
Startups Are Bands for Hackers - psobot
http://petersobot.com/blog/startups-bands-for-hackers/
======
doktrin
I'm not sure I agree with his final conclusion that the _best_ startups are
somehow profit-agnostic. It sounds like he is romanticizing both successful
startups as well as bands.

It's reasonable to assert that founders who truly _care_ about their product
may, on average, fare better than those who don't. However, it feels a little
presumptuous to interpret the motivations and ambitions of _all successful and
admired musicians / artists / founders_ , en masse and from afar.

Would anyone argue that Amazon was not founded with profit as (at least) a
prime motivator? How about Apple or Microsoft?

Moreover, even if _not_ chasing monetary fortune, people can still be
motivated by a multitude externalities such as recognition or fame - both of
which != passion for the product.

TLDR; The conclusion the author draws is hand-wavy at best and paints a
decidedly black-and-white picture of the musical scene and startup ecosystem.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Nothing is ever black and white. I think the author was trying to imply that
any venture (band or startup) should be built on passion rather than money.
Profit and wealth is a serendipitous reward for hardwork and passion.

~~~
dasil003
I don't fully agree with that either though. Like you say, nothing is black
and white, but on balance I'll take dedication over passion.

------
novalis
"Music reviewers devote their attention to those who care about their work,
and it’s rare to see a “classic” or universally-adored piece of music that was
written for hire."

Let's not forget how european classical music came to be a form of work for
hire where patrons, for variable amounts of time, sometimes decades, payed for
musical art creation. Hope I am not reading that wrong but the op is lacking
historical reference and concentrating on a very specific contemporary frame.

~~~
fromhet
Also, most successful music today is made by songwrites hired for the job. By
this I mean 'commercial' artists such as Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Beyonce-like
ones songwriters.

OP sees this too black and white. With passion comes devotion, with devotion
comes practice, with practice comes performance, with performance comes
sucess. Kinda.

~~~
YmMot
Lady Gaga is prob not a good example since she writes or has a big hand in
writing pretty much all her songs. Like most pop artists she utilizes
producers and songwriters, but she relies on them less than say Rihanna who
essentially has had all her hit songs written for her (or picked up songs
originally written for other singers).

~~~
raverbashing
Correct

There was once an article about a "songwriters auction" where songwriters
would pitch their music to producers of famous singers. (sorry can't find it
now)

For most commercial pop music it's an assembly line really. Several stages
specializing in one thing. McD ideas for McD music. Tastes the same as well.

~~~
JackC
The pop-music assembly line is actually pretty fascinating -- and definitely
staffed by artists. Check out this New Yorker article about Ester Dean, whose
role on the assembly line is coming up with a hook for the producer's
computer-generated tracks:

 _Dean has a genius for infectious hooks. Somehow she is able to absorb the
beat and the sound of a track, and to come out with its melodic essence. The
words are more like vocalized beats than like lyrics, and they don’t
communicate meaning so much as feeling and attitude—they nudge you closer to
the ecstasy promised by the beat and the “rise,” or the “lift,” when the track
builds to a climax. Among Dean’s best hooks are her three Rihanna
smashes—“Rude Boy” (“Come on, rude boy, boy, can you get it up / Come on, rude
boy, boy, is you big enough?”), “S &M” (“Na-na-na-na COME ON”), and “What’s My
Name” (“Oh, na-na, what’s my name?”), all with backing tracks by Stargate—and
her work on two Nicki Minaj smashes, “Super Bass” (“Boom, badoom, boom / boom,
badoom, boom / bass / yeah, that’s that super bass”) and David Guetta’s “Turn
Me On” (“Make me come alive, come on and turn me on”)._

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_seabrook)

I mean, sure it's ridiculous, but these tracks are made by people who are
uniquely good at the ridiculous things they like doing. If they've found a way
to get paid for that, my hat's off to them.

~~~
raverbashing
Very interesting!

