From Bootstrapping to Partnering With Sony — Seth Miller, Rapchat

We would be dead, for sure, if I didn't learn out of code. And it's an invaluable skill that I'll have in this organization and future organizations. It also just helps me think about things, like it's a really great way to look at the world sometimes. (upbeat music) - Hey, you're listening to the subclub podcast. A show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing subscription app businesses. We'll share insider secrets from the top subscription apps on the app stores. Let's get into the show. - Hello, I'm your host, David Bernard, and with me as always, Revenue Cat CEO, Jacob Heiting. Our guest today is Seth Miller, founder and CEO at RappChat. Seth is on a mission to democratize music creation with RappChat's mobile app. It takes a friction out of making music and has helped millions of artists unleash their creativity. On the podcast, we talk with Seth about bootstrapping his way to signs of product market fit, raising money from strategic partners like Sony Music and what it's like to have Facebook completely rip off your app. - Hey, Seth, welcome to the podcast. - How's it going? Thanks for having me. - Yeah, it's been a long time coming. You and I first chatted way back in 2019, and you were like the first office hours call I ever took at Revenue Cat, so, oh wow. - Yeah, go way back in my Revenue Cat days. - It tells you how bad of a CEO and we've never actually spoken perfect on the phone. And in two years. - Or how good David was. - Yeah, I was like sold after one call. I'm like, all right, dude, what do I sign up? How do I get this going? - We have a lot of cross-connections 'cause you're also an adjacent portfolio. Like Nico, is it co-investor? But then, yeah, customer. And we're also both Ohio based. So yeah, a lot to cover. A lot to cover. - Yeah, we gotta hang out. We should, I've been thinking about anyway, it's beautiful in Ohio today, but we're gonna save it. Not gonna make it in Ohio podcasts. (laughing) But maybe kick off and tell what is RappChat? - Yeah, absolutely. So, RappChat is the easiest way to make music on your phone. So we have an iOS and Android app. You showed me a rap you made earlier, but you really just tap in, open the app. We've hundreds and thousands of free beats on the app. So, you just pick a beat, you can record over it, and then you can share that anywhere. So, you know, we have people making full length, studio quality songs from their phone, and sharing it to Instagram and SoundCloud, and then also on platform, we have a social layer as well, which is really cool. But yeah, pretty much recording studio in your pocket with a community, with a social layer. So kind of similar to like a Visco or Instagram for music. And our mission's really to democratize music by providing access and tools to, you know, the next billion music creators. How did you get on this idea? - Well, I mean, like a lot, like just scratching my own itch in the early days. So, I mean, almost eight years ago, when I was in college, apps were really starting to become a thing, and same with social networks, and UGC platforms that, you know, let you create content and share it. So, you know, the day golden era of Vine, Snap, all that. And there was nothing for music. And I also had a hobby of just freestyling with my friends. So, we'd get together, throw on beats and rap, and some people would sing and just create all sorts of stuff. And it was just something I noticed that was like, yeah, this should exist on your phone. I should be able to do this with my high school buddies that are on a different campus that I used to do it with. And that was really it, just scratching my own itch. And then, over time, I think we've really come to realize that there's just this massive opportunity to do this at scale for those that really want to make music and take it seriously. And so, kind of outgrown my own use case a little bit, even though we have people that come and have fun, but really we're focused on providing tools for the everyday artist that historically has been kind of gate-keaped out of participating in music. And so, we try and give them everything we can in their pocket and still feel like we're only getting started. It's not as easy to pirate logic these days, I imagine. Maybe used to be. - Yeah, right. - When did those early days look like? So, like, did you learn to code? Did you have a coding background? Did you, yeah, when did those early days look like? And when did you get the app out? - Yeah, I mean, pure chaos, and it's not too much different today, you know, it's just a little more organized. Yeah, the first version of the iOS app was June, 2014. I think it was June 7th. And that was really like, wouldn't even pass us an alpha version today, I don't think, like, especially with how good some of the test flights are. But, you know, it was very basic. It was, you could open the app, record one track over like 10 predefined beats that had to come with the app store bundle. Like, we didn't even have server side, like beats. - Sure. - And, like, we just want to test that people do it. And, you know, of course, the first couple of months is just getting friends off Facebook and family to like, download it. But then, start to notice, like, you know, a little bit of traction and then more traction. And then, basically quit my job. I was like, all right, I got to, I got to really go after this. And that, exactly, that's when I taught myself how to code too, because I had a lot of help in the early days, just from like friends, faculty members, anyone I could get to like work on it. But then, after, you know, I noticed there's just like, it basically early signs of product market fit, I guess, if you will now, but people sharing it. I was like, I really want to make updates to this thing. And I can't afford any engineers. And I don't know anything about fundraising. So it was like the only way I could make any updates and then wrote really shitty code for like three years. And, but got enough traction and proof to kind