Tag Archive: entrepreneurship

Bring It On – a Comment on Competition

by Joey Flores
Opinions and Editorials | January 27, 2012

I remember when we started Earbits – it was called MyOwnFm then – we were several months into it and had only a blog, some low traffic volume, a board of advisers and a few other business-oriented accomplishments under our belts.  We had no technology and, if I recall, no technology co-founder yet, either.  Needless to say, we had (and still have) a very long way to go before our success was ensured.

On one of those early days there was a news article that came out about a company that, based on the description, was exactly what we envisioned for Earbits.  I read it and thought, “This could be about  us.”  They were going to be launching at a big tech conference and both Yotam and I were scared out of our minds that they were going to beat us to the punch.

The day of their launch came and I sat refreshing the conference video clips page over and over waiting for theirs to appear so that I could watch our idea be unveiled to the world, by somebody else.  Luckily for us, and unfortunately for them, the presentation was a relative dud.  You couldn’t tell at all what they were offering, and the presenter spent most of the few minutes repeating himself.  At the time I felt great afterward – they may beat us to market but at least they didn’t come out with the bang they could have.  In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t relished in someone else’s tough times.  But the point is that, it has now been a bit short of two years and this company we were so scared about is still biding its time, to put it nicely.  The reason, as any good entrepreneur will tell you, is because it’s all about execution.

When you have little more than an idea, someone stealing it or having the same idea is terrifying, because it means they have everything that you have.  But really it’s going to come down to whether they can execute on it, and further, whether they can execute on it better than you can.  Regardless, though, at the time this was among the scariest feelings I could have.

Months later, after we had come much further – we had launched our site, secured hundreds of licensing contracts, built up an audience, hired great people, etc. – I began to realize that I was not nearly as afraid of competition from newcomers as I used to be.  In fact, I started thinking, “Go ahead and try to do this.  At least I’ll have someone else to laugh at.  This shit is hard.”  In all seriousness, I started thinking less and less about other small companies passing us up because I see now how hard it is to do what we’ve done.

But, as comforted as I have been about the low likelihood of a new company catching up to us, I’ve still been relatively afraid of larger companies deciding to do what we do.  With all of their assets, it would obviously be a big challenge, and you always get people asking you what you’ll do when so and so does what you do.  They make it sound so formidable.

That’s why my own reaction to something surprised me today.  Another entrepreneur had tried to put me in touch with a very large company to explore some synergies.  That company could be a great partner but they might easily become a big competitor to us, too.  However, you can’t forge big partnerships if you’re afraid to explore them, so I tried to follow up on the intro.

After they didn’t get back to me my friend said today, “I assume they are either super busy – or trying to copy you.”

It was splendid candor and that’s what I like about this particular friend, but what’s even more funny was my gut reaction.  ”Try to copy us?” I thought, “Oh please.  Bring it on.”

This was a pretty big shift in my mentality and it was fun to experience.  A year ago, people asked me what I’d do if the company in question tried to do what we’re doing and I thought about how much that would suck.  Now, I think, you know what?  All that’s going to do is make us work harder and validate that what we’re doing is big time.  And you know what else?  I think we can do it better.  In fact, I know we can do it better.  After all, this is what we do.  We do this one thing, and we do it better than anyone else, and we’ll keep doing it better than anyone else because we care about it more and we have 2 years of experience doing it.  Sure, it will be more challenging to battle the big guys, and by all means, I hope they keep sitting on their laurels and letting us build a killer company.  But even if they don’t, I realized today that I have far bigger things to worry about than someone else trying to start a similar business, even if they are a bigger company with more to work with.

It’s a good feeling, going from scared of a nobody company who has the same idea, to being ready to take all comers no matter how big or small.  The reality is that when you look at the distance you have to go and the massive challenges you have to face along the way toward building a big company – building a great product, getting customers, proving your business model, convincing others to invest in you, scaling at the right time and pace – another company running alongside you is really the least of your concerns.  If you do all of those other things right and focus on your own business instead of someone else’s, there is really nothing that another company can do to stop you from being successful.  If anything, they should really just inspire you even more to bring your A Game.

