The Story of Timbre with Jonas Krossli and Kristian Wredstrøm

Jakob Wredstrøm

Today is going to be special and a bit emotional. It's an episode about failure with one of my companies I've had earlier called Timber. I hope you enjoy it. It might give you a lot of insight of how it is to not succeed.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Guys, welcome to Sound Connections podcast. This is a group of people that I've known for a long time, I've been very close with. We have Christian from New York, here right now. Lovely to be here. And Jonas, you're from Oslo right now. That's where you live. Thank you for having us. You guys are, we're doing a different kind of episode today. We're talking about failure because we've had a previous collective history of failure together. Um, in the sense that we've had a company together that we were very ambitious with and sort of my first real startup journey, and, uh, we're sitting here four years later and, and haven't achieved what we wanted to do. And there's many reasons for that, but, but I think this is an episode talking about that journey, um, but just to preempt the bits, the company, um, was called Tamber. And Tambor was a company that was supposed to be a platform, democratizing capital investment in IP rights and music. To tell them a bit more simply, it was a platform where you can invest into music. So if you had a favorite artist, you could put your money on their music instead of, for example, the stock market. And this was a journey of a company that existed for around one and a half years, and we three did it together. But maybe just to set the scene of who we are, then Christian, how do we know each other? Yeah, has it already been four years since we've met? Yeah, I was astounded. Yeah, and you said that makes you feel old. Yeah, well, you know it. Yeah, but Christian, how do we meet? Yeah, well, the obvious connection between Jacob and I, as obviously as Jacob, you're my older brother. And so in that, in that context, we spent quite a bit of time together. Not as much anymore now that I live in New York and you live in New Orleans. But yeah, no, other than that, maybe a little bit about myself. 28 years old from Denmark, I live in New York City now. I've lived here for the past two years. Actually, I see I've spent quite a bit of time here because I also study at university here.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I was on this incredible venture with both you, Jacob, and you, Jonas. And my background is sort of from an educational perspective. I studied finance economics and went into project management in the financial services industry. And then having this opportunity with Tambor sort of highlighted my passion for startups and working on unique and disruptive projects. And after Tambor, And after finishing my stint in project management, I went into working through a different very early stage startup and one of the first full-time employees. Been started the last two years, a little bit over two years for this startup. And so I sort of continued my startup journey even after Tambor. So I'm sure we'll get into more about that. Yeah, we both cut the bug. So yeah, that happens. And Jonas, where did we meet? Well, we met, we worked quite a lot of together in Copenhagen. I'm from Oslo, Norway, and now you followed me back home, which I really appreciate having you close. And I'm a concert and music producer. After 10, we're moving a lot more into the business side of things. Yeah. I wouldn't say I work with a startup now, but I do work with project development for a small. recruiters company for audio engineers which has turned out to be quite a blast. It really is. Well, we worked on so many projects together I can't even remember. Yeah. I started the initial talk of Timer and then you two powerhouses just took it away, didn't you? Well, it's a funny story because you... I've always been entrepreneurial and what I've always been very good at, and that's also my, my most evil and worst side is I'm, I'm really good at, uh, getting people to, uh, be inspired by something or maybe like, Hey, here's something cool. Like, do you guys want to do it? And that's been my strong side, but it also has gotten a lot of people in a lot of trouble over the years and this is one of the cases, um, but, but I think what happened is