So I guess this explains how Justin Bieber's 'Baby' has so many
songwriters/composers. It's _really_ an assembly line

"I mean, sure it's ridiculous, but these tracks are made by people who are
uniquely good at the ridiculous things they like doing. If they've found a way
to get paid for that, my hat's off to them"

Agree wholeheartedly.

------
SwellJoe
Conversely, bands are startups for musicians. There's probably some awesome
business models that recognize that fact, rather than forcing musicians into
sharecropper deals.

~~~
willvarfar
I think the lesson goes the other way; startups will get increasingly share-
cropped.

~~~
mattmanser
I doubt it, a lot of startups could survive on a few hundred clients. Well B2B
ones can anyway.

That's never the case with musicians.

~~~
hessenwolf
VC's seem to operate on a milk-the-founders principle, like record labels of
yore, and the lead singer will be fired and replaced with a better looking CEO
once the songs are written.

------
unimpressive
I was once given a somewhat peculiar reason by a biologist for not learning
computer programming:

"Computer programming is overrated, it's the 'learning to play guitar' of the
geek world."

This article reminded me of it.

~~~
marvin
I think that's too narrow, it should be the "learning to play a musical
instrument" of the geek world. With music theory overlapping Computer Science
theory, and with various technical skills (mixing, rigging, mastering)
corresponding to domain knowledge in various fields.

So these skills would be a prerequisite for doing anything that has to do with
computers and computation. Definitely not overrated.

------
paulitex
People seem to realize this once a year...
[http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs-
rock-b...](http://www.televisionsky.org/2010/04/tech-startups-vs-rock-bands/)
<http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/04/nice-analogy.html>

~~~
jcn
True. Another take on it from an Ignite talk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5UrlKl8l1M>

------
SlackerRouse
Then I'm the annoying guy who plays hits from the 90s on his guitar at small
parties, amazes his drunk friends who exclaim "You should totally make an
album! I have a great idea for a song!"

And I answer "No, no - I couldn't do that. Also, I'm not that kind of person",
while secretly, in the evening, I spend about an hour writing short, simple,
crappy songs for fun - sometimes thinking "maybe I could, if only .." and a
thousand different reasons hammer my mind "if I were younger / had a clue /
had the skills / had an education / had the time / didn't have a family to
support" and so forth.

(Dedicated to all the scriptoldies out there - for keeping the passion alive.)

------
MicahWedemeyer
Slight correction to this statement:

Startups that set out to make a great product are, on the whole, adored for
their work, and often enjoy success as a side-effect.

Startups that set out to make a great product are, _when they get anywhere at
all_ , adored for their work, and _rarely, but sometimes with a lot of hard
work and luck_ enjoy success as a side-effect.

Just like bands, _most_ startups (esp. the "built in a weekend" kinds) will
probably end up being more of a labor of love than a true money-making
venture. That's fine, but don't pretend otherwise.

------
colindoc84
This is written by a guy who has never been in a band. You would think that
fact would be a lightbulb moment that maybe you shouldn't write this blog
post. Apparently not.

------
ssharp
This analogy is a huge leap. Aside from the fact that both endeavors are
largely entrepreneurial in nature, the two things are mostly distinct.

If you are actually trying to succeed as a musician, "success", you are going
to make a lot of sacrifices. The opportunity costs are huge. If you're touring
as a fledgling band, you are most likely giving up the formative years of your
career. The time you're spending with music isn't going to be particularly
helpful in other arenas. If you're hacking at a startup, you're acquiring
desirable skills in the process. If your startup fails, you can still go get a
really good job in SV. If your band fails, you're hitting the reset button.
You could be chasing a career in the music industry for 10+ years and be no
better off than you were a decade ago.

I also don't think the analogy between VCs and record companies really hold up
either. Because of the low returns of signed bands, as compared to funded
companies, the models work differently.

Additionally, as a musician, you're ultimately selling a piece of art. It's
designed by you, and while it may be influenced by the market, the product is
largely determined by your own creativity. A business operates in the exact
opposite way. Business as art rarely work. I can give someone a copy of "Kid
A", have them say "this sucks", reply back "give it a few listens", and the
person may ultimately end up really liking the album. I'm not doing that with
a company. If I think a product, say Basecamp, sucks, and I have to pay $20 a
month for it, I'm not going to give it much thought after my "it sucks"
reaction. We consume art differently than we use other products, because they
are radically different things. Market demands are simply too important for
businesses. They have to listen to the customers to succeed. The path to
success is to take customer problems and figure out a creative solution to
them. The customer is driving the most substantial part of the company.