–

Joey Flores
CEO, earbits.com
joey@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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The Pros and Cons of Raising Money from Friends and Family

by Joey Flores
Opinions and Editorials | July 8, 2011

Joey and Felix Flores

The other day our YC homie and LAL.com CEO Evan Reas wrote a great blog post about seed stage fundraising.  If anyone knows how to raise a great seed round, it’s Evan.

I made a joking comment about how different raising money has been for a music startup that doesn’t have LikeALittle’s monstrous user ascent.  And, given our knack for sharing nearly all of our startup emotions, we might as well talk about perhaps the most emotional experience we have had in building Earbits, and that’s raising money from friends and family.

It would be pointless to compare a friends and family round to a VC round, so this is clearly describing the difference between F&F and Angel investors.

Depends on the Friends, Depends on the Family

Before I get into the Pros and Cons of raising a friends and family round, I should clarify something.  Some peoples’ experience raising money from friends and family might be different than ours.  After all, some peoples’ friends and families are very wealthy.

Ours are not.

Most of them are not risking money they can’t afford to (read: most), but of our dozen or so F&F investors, a two-toed sloth could count the millionaires.

And with that…

The Pros and Cons

Forgive and Forget

Since this is an ongoing joke of ours, I’ll get it out of the way first.  The pro of raising from an investor you don’t know is that, if it doesn’t work out, you probably won’t be seeing much of that person ever again.  Hopefully, without them around reminding you evermore of your failure, eventually you can forgive yourself for losing their money.

The con of raising from friends and family is the opposite.  You’ll not only have a harder time forgiving yourself for losing money from someone who wasn’t taking the risk for the upside and adventure alone, but you may have an awkward ongoing relationship with that person afterward, or not much of a relationship at all.

We raised from nearly every friend and family member we could get excited about our idea.  The joke is, if Earbits fails we won’t have a friend or family member left.

Under Pressure

Because in many cases the previous possibility – a life of uncomfortable silences at Thanksgiving – is very real, the pressure that comes with taking money from friends and family is immense.  Particularly if your friends and family are not wealthy people, the idea of losing their money can be almost unbearable.  The pressure of being a founder alone is enough.  The pressure of being a founder risking someone else’s money can be even harder.  The pressure of trying to be successful with money taken from people you know and care about on a more personal level simply can’t be described.  This is both a pro and a con.  You should already be on your A Game, but this kind of pressure can add to it in a good way.  That being said, founders are already under enough pressure as it is.   Adding more shouldn’t be necessary, either.

No Such Thing As a Stupid Question

A pro of raising money from people who only gave it to you because they care about and believe in you (and maaaaaybe your idea) is that they’ll rarely have questions for you.  They’re probably not going to bombard you with requests for reports or ask you why your numbers dipped from last month.  That being said, one of the pros of working with strong investors who invest in many companies is that they sometimes ask some very important questions, questions that make you think about your business in new ways.

The other side to the question coin is that you might not be able to ask friends and family a whole lot of important business questions either.  If you’re lucky enough that your family or friends have extensive experience, more power to you, but since you probably haven’t picked them for their business experience specifically (like you may have with other investors), you might be on your own.  The right investors will have a lot of experience in your industry, or at least in operating or founding an early stage company.  Having them around can prove very valuable when you yourself have questions.

Hotter or Colder

One awesome pro I have experienced in taking money from friends and family is a “we’re in this together” vibe that has brought me closer with them.  That’s probably because we didn’t take money from anybody with the slightest hint of reluctance.  And so, the jokes about not losing their money, the mutual skin in the game, it’s all been a nice and welcome addition to my relationship with my friends and family investors.  We get that pro with our Angel investors, too, but we rarely sit across from them in a game of Monopoly like we do with our friends (although I challenge any of our investors to Monopoly – anytime!).