Jakob Wredstrøm

Me and Jonas, we were studying together our masters in audio engineering. And, um, and me and Jonas, as Jonas mentioned, we've had a lot of projects together, we were doing this crazy project where we, uh, wrote a whole classical pop musical, uh, like one hour of music, uh, with full orchestra. Um, very ambitious. We spent 18 months on it. Uh, and then COVID came and so that, that failed. It seems like it's a recurrent thing, Jonas, but today. It seems like we're doing quite well now. So that's sort of our relationship, but not too long after we started studying, I think, I actually don't remember. It was just about, no, I actually don't remember. We had some sort of... Oh, I remember. You remember? Yeah. Oh, I remember it so well. It's, because I mean, this was a... revolutionary experience for me, starting this thing. Because as you came to me talking about, we were just working on something in the studio, I can't remember what. And then we went to grab a coffee and when we came back, I mean, you're always shouting out wild ideas for everything. But then you came with this one, like why? I've been thinking about something lately, why can't? people invest in artists and music like they do with companies to kind of infuse capital into the music industry. And it was completely bracing because I had been thinking about exactly the same thing a couple of weeks before. And then we started talking about it. And I mean, then some weeks go by, you start sending me some links to things. And it was hard for me to kind of fathom. that you actually wanted to do this. I mean, I talk about a lot of things with a lot of people and like great ideas come and go. But at that time, I couldn't ever imagine kind of the ambition that you two have to actually execute on it, to actually make it into something. Our product was unbelievable to me. And I mean, yeah, you're an inspiring person, Jacob. I believe I took some time to inspire even on this one.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Some would say, uh, some would say manipulative. I'm kidding. Well, I think, I think there's some truth to that. Um, but that's, that's a different kind of talk, but, but yeah, there's definitely some truth to it. It really depends on how you see it. Uh, my producer for the podcast, he's just started laughing when we said that. So, so I guess, I guess someone recognizes something, but hopefully it's, um, it's a positive thing. Look, you know, Jonas mentioned that me and you, Christian, were ambitious about that. So there's. obviously a few steps he just jumped over. What was your introduction to, to Tamber? Do you remember that? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, what my experience with you has always been that you have a lot of great ideas all the time, right? And I think at the time when you approached me, I'd been in Copenhagen for a year and a half or so. a year or so, I had been studying in the United States for a long time. And you sort of approached me with an idea that I felt comfortable in trying to execute, because it was sort of pairing finance and economics in a way. And I felt like it was an area where we collectively could add a lot of value with you and Jonas's knowledge of how the music industry works. me being able to provide some insight on the financial side. But then also just the three of us all, all having this go get a mentality and realizing that it was a unique opportunity. Um, it just made a lot of sense to me at the time. And, um, I think he approached me in my apartment. I think we were having dinner or something, if I recall correctly. And, um, and, and you proposed the idea and it just really struck me as a unique opportunity. And I think for me, um, I, as a person, I've always really enjoyed going against the grain. I've always, you should probably recognize this as a younger brother, pushing buttons on you and Jonathan and doing things differently. I've always been very, I guess, exciting for me. And I think at the time I had sort of fallen into this corporate environment. I had worked for a bank in Denmark, a large bank. I was working for a larger pension fund at the time. And I sort of...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Settling into this corporate environment of doing things. And there wasn't a lot of room for free seeking and new projects, other than obviously being in project management. But this just seemed like an opportunity for me to once again, pick that up within myself and do something new. So yeah, that's why I thought it really interesting. And then we just decided to go with it. Yeah. What's interesting about Tamber is we really hadn't you know, had a solution from the get-go. It was a very dynamic journey of, of figuring out what this should be. Uh, and as Jonah said, I think he found it quite, quite good is why don't you invest in assets the same way you invest in companies and that was, so I sort of was, was the basic premise and then a whole period of maybe a month or two of brainstorming came where we were like, okay, how do we do this? And, um, We think reading a lot of things and reading research as much as we could. Well, Krishna was reading research. Me and Jonah are creative so we couldn't read. Well, no, that's not true, but sort of true. But at least like trying to get inspired from different angles. And I went into like hyper idea mode and explore a lot of things. And we like explored blockchain, which we said, oh, that's at the end. That's silly. Well, wasn't, but we'll have. Talk about that a bit later in the podcast. Um, but we looked at blockchain before that became a thing in the music industry. Um, and we explored a lot of aspects and after a few months, we sort of landed on that we wanted to be a platform. And Christian, maybe if you, it's a long time since you've done this pitch, but if I was an investor or a person supposed to use the platform, I'm just putting you on the spot right now, how would you pitch Tamber as we conceptualize it back then? Yeah, as an investor, you're putting me on the spot here for sure. But I think the one made so much sense to me when we sort of talked over the idea, um, was that it made a lot of sense from an investor perspective, right? Cause it was being done in a number of different ways, uh, that we came to find out as we started Tambor. But essentially having an opportunity to invest into Music IP as a recession resistant investment is sort of performs.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Throughout economic cycles and getting a steady stream of income. It seemed to be a very good complementary approach to the ebbs and flows of financial markets in general. And I think that was the basic pitch for investors that you could actually find value in this at a pretty large scale. So that was from the investor side and I think what came together really well was the two of you were able to relay this. Value to the music industry. How could this actually facilitate new investment within the music industry, sort of disrupt existing ecosystems that were maybe quite restrictive to artists and the way that things were being done. So yeah, I think that, that was the basic value. Yeah. And you talked about the music industry because that was really interesting because our, our idea might have sound quite simple. For a person who works with finance. Um, but our idea was incredibly complex for the music industry. Um, but, but to our, uh, failure, favor, what happened when we started the company is a couple of months after we launched Tambor or the conceptualization of the Tambor, then Hypnosis, a company that's very well known now, and now it's their existence and Hypnosis is a fund that purchases music IP rights, but it does so under London Stock Exchange, which means everything they do is public. And they were sort of on a global level, the first movers on making this information publicly accessible, but also really trying to tell about the worth of IP rights. So that really spoke to our favor. And with that storytelling, we say, okay, this platform must work. So we went out and talked with the music industry. Jonas, do you recollect how those talks went with these music companies? I think as far as I can remember, I remember this quite well. I was surprised at the level of interest and engagement and support we actually got from kind of the interest organizations in the business, like the labels union, the publishers union, the songwriters union, everyone thought this