~~~
freshhawk
"They have to listen to the customers to succeed. The path to success is to
take customer problems and figure out a creative solution to them. The
customer is driving the most substantial part of the company."

I think the analogy is pretty good actually. You seem to have a bit of a naive
view of how music is made a produced. This is a decent description of how
music is made, perhaps with the Apple-ish addition of them frequently telling
the customer what they like rather than always listening. It's completely
treated as a product.

~~~
ssharp
I'm not sure how my view of music is naive. As a completely unsuccessful
musician hobbyist myself, who's toiled with bands and production, I've never
once talked to the crowd after a show and said "what would you like us to
sound like?", or "what should the next song we write be about", or "what would
it take for you to buy a record of ours". Sure, trends are followed, and
people may steer more towards what's popular, but you're not solving people's
specific problems through music, so the type of customer oriented problem
solving that allows startups to succeed is not really relevant to music.

~~~
freshhawk
Right, but I think the analogy was not comparing that kind of band to a
startup. Following the analogy that's more like open source contributors. They
do it because they enjoy the craft and want to make something they will enjoy
and feel proud of, they know/hope that there will be fans when they do what
they feel they should.

VC funded startups are exactly like a band that says "what should I sound
like? What should our next song be? How do we get more listeners really
fast?". They need a hit record to even have a chance of making a return on the
investment that's been put in, so they better be making a top 40 song (or a
mobile social media sharing app/site).

I think I was wrong about your view of music being naive, i think we were just
comparing different types of bands and startups here. Match up manufactured
record label band and VC funded startup and they match quite well. I have some
family and aquaintances who've worked as record execs and you better believe
they look at it as a customer oriented problem solving. None of them like the
music they push all that much, if they like music at all, they just know how
to find/make music that sells.

------
MartinCron
When Zappos was sold to Amazon and Mint was sold to Intuit, I had the same
pathetic angst as when I started hearing Nirvana and Pearl Jam on commercial
radio.

 _I liked those guys before everyone else did!_

~~~
pdmccormick
Ahh, the hipsters dilemma: your sensibilities are offended when something you
cherish sell out and go mainstream, yet you wear the hard earned "I liked them
_before_ they were popular" badge with honour. It's hard growing up and having
your sense of identity and place in the world challenged when you peer behind
the curtain. There is something real to be mourned there, yet we are better
for it.

------
raldi
So what's the musical analogy for a hacker leaving the startup world and going
to work for Apple, Google, Twitter, etc?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Becoming a session musician. An anonymous if proficient cog in the machine.

~~~
raverbashing
Good analogy

There are several very competent musicians working 'as the band' for famous
names or just playing in recording sessions. There's good money on that.

Of course, most of them have their own band, do their gigs at night, usually
just for fun (it most certainly does not pay the bills).