The con, which I can only imagine since it hasn’t happened to me, is that I can see the wrong friend or family making bad jokes, or becoming uncomfortable engaging with you like they used to, now that you have their money at risk.  Or, holding it over your head.  That has never and will never happen with the awesome people we have involved in Earbits, but I could see that being a con whether your investors are F&F or not, but more so when you have to see them at every family gathering or BBQ.

There’s More Where That Came From

This might only pertain to F&F investors who aren’t that wealthy to begin with, but it may also apply to those who say, “I’ll give you X, but then you’re on your own.”  The simple fact is, there might not be more where that came from with family.  The same can, of course, be true of any investor.  But the simple fact is that regular Angel investors are definitely in it for the returns and there are no returns if you run out of money.  As long as it looks like there’s light at the end of the tunnel, your regular investors would be wise to double down and give you a little more runway.  Your family investors are less likely to be able to assess your business’ real potential and may just have to decide to cut their losses and feel like they did their part.  You may get a more objective response from a seasoned and risk-tolerant investor.

It’s All In the Family

I don’t know if everyone feels this way or if it’s just an Earbits thing, but our investors are all family.  Every signed investment paperwork is returned with the same words, “Welcome to the family.”  We take very seriously the act of taking anybody’s money.

While I think we’re in as good a position as anyone to talk about the pros and cons that have gone through our heads as we’ve received investments from generous friends and family, the stone cold truth is that we haven’t experienced any of the cons above except maybe the extra pressure.

And so the final point is this:

There are pros and cons to taking money, and there are all types of people.  It doesn’t matter where your investors come from, you need to choose them wisely.  If you pick the right ones, whether they were friends or strangers, it can be a great experience and create a long friendship as well.  If you pick the wrong ones, no lack of prior relationship can save you.  I may say we’ve gotten lucky, but in fact we’ve just been picky.

I highly recommend that everyone else be the same.

–

Joey Flores
CEO, earbits.com
joey@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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Persistence – The 7th Wonder of the World

by Joey Flores
Earbits Company Updates, Opinions and Editorials | July 6, 2011

Photo by Chensiyuan

–

The other day I wrote about growth envy, which is a common problem for company founders to have.   It’s based on the misperception that the results you should expect from your own company should be largely in line with what you read and hear about other companies.  The reality is that, by nature, the results of the companies you read and hear about the most will be abnormal.  If they were normal, nobody would write or talk about them.

But, even when looking at (y)our own company’s results in a vacuum, there is another common misperception issue that can affect your judgment about the results you’re achieving  - and that is what I’ll call The Canyon Effect.

The Canyon Effect

The Canyon Effect put simply is this: Despite the gorgeous masterpiece that the Grand Canyon is today, it started out no more impressive than your average (albeit ambitious) river.  If you were to sit and watch the formation of the Grand Canyon from a river running across a plain (or whatever) to the wondrous place that it is today, it would take over 17 million years.  During that time, as the Colorado River was slowly whittling away at the earth’s hardened surface, it would seem as if nothing important were happening.  But over time, the results were stunning.

The Canyon Effect for Startups

Company building, so I’m learning, is no different.  In your head you have this amazing view of the future – The 7th Wonder of the World that you and your team are painstakingly building.  You can see it.  It exists.  In your head.

But day to day, you see your email inbox.

You see a negligible amount of new users.

You get one more client.

The next day, you get a write up on a blog.  It drives a few more users.

…but it’s still just whittling.

Putting The Canyon Effect in Perspective

For a founder it can be painful to see the outcome you want so vividly in your head while you watch results trickling in on a daily basis.  Why can’t we move faster?  Are we accomplishing enough?  This kind of internal pressure is natural, at least, for the types of people who start companies.  You don’t even have to have growth envy to feel it.  You simply question whether you’re achieving anything at all.

It’s like watching the Colorado River flow miserably across a plain, while you can so clearly see that there should be a canyon there.

But earlier today, one of our team sent me a sales presentation we’re sending out to a big client.  We just started working on the deck not too long ago, and yet I had to make several significant changes to the traction slides in the deck.  We had almost 10% more clients.  And yet, for the past few weeks, it didn’t seem like we’d done unusually well at all.  In fact, the pressure of The Canyon Effect has been particularly strong lately.