Jakob Wredstrøm

Great. And then you kind of go out there to the actual creators. I mean, it's not, it's not totally unexpected that they wouldn't in the same way that Christian described it as, or not to sell you out there, but as some kind of laziness or a, a lack of ability to do business in fear of compromising your own product, because you're so emotionally attached to a product. But I didn't expect it. As you say, it's a pretty simple value proposition and it's uncompromising to the product that you're trying to make. As long as you can find the support that you need. There was, it was surprising how, how much resistance you got from the actual creators versus how much support you got from everyone who dealt with the business side of the music industry. Yeah. And, and I think that was my biggest surprise is how. Little the industry was positioned itself to change. Yeah. Like there wasn't really any interest in doing things differently, even though there was a glaring problem of lack of capital, like everyone could recognize we don't have enough money and we need to use too long time to build this company. And we have access that, you know, breaking instantaneously and we don't have the money to scale these, these artists, but we definitely won't take capital in. To do something about it. That was sort of, that's not what they said, but that's, that's definitely what they said. If you, if you, if you see it from a business, like a cleaner business perspective, that is what they said. And Christian, did you have the same understanding of this dynamic? Yeah, I did. And I just, you know, as we talk about the same, you know, memories come rushing back of the experience.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I just remember so many times being so incredibly frustrated with dealing with the music side of what we're trying to do. Because I had no experience working with artists or working labels or, as you said, doing an interest organization, we're actually really cooperative. So that wasn't necessarily too bad. I just, I remember stepping into this world and never expecting that you couldn't expect an answer to an email at a reasonable time. Couldn't expect anyone to follow up on action items that you agreed on a meeting. Or you couldn't really not expect anything from anyone that you otherwise might expect of your colleagues when you. Go into office on a Monday morning. It's really simple things. So I remember this was a big challenge for me to actually level my expectations and try to communicate in a way that was aligned with.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think that's where, in particular, Jacob, your experience in Saria was really valuable, because I don't think I very effectively understood or communicated with those individuals. Yeah, but this was a big source of not only frustration, but also conflict at a later point, because what is very evident in the music industry is that it is not professional in the terms of being. Respectful and structured in communication and especially expectations. Like it's, it seems like it's, it's sort of almost two-faced, uh, that, you know, you can agree upon something, but there's no shame in not doing it afterwards. Like it's not an industry that holds itself accountable or in large. And that is really hard to navigate. And, you know, Capella right now we're 20, 22 people and we recently hired a general manager. Um. And we'll talk a bit about that, why I've done that. This actually based a lot of my experience with, with Tamber. Um, but he's, he's from the corporate world and he just doesn't get it. He just doesn't get it. Why, like you have, you have an assignment and we have an agile meeting. And I expect you to do this tomorrow. Why many people don't do it. Like what is, what is the motivation then? What, what do you gotta do? In order to make people do things. And we don't have time to talk about that, about the podcast. That's going to be a long podcast. But there's this mutual, there's a lot of ways to navigate that. And it's really, really freaking complex. And it has a lot to do with emotional intelligence and communication, blah, blah. But that's what we experienced. Jacob, before you go any further, can I just ask you, because this is something I never figured out. And just in a few words, what would you attribute that to? Why is that a thing? Um, I think a lot of it has to do with culture. That there's no, not a culture of being accountable for deliverables. For example, I think that's something to do with it. But, but beyond that.