------
SudarshanP
I have no idea why the guys at Planetary Resources do not redirect curious
people to the KISS studies they talk about in their press conference.
[http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Pre...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120307_IEEE_Presentation.pdf)
[http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_re...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/asteroid_final_report.pdf)
[http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTE...](http://www.kiss.caltech.edu/study/asteroid/20120314_ESA_ESTEC.pdf)

I had to dig around for sometime and I thought these papers must be behind
some pay-wall. I was surprised to find them on the KISS website. It is not
that they are clueless about how to bring back an asteroid and extract
resources from it. They just want their MVP to the be the act of prospecting
itself. Also I was really surprised to learn that Ion Engines have been
routinely used before for asteroid missions like
Dawn(<http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ion_prop.asp>). The scaling they need
to achieve for these missions is much smaller than the average non space geek
would expect.

Does anyone here know if the scalability requirements of solar ion propulsion
systems they need for the mission of tugging an asteroid into lunar orbit is
realistically achievable by 2020?

------
Aftershock21
Hacker Hacker Hacker.I am sick of this word. Whats wrong with simple words
like techie. There are far more people considering themselves as Hackers
nowadays even though they are simply an average engineer. Please stop abusing
this word. Was Einstein a Hacker ? How about Leonardo Da Vinci ?

By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you are
interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in
technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B
testing. Please stop.

~~~
unimpressive
>By the way, startups are for people who are interested in business. If you
are interested in business, YOU ARE NOT A HACKER. Hackers are interested in
technology for the technology's sake. They don't do UI, they don't do A/B
testing. Please stop.

"Once a vague item of obscure student jargon, the word “hacker” has become a
linguis-tic billiard ball, subject to political spin and ethical nuances.
Perhaps this is why so many hackers and journalists enjoy using it. Where that
ball bounces next, however, is anybody's guess." \- _Free as in Freedom,
Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software_

I find this particular usage especially amusing considering that the words
"hacker" and "business" were about as diametrically opposed as words could be.
(In the same way that "punk" and "policeman" don't go together.) And yet now
it seems that many businesses are being overrun by people who like to rip
things apart just to see how they work.

Theres a delicious irony in a world where the people who rejected the likes of
IBM as disgusting went on to create businesses that do things like track you
across the web for ad money, or lock you into an environment of rampant ADHD
web posts with side offerings of 'social games' that exist solely to convince
you to waste your time playing them.

------
sparknlaunch12
So startups are like bands without drugs and girls?

Agree with the similarities. Another one is disruptors. Think about successful
bands and how they disrupted the music scene.

~~~
geoffschmidt
It's like you haven't even seen The Social Network.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Fair comment. I was poking fun at the old image of the tech scene.

There is a fitting comic that has a geek looking character threatening a
school yard bully - "if you don't give me your lunch money I will hack your
Facebook account."

Times have changed.

------
personlurking
I guess that makes me a bit of a groupie, and HN, Rolling Stone (mag).

I read on The Verge that the boombox had the highest adoption rate for any
gadget in history. Now we don't need it, we have our computers and we don't
need to drive to someone's house to connect with them either.
<http://i.imgur.com/d29b0.png>

------
BrainInAJar
And just like most bands, the vast majority of startups fail.

And just like most musicians, people who found startups have delusions of
grandeur.

And just like most bands, even the ones that succeed are screwed by early-
round investors (record companies/VC).

------
ssharp
This would mean YCombinator ~ American Idol.

~~~
raverbashing
You jest, but there are a lot of similarities

Of course, YC doesn't profit from very bad contestants, so there's one
difference

But if you see the progression of the candidates through the competition you
can certainly draw several parallels.

YC doesn't have a 'clear cut' winner as AI, still you know that there is a
slight mismatch between 'winning the competition' and be 'market successful'.
One rarely matches the other.

And of course, the issues of focus, strategy, pressure are very similar among
AI and YC. Some contestants start shining early on in the competition, some
have perfect technique, but in the end, it only goes so far if it isn't a
balance of competences.

~~~
ssharp
The analogy I was going for was that American Idol gives people without
outlets to a record label a path to a record deal. YC gives teams a path to
become an investment-worthy company (or maybe even company successful enough
to not need further investments).