Seeing the Layers in the Canyon

This update to our deck got me thinking.

We started fundraising at the end of Y Combinator in March.  Whenever I start talking to a new investor I send them our executive summary.  I only update it if the company’s results between the previous version and the new investor are meaningful enough to bother with taking the time.  That doesn’t mean regular flow of traffic, the addition of a few more record labels, or other day to day results – it means big jumps that made a difference.  In those cases, I make the handful of updates, save it as a new file and send it out.

As I look at my documents folder, I see seven versions of our executive summary between March 25th and June 20th.  That means that in 85 days, I felt that our results warranted updating our executive summary every 12 days.  Looking at that folder is a view into our company’s progress that seems akin to looking at the history of the earth through the changing color of the rock in the wall of the Grand Canyon.  There are layers of change that, over time, have taken our company from water on a plain to the beginnings of something great.

Persistence – The 7th Wonder of the World

A few days ago, I had a realization that Earbits wasn’t just an idea anymore, but a real company and something to be proud of.  Day to day it looks like some answered emails, some successful sales calls, just another spike in traffic.  But there is something to be said for constant and consistent progress and it may not be obvious when you’re stuck in the weeds.

Looking at our history of executive summaries today was an affirmation that the progress we’re making is happening a lot faster than it seems on a daily basis.  Whether they are updated sales pitches, code releases or just old To-Do lists, it can be very rewarding to take a step back and look at what you’ve accomplished over time.  If it still seems like too little, maybe it’s time to kick it up a notch, but I suspect for many entrepreneurs they’ll see something really great forming.  It’s important to reward yourself by taking that step back.  Otherwise, it can seem like 17 million years have passed you by and all you saw was trickling.

–

Joey Flores
CEO, earbits.com
joey@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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Earbits Used to Live in Our Balls

by Joey Flores
Opinions and Editorials | June 29, 2011

Dave Chappelle – Macaroni Necklace

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Earbits Used to Live in Our Balls

This is crazy.

Four years ago, Yotam and I were driving to San Diego.  We were stuck in traffic and I was bitching about my job at an ad network.  We were both bitching about how hard it was trying to get our band’s album out there, or get new people to come to our shows, and at some point, Yotam said, “How do we do what you do for music?”

By the time we got to San Diego, we were rabid talking about JOOK Radio.  That was the first name we had for what would be our own internet radio platform and network, where artists could get access to massive exposure and use it to sell their products, just like advertisers used the network I worked at to market a Bowflex or an online degree.  We thought it was pure genius.

Two Years (Not) in the Making

For two years we talked about JOOK Radio.  I made power point presentations explaining it.  We wrote a business plan.  We talked about it with countless people.  They told us it was a good idea.  We kept talking about it.

I finally left my job.  Did we start JOOK?

No.  I got another job at a consumer internet company in the auto space.

I worked there for just under a year before leaving.  Did we start JOOK?

No.  I traveled to Mexico.  Then India.

We kept talking about the company.

I helped a friend start SportsCampConnection, which is turning out to be a great lead generation business, and I started a consulting company that was only mildly short of a disaster.

At the end of the year, it was clear that I needed to either get a job or commit to one of my projects, none of which my heart was in.  Yotam asked me a simple question…

“What the fuck are you going to do?”

My reply was simple.

“I don’t know.  I don’t want to work for anyone else.  I definitely don’t want to do anymore consulting.  And the only thing I give a fuck about is MyOwnFM.”  (We had learned that JOOK was a bad name for a number of reasons and had started calling it MyOwnFM)

It was true.  The only thing that got me excited in terms of work prospects, was building our company.

“We have to do it, then.” he said.

So we did.

Cut to June 29, 2011

It has been 1 year, 5 months and 9 days since we founded what started out as MyOwnFM and became Earbits.

Yesterday, I looked over at my 2nd monitor and I saw this.

–

As I looked over to see Moe playing on Earbits – Moe, one of my favorite jam bands of all times – a wave hit me.  It was as if my 3 year old child just handed me a hand-painted macaroni necklace.