Jakob Wredstrøm

People choose music, people choose the music industry because they're film musicians. Number one, that's about it. And people choose to become musicians because they are emotionally, they're very creative and they need to express themselves in an emotional way. And without diving too deep, then emotion and creativity comes from the subconscious. Instead of the structured side of you. And which means that now I'm taking a bit far, but creativity is the opposite of structure. Yeah. That's, that's probably actually completely. Yeah. So I'm trying to get a person on the podcast that is a psychologist. So who's going to talk about this, but you know, maybe, maybe in other ways, but, but that is like the two answers I can give you that really short. For this podcast is that creativity is the opposite of structure. And then there's not a culture of being accountable for deliverables that you promise. And that's sort of a self amplifying circle of death. Um, was that, was that a sort of a, an answer you could have to be that, and it made actually a lot of sense too. So, um, I want to ask you guys because before we get into the failing, which we will come soon. Um, how was the emotional experience? Um, well first starting it and then in the middle of this frustration part, the valley Christian, could you start with explaining how your emotions were at the start and then at the valley? Like how, how would you describe them? Yeah. So just at the start, are you also at the end of the center? Well, not the end. Let's call it the valley, the in-between the middle. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, for sure. I. I remember this incredible excitement in connection with what we were trying to do. And I think also the potential of what we were trying to do. Since we stopped, this is sort of the business itself, it's sort of been proven. I'm sure we'll get to that. So I think we were seeing it through that lens, the opportunity, and we weren't really seeing a...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Course we were seeing the challenges and I don't think we were fully understanding some of the challenges we faced later on but there was this incredible excitement and at the time I was working a nine-to-five you know and so were you Jacob and so were you Jonas and we were doing all our own things on the side but I just remember as soon as I walked in the door at home I was just head down into that laptop I was writing away up researching I was developing all these documents that we would need to finally be able to go or their interest organizations, all these things, that it just became this sort of obsession in my life of trying to make this work. And I think it maybe became that to a fault because I think I realized it took a big toll on people around me, my own relationships. And I didn't realize at the time I was just head down working. But I also remember just going through the journey every now and again, there would be this roadblock. And I remember how it felt like a punch in the gut every time, or at least in the beginning, when we hit these obstacles, we were sort of on fire. I was expecting we were just gonna take the world by storm, but didn't fully realize all the obstacles that would come along. And so I remember there were a few times there was just like, oh, you know, is this really gonna work or, you know, how are we gonna fix this? And it was like a punch in the gut. As we went along, we learned how to roll with the punches, but in the very beginning, uh, and sort of in the middle, it was tough to overcome those, but I think it was good that we had each other because we had different perspectives on things. And when some people were down, the others could pick them back up and, you know, describe the beginning as sort of an obsession in a way and excitement. Yeah, that's how I felt about as well. Jonas, do you have anything that was different or was that the same experience? Oh, I completely agree with our, um, yeah, with it, with the purchase to the gut, especially. It's every time you know, but I mean, when you when you when you're this excited for something, I mean, I was over the moon when we when we first started the thing, as I said, it was it was quite a revolutionary experience in my life. Because I got into music production in the first place. To I mean, I have a vivid memory in my mind of Jonas. I mean, I was 1314 years old. Walking our dog with my dad.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And he showed me this thing called Spotify, where you could get all the music in the world for I mean about 150 crowns or something. It was back then. And I was even, Jonas 13 was like, well, that's not going to work. That's not sustainable. And then I, because I was already a budding musician back then I played the trumpet and I was playing at the opera house and I had things going on. But I suppose when it came time. The time came to choose careers. I was very hesitant to go into music or to go into performing, to go into being a musician and headed towards production because of this kind of hopelessness and how streaming was negatively affecting the economy of business and the kind of expectations that something has to happen at some point and when it does, I kind of