to that's really important.

One of the things that I speak to my consultancy clients about is one of the disclaimers I make is that I prefer to ask questions rather than give answers. Because the question is the constant. The answer is ever changing. And I think that speaks to founding a company, but what is your question? And what is your problem? What is the thing that you're curious to solve? Like, how do you solve this problem for music supervisors?

How do you address this? And the answer can be ever changing according to the market, technological innovation, global policies. There's so many things that can affect the answer. But the question, if you have a right question, a good question, a constant question, then that can be your base. That can be your anchor. What? No, I'm not taking this far, but like, what is your question in Disco?

Well, what is the thing that you wanted to solve? Like, is that in a way that you work? Or is it me just bullshitting right now? No, right? No, I think the question is important. I think, I think it's about, for me anyway, it's about understanding workflow. And so why do you work that way? How do you work that way? What does that say about you? How can we support and understand you? The thing with disco is that we have this insane net promoter score, which is like in the

is in the early 80s, which is like a very high number after 10 years for a product that's at the pointy end of commercial transactions. But the thing that the feedback that we have is that amazing product, amazing support. So we've invested really heavily in literally 24-7 support on a platform that, for users that previously, you know, you're sending a Dropbox link or Boxlink, there's no one there to talk to. But so we're constant, we're actually on line, always asking why, and always asking how, and how can we help? And, you know, the,

the thousands of tickets that we deal with then have like a, a average answering time of under two minutes. Why? For a what? But from a human. What? But there are people online right now that, and there are people that love music and are heavily invested in music. So you're absolutely right. Like the why and the how is something that is ingrained in the business. And so that's, I don't know if that really answers your question, but I think, it does, right? Yeah, it does. It does. It was almost also a leading question, so sorry about that. No, that's

It was good for you to kind of bring it back. I mean, I am enjoying the philosophical rabbit holes that we're going down. What is the future of disco? What's going to happen with the product? Yeah, look, I think we're nearly at the starting line. So we're nearly at the starting line.

a majority of the music industry onto the one platform. But most people don't, if you're outside of the music industry, most people don't know that we exist. And we're in this increasingly noisy space where there's sort of startups that, and I understand why they need to make noise because they're trying to exist and survive and everything else. But

We have so much, now that we have a place where there are people that are working, we can now start to connect them and we can now start to re-em- we can start solving the human problems around metadata because there's all of this, everyone rushes off to, oh, this is, you know, this is different ways of solving the problem around metadata. It's actually a human problem. It's not a data problem. So um.

What are the drivers that can help solve human problems? Well, communication can, and commercial outcomes can. And then if you can find ways of establishing a network effects platform that happens to share, that happens to be at an intersection where people work, then there's some...

really interesting opportunities there. And if those opportunities drive success for the users, you actually start going some way to redefining and expanding the way that the music industry works and how it values copyrights. And then at the same time, there's all of these tailwinds of BandLab and their 60 million users, or there's all of these different things so far don't necessarily touch or bump into disco yet, but the places that where we start to, the overlap between our platform and then other momentum and other things that are

happening in the music industry is it makes for a really exciting time for us. And it's kind of interesting to say exciting time and B2B SaaS platform all in the same sentence. So that, you know, it's like, is that actually possible? Well, yeah, actually it is. I love that answer and it speaks to my point of longevity mindset. I've loved this Carl. There's a lot of founders right now in the music industry that's trying to make them work. You talked about noise, creating noise. There was a small, I don't know if that was a criticism, but like there's definitely a comment to like, you know, different ways of engaging with the people around you.

The question I'm coming to is, what do you believe that founders need to know? What is it some things that you've learned that maybe is almost uniquely positioned in your experience that could be worth sharing? Yeah, I think looking, okay, things that founders need to know. I think that people need to take an abstract idea and then actually be very pragmatic about the reality of the music industry and what it is that they're trying to do.

you know, like bound to old ways and stakeholders and people that don't want to have change. And so someone comes in with a great idea. You actually need to, I think, really live and breathe the problem. And then you also need to know that you're not entitled to solve that problem. You actually need to go and do the hard work yourself to be able to...

not actually have to go out necessarily and look for funding. You should actually try and work towards actually creating something that is compelling and useful and helpful. And that's really hard to do. And that doesn't mean that your idea isn't a good one and it doesn't mean that it isn't necessarily going to come to life at some point, but there is a massive responsibility to go beyond just a good idea. And so then it's like, well, where do you get those learnings from? For me personally, it was about, you know, how did the Y Combinator series, you know,

how to start a startup and those 10 lectures that is amazing sort of, you know, that information is out there. It's about actually diving in and looking at the things that all of the books, all of the podcasts, all of the things that actually... are around your idea that might be able to help you. And that is something that I don't necessarily... I think that people either get very blinkered and just sort of... and have an expectation that they're just going to solve their problem, or they're not necessarily rigorous enough around creating a business that can support...

the time that's needed to bring me an idea to lie. Eh. So I hear a lot of things in what you say. You talk about being pragmatic. You talk about, to some degree, due diligence by knowing the problem and working through them, bringing worth. So the opposite of that, in my interpretation, is someone trying to build something fast to solve a problem they maybe don't know in depth. Yep. And you know, I have thoughts and feelings around I think it's also really dangerous when there's a little bit of knowledge and not

necessarily that much time spent at the call phase. I think that there's examples out there and there's been recent examples, but I think that there's... You can, I think, rush to...

quickly to try and build something at scale as opposed to actually validate that it's going to resonate at the really granular level. And that's the hard boring bit. That's the hard boring bit. And people don't necessarily work at like the core of their idea. And I think that it gets very dangerous when there's people that have a passing understanding at aspect of the music industry and then they start communicating that to investors or people that maybe are outside the music industry or just attracted to the idea of the music industry. And that's when that creates, I think, or will create some really challenging moments

and might actually make it harder for valid startups that work inside the music industry. That's a really interesting point because there's a lot of reluctance from non-domain experts within the music industry, investors, to go into music startups. A lot of it has to do with, especially if they're very established, they've seen a lot of decks. And when things consistently doesn't add up or there's two little visible examples of turns even more sour and negative. Even though you love the bootstrap method, there's also a lot

of validity to having healthy influx of capital the same way that you had a seed round. You know, at one point when you've actually created something healthy, you have validation for the correctness of your assumptions, then still needs to come capital in. Carl, I think this was lovely.

It's so great meeting you in person. Our initial connection came through Ulle Dreier, who is a common friend, friend to you, friend and mentor to me. And one of the really important things that you said in the first email we sent together is the importance of mentors and mentees. And your contribution to this podcast speaks to that. So hopefully people will learn. And I'm looking forward to over the next many years.

develop a closer relationship with you. And it feels extra special when you come through all this. I've said a joke on the other podcast and I've said it to him many times that I have one mission that is to somehow make him rich one day. I still haven't figured it out, but that's how I see it. Like the importance of that is so, so important. Well, thank you for taking your time. Now, likewise, Jai, but I, you know, I've really enjoyed.

this conversation and it's kudos to you. I think that what you're doing here is really important. I like the fact that there's listening that's happening and questions that are being asked that hopefully are useful to people out there. And I think that you're going about creating something that's going to be really powerful and useful.

You know, you talk about the democratization and support of artists. Well, I think this is really, you're in that exercise of the democratization of knowledge. Um, and, you know, I love it. That's great. And, and likewise, what do, uh, continue to stay, um, connected and, uh, we'll be watching with keen interest, listening with keen interest, uh, as the podcast, um, develops. Thank you, Carl. Thanks, man. Cheers.