“You used to live in my balls,” I thought!

Four years ago, Earbits wasn’t even called Earbits; it was just an idea.  Go back a few more months and it wasn’t even that.

Now, Earbits is a company, incorporated in Delaware.  It has investors, advisors, and almost a dozen dedicated team members.  There is a website, mobile apps, t-shirts with our logo on them, and articles all over the internet about it.

There are almost 2,000 bands playing on Earbits, and many, many thousands of people listening to those bands.  People who may not have heard them if Earbits didn’t exist.

Bands come to us and say that their friends told them they have to get their music on Earbits.

People tweet about us and say the most flattering shit.

I’m not writing this to boost our ego.  It’s just that yesterday, as I was listening to one of my favorite bands, not in my iTunes, but on a killer website that me and a bunch of my bad ass friends and teammates built, I was a bit overwhelmed to realize what we have accomplished in just 1 year, 5 months and 9 days.

Earbits used to live in our balls!  Today, it lives and breathes on the web, where many thousands of people see it, hear it, and are affected by it.  Honestly, there is no feeling quite like it.  We have many months of runway and hundreds of great ideas for making Earbits better.  It just keeps growing, and making us macaroni necklaces.

Many thanks to our bad ass team, our killer artists, and the thousands of people who are helping us spread the word about Earbits.  Honestly, this is awesome.

Written while listening to Lawman by Dangermuffin.

–

Joey Flores
CEO, earbits.com
joey@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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The Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

by Yotam Rosenbaum
Online Radio News | June 23, 2011

As a musician, I’ve always been self employed. The only “real” job I’ve ever had was a miserable, 3-year, mandatory service in the Israeli Defense Force.

When I tell people about my lifestyle, many express their jealousy, wishing they didn’t have to go to work Monday through Friday 9-5, which in our day and age looks more like 9-6, or even 7. But just like anything else in life, working for yourself has its pros and cons.

Recently, I have become a true entrepreneur, with a real company and employees.  This also has its own unique benefits and challenges.  Here are some things I’ve noticed about being both self-employed, and a business owner.  The big difference between the two has been saved for #5.

1. Being Your Own Boss

Pros

When you’re self employed or own a business, you don’t have to report to anyone but yourself. There is no one standing behind your back monitoring how good or bad of a job you’re doing. You can make your own decisions without having to get approval from your superior. It is a very liberating and empowering feeling.

Cons

You have to take the responsibility for making all the decisions and stand by the consequences. There’s really no one else to blame but yourself when things go wrong. You have to be your own boss and make sure you are always on the right path. You must constantly ask yourself, “Am I working hard enough?  Am I’m working smart enough?  What can I do better?”

2. Flexible Schedule

Pros

I love having the ability to create my own schedule. I can tailor what I do to my productivity level at that time, instead of having to perform a certain task at a certain time. If I feel tired in the middle of the day, I can simply take a nap and complete my work later in the day, or even late at night. If I can’t fall asleep, I can get up and crank out more work.

Cons

Setting your own schedule can be tricky for people who don’t have strong work ethic and self discipline. My friends often make fun of how rigid I am about going to sleep at a reasonable hour and waking up early to work. I think they often overlook the fact that although I don’t have to report to a boss, and nobody would fire me, I still need to report to myself, and if I don’t get my work done it’s bad news.

Some people find it difficult to balance work with other activities. Without the 9-5 structure it’s easy to get carried away into working longer hours, and weekends. With a “regular” job it is normally easier at the end of the day to completely plug out and enjoy the rest of the evening.

3. You Own It

Pros

If your business is thriving it’s because of your own hard work and dedication. You’re the one to reap the benefits. The reward is not only the financial gain, which is nice on its own, but the feeling of achievement can be extremely rewarding.

Cons

Just like you’d own the success, you’d also own the failure, and you will have to take full responsibility for it. Unlike working for an employer, when you run your own business you can’t just give a 2 week notice, quit and get another job. You’d have to work through the tough times.