want to be there. And then we have the conversation that we had, Jacob, you in many of our conversations, you, you kind of turn to God or you're a religious man. And I'm not, but if I ever was, I was never closer to becoming religious. That one, when we started, when we started this, cause it's like, okay, so that's it then we had this idea and then YouTube had a level of ambition. I could never imagine possible. And it's like, okay, if I want to. If I want to get in on this project and actually try and do something good for the industry, this, this is it. Like then we, then we, uh, saddle up and start working for real. Yeah. And we did. And like you said, Christian, it was obsession working on that business case, refining, refining every step of the way. And every time we hit a raw block, it's like, okay, delete five pages and start again, you just have to develop it. Yeah. And it was a journey because, you know, we were learning everything from scratch. We didn't know what a pitch deck was. We didn't know what, how to get investors. We didn't know how to develop a platform in what order. We made a lot of mistakes that I do regret. Like I know a lot better now, but, um, but it sort of set the scene at least for my journey. Um, before we come to the end, I want to say something and that is our idea worked.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Everything we conceptualized was true. And the reason why I'm saying this is that we had at that point, several companies that were doing something similar, but we were different. We thought differently about it. They weren't like us, but we like, we don't believe that is the right way to do it. But they did something similar. I was at a conference six months ago as a speaker talking about. Uh, NFT ticketing, uh, because suddenly I've become a nerd. And I was at this talk with a very recognized, uh, guy in the music industry called Scott Cohen. And he is most famous for starting, um, the Orchard, which was the world's first digital distribution service. He's also been chief innovation officer at Warner music group. Um, he's probably top five in the world, recognized within innovation music. And at this conference, I heard for the first time, he started a new company called Jukebox. And as he talked, every single point was tampered. Everything from using blockchain to, you know, do the, do the rights allocation about not purchasing into the ownership of the master, but the ownership of, of the, of the financial flow to how to invest, to using a platform, financial regulations, private investors invest like one to one, what we spent one and a half years on. He was just unfolding and when he told it, our started clapping and cheering on. And he sort of stopped like this guy's the only one who gets what I'm talking about. Um, but because you don't even know the first thing. I definitely know what you're talking about. Yeah. And it was so funny to be in the room because I was first row and I was exploding like, can this be true? I wasn't an idiot. And now I don't remember exactly amount, but I think they're about $4 billion committed investments now on the platform. So obviously, I mean, you sent it over to us as well. And reading just an article about, I mean, it was like reading our own business case. It's, it's shocking how, how close it is. Yeah. But we could never have done it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I, we, we couldn't have done it. So even though it was a great idea and I, if the sunny say anything I give my credit for is like how freaking good we were at recognizing what was going to happen four years later, it's done. Um, but we could never have done it. Um, Christian, you were actually the one who wrote, uh, the memo about why we stopped, I can pull it up if you can remember it. But can you remember some of the points of why, well, we all made it together, but of why we stopped? Yeah. Um, I don't know if I remember every single detail. I think there were a few reasons, but I do remember the main one being that we had sort of followed the flow of Capitol and music throughout the entire journey. Cause this was the field that we were aspiring to be in. So we need it to be familiar with. And Hypnosis was just one of the companies, the fund that we would follow daily. We would try to, you know, just research everything that they were doing. And I think what we realized, and as I recall it, I was the one, I think it was the first one to sort of bring up the doubts of what we were doing, was just the level of social capital that these people had in this industry. That allowed them to execute on this. You know, we'd read about what's his name? Merck, I can't, sorry. He's got a very funny last name, but Merck's kid? Yeah, the guy from hypnosis. And you see the catalogs that they were, you know, buying and investing into, and it was just all driven by social capital. Who knew who? And who was someone in the music industry. And we were just nobodies, right? So we had to start from that place and convince people that our idea was gonna be good enough to attract hopefully some big catalog, maybe some new ones. And I recall that as being the biggest realization of how do we overcome that? Because we can solve other problems, but how do we convince someone?