However, this ends up supporting the VC = Record Label analogy that I don't
think is strong.

~~~
raverbashing
Makes sense, but yeah, VC as a Record Label is not really a good analogy

Record Labels give much more support to their protégés, and "charge a higher
fee" as well (VCs don't ask for 'creative control' of their startups as an
example)

------
xefer
VCs have effectively the same business model as Record Companies; i.e., cast a
wide net and hope that at least one big fish is landed.

------
JCordeiro
Starting A Tech Company And Starting A Band Are Pretty Much The Same Thing

<http://goo.gl/hNoZK>

------
j2labs
What brand do you play in?

------
naithemilkman
Nice post! I wrote something similar whilst observing my brother in academia
through my startup lenses.

[http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similaritie...](http://pragmaticstartup.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/similarities-
between-an-entrepreneur-and-an-academic/)

------
sopooneo
I am not a musician, but I used to hang out occasionally with a large circle
of traditional Irish fiddlers around Boston. I have never heard anyone talk
about money more outside the financial sector. They talk about it they way a
man dying of thirst might talk about water.

------
kushagrawal
I love the title! :D

~~~
avolcano
It's the first title in a while I've seen and immediately gone, "whoa," based
on the strength of a few words. Smart article, too, of course.

~~~
mahmud
read more broadly, more often.

------
scelerat
I've played in many bands and worked for a few startups. The gist of this
article is dead on.

------
lifeisstillgood
It has the ring of a deep truth.

But, Michael Arrington == Casey Kasem. There is an interesting analogy.

------
DrorY
Well, take a look at interlude, it's an Israeli startup that was formally a
band (and a very successful one in Israel, vocalist is Yoni Bloch).
<http://interlude.fm/team.php>

------
initself
Is it true that being in bands is now less popular because kids are now
hacking rather than practicing their instruments? Or is it just that certain
kids who didn't feel like bands were for them now have a "band" to join?

------
abeh
There is one really important shared aspect: the point at which all the
members of the band/startup decide to go for it - make a serious commitment.

------
outside1234
i was with you until you threw profitability under the bus. the best bands
don't tour just to show their work off, they do it as part of building an
audience for their business, which is selling tickets, selling albums, selling
songs...

------
airnomad
Starting a bend is (still) better for getting laid, but things are improving
there, too.

------
kokey
This analogy can also be extended to writers and the publishing industry.

------
angersock
i have yet to pick up members of the preferred sex at bars talking about my
startup

where are the groupies, the sex, the drugs

what am i doing wrong

(

More seriously: While there are certainly some similarities between the
lifecycle of a band and a startup, the author seems to put forth a very
structured form of the startup lifestyle--I think that claiming there is one
true trajectory does any favors to us.

Also, something to muse on: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold
10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band."

What do you think would be a reasonable mapping of this onto
tech/startups/CS/engineering?

)

------
jiakeliu
The part about pivoting is interesting. For a musician, changing the genre of
the band has to be quite difficult, because an style is likely developed and
the soul to the art will have to be changed. I wonder if it's the same for
entrepreneurs, who likely have an affinity to a particular field due to
passion or expertise. Pivoting, by definition, shouldn't be a complete redo,
but I'd imagine it's as hard of a choice for a startup to pivot drastically as
it is for a band to change genre.

~~~
freshhawk
Bands change genres all the time in order to make it big. Most of the time to
a more mainstream and marketable genre and style to get more listeners and
make more money.

That fits pretty well to me. The problem everyone seems to be having, author
of the piece included, is to spin this analogy so that commercial music
sellouts == bad, commercial hacker sellouts == good.

Accept the fact that an investor funded startup trying to get a big exit by
getting a huge number of users and pivoting as necessary isn't were people
with "passion" or who would object to having to change the "soul of the[ir]
art" would end up and it's a great analogy. As they are both hit based
businesses where the market is heavily influenced by hype from big market
makers and there's a lot of money to be made it's not surprising that similar
patterns emerge.