4. Pick Your Projects and Clients

Pros

Business owners and the self-employed can decide which projects are interesting to work on. They can also choose which clients to work with. This is rarely the case when working for an employer. The projects are normally dictated from above and the clients can sometime be tough to deal with.

Cons

Although you have the freedom to make the decisions of which projects you’d like to pick and the clients you’d like to work with, this decision may sometime conflict with the need to make money. At that point choosing to work on a lousy project feels like selling out. And once again, there’s no one to blame, it is your own decision.

5. Paychecks That Take a Vacation

Everything I’ve talked about so far described the difference between working for someone else and working for yourself.  Whether you’re a self-employed contractor or a business owner, these things can often be the same.  The big difference between the two is whether your paycheck takes a vacation when you do.

In all of my years being self employed, if I ever wanted to take time off, my income took time off too.  If I’m not around to service more clients, no more money comes in.  When you’re a business owner and you’ve built a business that is stable, successful and cash flow positive, you can theoretically leave, take time off, and still have money coming in while you’re gone.  Eventually, you can even hire someone to handle operations of your business and be making cash while you’ve long since forgotten about the day to day headaches.  That, I imagine, is a good place to be.

The con of being a business owner, is being responsible for the safety, security and well being of others.  Whereas I no longer have to answer to anyone above me, I have people who depend on my decisions to feed their children and advance their careers.  That’s not a trivial amount of stress – but if you believe you’re making the right decisions for you and your team, it can once again be very rewarding to provide others with a means by which to make a living, and the chance to one day have their own businesses as well.

–

Yotam Rosenbaum
EVP of Music
yotam@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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The Importance of Follow-up (particularly in the music industry)

by Yotam Rosenbaum
Opinions and Editorials | June 17, 2011

When we just started Earbits, long before we even launched our site, we talked to people who expressed their doubts about whether we could get music and listeners.  We heard the chicken and egg argument over and over again.  But as fresh and stubborn entrepreneurs, we’ve chosen to ignore it all.

As the head of the music department it was mostly my responsibility to recruit artists and labels.  Here is what I learned so far from the experience.

Cold Emailing

Almost all of my outbound recruitment efforts are done by emails to people who don’t know me, and before we had our site up, also had no idea what Earbits was all about.  My partner, Joey, helped me craft good marketing copy for the email.  I would then do my best to personalize the email with a name.  If I couldn’t find the name of an individual in the company I would at least search their roster and mention a few of their artists’ names and explain how they would benefit from our service.  To be honest, I didn’t expect much.  At the time we didn’t have an awesome looking site; all we had was a vision.  So I was not surprised or disappointed to see that only a small percentage of my emails were responded to.

Follow-up

I opened a new spreadsheet and logged the names of all the labels I reached out to.  I specified any names of individuals in the company, their role, the date I sent out the email, and any other notes.  A week or two later I followed up with another email.  To my surprise I had a much better response rate to my follow-up emails.  I put some thought into it and realized that the people I was trying to reach out to are most likely extremely busy, and they receive tens, if not hundreds, of similar email requests every day.  One way of filtering emails (definitely not my preferred approach) is to simply ignore the first request and see if the person is serious enough to follow-up.

Don’t Give Up

I was encouraged by the early success.  Within the first month we already had a handful of labels who jumped on board or at least showed some interest.  I kept updating my spreadsheet.

A few weeks later I followed-up with a third email.  I received a few more responses.  Maybe it was the same filtering mechanism as before with a higher threshold.  I kept logging all the events on my spreadsheet, including the number of times I approached each label.  Sometimes I got a response such as “We are very busy now, but feel free to follow-up in 2 months”.

I made a note of it and followed up exactly two months later.

Leverage Exciting News

As Earbits was taking shape we started generating exciting news.  Joey, a shrewd salesman, closed our first partnership before we even had our site up.  I used this news to go back to all of my contacts and let them know about it.  Every round of emails yielded a few new labels who came on board.

Persistence

I’m almost ashamed to admit that I have followed-up with some of the labels up to 9 times, often without hearing anything back.  But at the same time, a few of them only responded after the 6th or 7th email.