Jakob Wredstrøm

To that we're the right ones to invest with because investors will always consider, you know, the risks of doing investments with someone. I think those risks are minimized if that person had to read a big name industry and then connections like so. Yeah. I think you're spot on. There were several other reasons, but I think that was the biggest one. But knowing what I know now, I can tell you for sure that point is so valid. And our ambition would never have been achieved with the amount of social capital we had in the industry by then. It is a networking game. And actually we have had two episodes here in the podcast talking about that. So for you guys who haven't listened to those, go listen to Toro and Vicky. But that is how it was. And that really took a toll on us.

Jakob Wredstrøm

The disagreements and the fights about closing this together. And I think what was a precursor of that, because one thing is the realizing that we needed to close the company because we seemed to couldn't do it, even though we were smart enough, maybe to some degree. But the internal conflicts that came from having this start up together was hard. And I think the biggest frustration was between me and you, Christian. Jonas, because you're a peacekeeper in the way that's sort of your personality. And I think that was a lot of strength into what we did. But me and Christian, Christian and me are sounds dramatic, but fierce warriors. Like we, we like, we like war. Ed Strong, right? Ed Strong. Um, we were both aggressive in each our, um, communication forums and yeah. And, and what happened is that I had a lot of weaknesses, um, that, that I've come to recognize and a lot of them has to do with that I wasn't able to live up to my words when it came to expectations of like structured things. Like when it came to ideas and talking with people and all the kind of stuff, you know, that was great for me. But everything with expectations for things I needed to do, I just couldn't live up to. That has changed a bit with discipline and recognition. And Christian, you just couldn't understand me. And Radha, you couldn't understand Jonas either. Like why are you guys not living up to the level of performance than I am when delivering stuff. And that's one of many things that went wrong. And I don't want to dive too much into it, but it took his toll on us as brothers, that it took us some time to kind of like get over. But Christian, what was your emotional experience in that process when we closed down the company?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, it wasn't a pleasant one at all. And I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, throughout, I think it was an incredible experience working together as a team, but also particularly as brothers, you and I, I think it was a very unique opportunity for us to bond over something that we had in common, I think throughout our lives, we haven't had that much in common. I mean, we definitely share similarities, but as far as interests or things we were good at. It's just been very different in our lives. So this was an opportunity for us to do something unique together. And that was a really powerful thing. But at the same time, I think we both struggled with putting our professional and personal relationships into separate buckets. The way that we communicated with one another was not very civil. And I think that was because we were brothers. Because we, you know, Shout out to the restaurant clan, we love you all, but we're not from a family that's particularly good at expressing our emotions in a productive way. It is a very emotional clan, so to speak. And so that was what happened when there were frustrations. It was more of a emotional and personal touch rather than treating each other as colleagues and understanding each other in that way. So as... throughout the journey, we definitely had conflicts where looking back now, I definitely have many regrets in the way that I communicated or the frustrations in the way that just didn't land well with you because you're also an emotional being, as am I. There are definitely more effective ways to communicate. But when everything shut down, I think, you know, I remember my response being Definitely emotional, but also I was just trying to cope with everything that was going on. So I became very practical. I was sort of like looking through a lens of practicality and this is what, then, you know, why are we emotional about this and all these things. And that didn't clash well with, I think, your personal experience of it, Jacob. And Jonas did a great job of being fairly neutral and trying to be a peacekeeper throughout all of it.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I just felt like an art of failure and I felt like that for a long time. I felt very small because we had involved a lot of people in this, a lot of partners, a lot of people that work with us. Thank God we didn't have a ton of employees. We had a CTO, Deb, that also worked with us. But yeah, Deb, yeah. And we had a, we just onboarded some family and friends as investors. And luckily we rectified all that and paid all money back and all these things. So that was no problem. But I think it was just a, I felt ashamed. And I, and I think at the time I didn't get myself any credit and I don't think maybe for a long time, you know, and to be honest, I haven't reflected on a lot of tamper things since then, cause I've suppressed other emotions for a long time. Um, but I didn't give myself credit for all the things that we did. We did some incredible work as young individuals, but all that I could see. And all that I reacted to was all the things that we did wrong or that we failed to execute on. And so it put me in a really dark place for a long time. And yeah, so that was my own personal experience of it. Oh, I can remember. You reminded me there of how cynical you went when we were right towards the end there. Yeah. Because you guys were at it for a little while with your conflicts. And I mean, it was. When things started to become challenging and we, we had gotten so much support, uh, had all these great advisors who was like, Oh, okay. This makes sense. The idea is good. We were, we were excellent at improving with every, with every punch to the gut. It was quite impressive seeing how young we were that we keep kept pressing on. I think we're very good at seeing our weaknesses and kind of refining, sharpening the edge every time. Before going in for a pitch understanding more of the market with every conversation we had. And I think we had some real smart conversations we found advisors in a bank. There was some I remember there was some kind of entrepreneurs program in the bank. Yeah, sure. Jacob came one day like, you know, you can just book a meeting. But still when going through all the lab when things were going well, you're too

Jakob Wredstrøm

Kind of polarities are the differences. And we talked about the music industry and, and Jacob's kind of creativeness. And then you're a Christian's very rigid stability and ambition to make things go forward, which played really well together when things were going well. As you said, you got to follow both of you got to follow your passions. And then when things start getting real challenging, suddenly those differences become points of contention, right? What about what about you, Jonas? Because I don't think we actually ever had this topic. Jacob and I's drama overshadowed probably anything that you felt in that moment there. I don't think you and I ever had this talk maybe it would Jacob because you work more with them. But what were your emotions when everything happened? I mean, I was kind of I was kind of leaning on the fact that throughout the whole project, I had been the kind of realism pessimistic realists. I am built to this day and I've come to through a time where I see that see the value of that to kind of what I enter a project, I will always see the challenges that lie ahead. So I never get disappointed. That's a very sad way of looking at things. As you say, Christian, I very much suppressed all of this. I very much suppressed all of this. And at the same time, as all of this happened, I also had a had a breakup in my in my personal life. And then it just became clear that I was moving back to Norway. So it's, it was, yeah, you guys's conflicts overshadowed everything. But I mean, I was feeling exactly the same. It wasn't, it was so hopeless. Like you really tried. It went so well. We had so much, I mean to have confirmation from, from Scott Cohen afterwards that the idea was good. It was just our stance and our social security or social status in the industry that was the problem was kind of the realization that was the reason it ended was really tough. Yeah I think it's interesting about the suppression part of it because if there's something I didn't and that was suppressing it like I worked through it so much and I'm doing I'm still doing the founders thing in the music industry.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Because of Timber and, and every, everything that I've come to know of how to build companies has come from Timber. And one of the things we did very uniquely is that we off started to get good to talk about the worth of music in a way that investors understood what we said. And I've used that in Capella. I think the podcast listeners by now knows what Capella is. But what I also learned is that I need to recognize my weaknesses and being unapologetic about what my weaknesses are and build structures around them where that's absolutely okay. One of the things that I have a very hard time with is commitment, not commitment in the sense of committing to someone. But to something because I'm a, I'm one who creates ideas and inspire people and concepts and you know, it's almost like a Lego. But when it comes to taking this Lego house and building something that actually resembles that in real life, I'm not the best. I can still follow along on the journey and keep on inspiring, keep on adding to it, but I can't build a house. And I didn't know that before Timbre. And I know that now. So, so my position in Capella is, it's this visionary. It's, it's thinking outside the box. It is somehow like a glorified salesman. Like I get the money, I create the relationships. I talk with the people. I do, I do this podcast. Do you get what I mean? Like it's, it's those creative projects that's, that breathes life into other people's work. And that is my role. But that is also sort of my only role. And I frame myself as a CEO, but you know, after working with Tambor, I had this, I'm never gonna be CEO because I saw what you could do. Christian, I was, I don't know if I was jealous, but I was very like confused how you could be so, you could say something and then you would do it like every single time. I also find that impressive. Yeah, and also.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Also on time and, but for me, that was, that was, I just didn't know how, how to do that. I didn't know. So I said to myself, I would never be a CEO. And I'm not a big CEO now, but you know, we've got 20 employees, we've, we have a direction and, and I think that is a CEO. And, and I'm doing a really good job, but it's by also having someone else to do the things that I can't do. So we've hired a general manager. Um, which basically is the Christian to me, but someone who comes later in the prop progress process of building company. And I set the premises of who I am and how I work. It's like, this is me. I'm not going to do this because I'm not going to you do it. And then that fits with that person. So the expectations of their role is already set. And for me, that was the biggest lesson in September. And that is that I'm incomplete and that's fine. Which is such a valuable lesson and being able to see how many different companies you've started since that it does it of course makes me proud as a brother but as a former business partner as well it does make me proud to see that's something you've been able to do. It's completely crazy and it's yeah as both Graham and Christian said I was depressed for months after the camera ended and to see you or the fact that you said, you say all sorts of crazy things. And you have all these crazy ideas that you were just like, no, I'm going to go to Norway and then I'm going to do the same thing again. Just like get back up on the horse. Let's go. It's insane to have seen that. And I mean, I know Capella a little bit and I visit you guys down in Stavanger many times. And yeah, I definitely see a lot of the values. Or kind of the structures are built around the same values that we have with them. Where the kind of, the kind of business professionalized context of music as a product and music as an industry. It's, it's so great to see. Yeah. I think we'll sort of run out the podcast now, but there's a load to be talked about this in private and you know, over, over a couple of beers at one point. But.