Just a week ago I had a phone call with a guy from a label, which took me nearly a year to close.  He told me that he was consciously ignoring my emails, waiting to see where Earbits is heading before committing to anything, including responding to my emails.  More than once I received emails with people telling me how they appreciated my persistence.

The Results

Fast forward 17 months.  We now have over 140 record labels on board – more if you count those who signed up but didn’t upload enough content to be activated yet.  Record labels and artists hear about our service and contact us now.  As our service grows, the task of acquiring both music and listeners constantly becomes easier.  We still have a very long way to go, but we’re determined to keep at it until Earbits becomes a household name.

Take-Aways

  • Follow-up and keep track of it.
  • Be polite and professional.
  • If someone is not interested in what you have to offer, don’t keep pushing.  Instead, appreciate the fact that they gave you any feedback at all.
  • If you are an artist trying to get a record label deal, keep knocking on the doors.  This is often what is expected of you.
  • Don’t listen to people who tell you something is impossible.

–

Yotam Rosenbaum
EVP of Music
yotam@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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5 Things To Consider In Choosing Co-Founders

by Yotam Rosenbaum
Opinions and Editorials | May 22, 2011

Whether you are starting a start-up company, a band, or a sports team, choosing the right co-founders might be one of the most critical decisions in the life of your organization.  I’ve never been married, but by now I’m pretty sure I know how it would feel.  Here are 5 things one should consider before entering a partnership.

Communication

Correct me if I’m wrong, but any kind of partnership requires a lot of communication.  I feel like it’s always better to over communicate than under communicate.  Who is in charge of what? Did we hear back from X? Are you taking time off next week?  Less assumptions and more communication can prevent a ton of misunderstandings.

Respect and Trust

If you are serious about your venture you are most likely willing to give all you’ve got for its success.  And you’d be right to assume your partner do the same.  The problem is that we all have different performance levels.  While one person can crank 100 healthy working hours a week, another can do 80.  It doesn’t mean the first person is giving more of himself, he is just capable of more.  Respecting one another and trusting that everyone is giving their own 100% is absolutely crucial.  It’s easy to make the mistake of comparing your own performance to your partner’s.  You just have to trust that they do the most they possibly can.

Ability To Accept Feedback

It is difficult to work with partners who can’t accept constructive criticism.  Some people get very defensive when confronted with criticism.  Instead of using the feedback as a learning tool, they feel like they are under a personal attack.  It is important to learn how and when to give constructive feedback, and be open to hear feedback from the people you work with.

Aligned Goals

A fair amount of marriages fall apart when couples are in disagreement about issues concerning the kids.  This is a large undertaking, which will require full cooperation from both partners.  Similarly, partners in a company would have to have their goals aligned, otherwise it can be a recipe for a disaster.  Couples should talk about their future before putting a ring on each other’s finger.  Business partners should do the same before signing a partnership agreement.  How long are we willing to work together? Are we planing to conquer the world or just do a little stint? How much are we willing to sacrifice?  These are only a few key issues that should be discussed.

Cultural Fit

Partnership means spending a lot of time together.  Take for example a touring band.  The members have to spend days, weeks, and even months crammed together in a van.  It can be extremely challenging.  Sting and Stewart Copeland of the Police had so much tension between them that they got into fist fights.  It’s easier to tolerate one another when things go well.  But when things get rough, and at some point they always do, the personal issues start manifesting themselves.  It is important to work with people you like, people you have a common language with, people you’d be happy to grab a beer with at the end of a long day.

Conclusion

Just like you wouldn’t get married to someone you’ve just met, you shouldn’t get into a long term partnership with someone you don’t know well enough.  I feel very lucky to have two awesome co-founders.  We all have our issues, but at the end of the day we are all on the same page, working our asses off to change the face of the music industry with Earbits.

–

Yotam Rosenbaum
EVP of Music
yotam@earbits.com
Listen at www.earbits.com
Connect with us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/earbits
Listen on iPhone: itunes.apple.com/us/app/earbits-radio/id397894402
Twitter: @earbits

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