Jakob Wredstrøm

What's your biggest takeaways on a personal level? I just gave mine on a professional level, but if you were to comment on a personal level, what's your biggest takeaways from the journey?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Oh, sure. Start. Excellent question. I was thinking about this last night because I was just prepping for the call. And like I said, I haven't really processed any of these investments for a long time. So I was sort of in no man's land thinking about what did I, what were the biggest lessons. And I think one of the big lessons was that in the grand scheme of life, this was such a blip in every saying. That by life will be that I really shouldn't hate myself too much for failing at something because I tried. Right. And so that's more than that. You know, most can say at our age when we tried it and, you know, so we really tried and then, and, you know, instead of being embarrassed about that, um, should be proud for trying because it certainly has given me a lot from trying that. But I do think the biggest realization about myself I found from the experience was that, um, I just wasn't really that resilient as a person. And I think then something that's been proven to me over the last period of time as well, something's happened in my personal life that I just am not really, I haven't been a very resilient person because I've led a pretty dang good life. And so these tough moments in life. They prepare you to be more resilient and they make you strong and make you a better person over time. But in the moment, that's so hard to see. And I think the experience with Amber, um, it will be in such a dark place because I haven't gone through really hard things in the past. And I think it's just a prerequisite of growth. You have to go through hard things, uh, um, and you have to reflect on those hard things. I think one of the things you've done really good is, is Jacob, you reflected on it and you took a lot of positive out of it. I haven't really reflected that much on it and I know there's a lot more reflection to do. But I think it's a necessity to grow from it. So I'm kind of speaking to myself. I'm hyping myself up here, telling myself to reflect more on this and grow from it rather than suppress it. So, yeah, that was a great answer. I think it's very inspiring. Sure. Jonas, what about you? For me, it's kind of the other way around. Or I...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Got from this experience, the fact that being the, first of all, the fact that being the realist, being the pessimist, seeing the challenges is also very much a value, which I hadn't seen before that because I let it get me down all the time and prevented me from doing things. The fact that you know that this might be hard because you're working towards something great and along the way you are going to fail a million times. And you're probably going to go through a bad time, uh, emotionally as well when, when those punches hit the gut, but that's no reason to not do it. Yeah. You are going to come out stronger on the other side. So it's, uh, why not do it kind of, you're going to learn something. I think that's great. And I think this episode is really nice for, uh, people who are interested in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship in the music industry, because it's, it's not something that's talked about that much. In general, but especially not in the music industry. I think, you know, most people when they build businesses, they build them long term, over long time and take very little risk and it's very like bootstrapped step by step. There's many reasons why that is not the best way to build businesses sometimes. But we took a risk and we failed. For me, it's the biggest lesson I've ever had and I wouldn't be without it for a second. Yeah. And, and you know, on closing note, it was quite a, quite enjoyable doing it with you guys, like with all the downs, with all the negatives, it was quite a journey. Um, and you know, I remember I just had Axel, my first child right around the time we started Tambor and I was studying, working and doing Tambor and having a baby and I wasn't tired because I was just so excited. Yeah. And I think that is a magical thing. I think that shielding is a magical thing. And I think the journey we did was a magical thing and it's going to go with us for the rest of our lives, but I appreciate you guys so much for being on this podcast and taking your time. Um, you know, I consider you close friends and, and thank you so much for doing it with me. Likewise. Yeah. I'll say the same, man. Go being here. Well, thank you.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And thank you for listeners joining this rather long podcast. I think there's a lot of things to be said, but I think it was really good. So with that note, thank you guys.