of, you know, enter the startup space, the fundraising space. And now, luckily, we have really amazing engineers. And I still write some code here and there. That's probably not that great, but, you know, I love it. So, did you have any co-founders? Yeah, so we, I mean, we had a team on campus in the early days that, you know, we're helping out. We've had a lot of people along the way help out in different parts of the journey. It's been like an epic journey, you know? And lots of ups and downs. But yeah, we've had lots of different people help us out. And now we have a fully distributed team and still relatively small, 10 people. But lots of great product builders. And yeah, it's a lot fun. Yeah, David can probably talk more to the pain of not like having on staff. Like, it's not so much, I mean, the cost is a thing for sure. But like, I think a bigger thing often is the turnaround time, right, the iteration time of not having, well, you know, even if you're a, you know, product person who's non-technical and you have a technical co-founder, there's even like, friction there and communicating the ideas, right? If you're not really in sync. And so having that all in one mind, it can really like speed things up. And in the early days, that's what it's all about. All right, it's all about iteration speed. It's all about getting, you know, different sticking stuff, different stuff to the wall, to like as fast as possible to see what takes off. So, yeah, that's what the advice I think. I don't know if there's anybody that listen to this. There probably are people in the podcast in a similar situation where they're like, maybe they didn't study programming or whatever. Like, it's gotta be, I mean, I don't know, so that you can go against this if maybe it's not the case, but it feels like it's probably the best way to invest your time is like, get to the basics, like as fast as you can. Yeah, I think so. I mean, the amount of time you'll spend trying to like, find a co-founder that codes. Like, you know, sure, the ultimate is like, you find a co-founder you guys gel and like, they know how to code and, you know, you know how to do everything else. But like, I don't know, we would be dead for sure if I didn't learn how to code. It also just helps me like, think about things. Like, it's a really great like, you know, way to look at the world sometimes. Oh, yeah, you're not bamboozled by engineers too, which is nice. Yeah, and I can like talk to engineers. And I think like, it really helps me get buy-in. Like, I can go to the engineering team and be like, yeah, no, tell me the real shit. Like, you know, what's really going on? And we can have technical combos as opposed to like, you know, kind of the, I don't know if it's just, whatever stereotype of early CEO that's like, I need this and this is why and I'm gonna go sell. And, you know, that can get you into trouble. And yeah, so anyway, I'm a huge advocate. I get some people are really, it's a scary thing to learn. It does take time. You're really bad for ever, basically. I don't think you're ever going to be good. Like every engineer you work with is going to be like, oh, exactly, exactly. But I do think it's really helpful, especially those in the early days, because like, trust me, you can look at Google and be like, oh, I need to raise money for my startup, which is what I did. And eventually we did, you know, do some fundraising. But it's, again, the amount of time you'd spend trying to figure out how to fundraise and just jump in this like, really deep ocean versus, you know, a skill that you'll have for life that will instantly, you know, provide value in your current job even. Yeah, I'm all for it. I mean, I try to get people to code no matter what. I guess like you mentioned kind of that, that early stage and like, finding product market fit. Like, how long is something called wandering the desert? Like, how long did you wander the desert? Like, how long until, and then when you first started to see those indications, 'cause part market fits this like, it's a bad term because like, it means different things to different people and founders can deceive themselves all the time and, you know, even YC is like, I think one of the best orgs for defining this and communicating this, their definition's not very good, right, they're like, it just feels like it's going faster. And it's like, okay, like, you can still line yourself really easily. So what did that look like for you? Yeah, no, I could not agree more and could go on. Lots and lots of rants about this or just in general, like, you know, benchmarks or ranting like that. I think it's, you know, and I'll just speak for myself, 'cause like you said, it's like totally different for every company, but the first sign is when I remember, I was working the first and only job I had out of college I was a systems engineer at Progressive Insurance. So I was in their data center, really like working on servers. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was there for like six months. And I remember I was like at work searching Twitter, like rapchat on Twitter, just the term. And then over time, like more and more people just kept sharing their tracks to Twitter and like saying how much they love it. And then App Store reviews were a big thing. I mean, it was just clear that we like, like people truly loved the product. And that was kind of the first step. And you can't really like quantify. It's not like, oh, there was a thousand Twitter. It's, you know, quotes or something. - You weren't measuring like day one retention, day 30 retention. - I was, I learned all that stuff over time. And like we track, we track a lot of that stuff, but I'm telling you, like the most important stuff was like the qualitative in the early days. - Yeah. - And then, but you need qualitative at scale. Like it's not just like your friend, you know, it's like a plus, you know, 50,000 I may use at that time or whatever it was. And I think that that was really key. Like the first thing is like people were actually able to record music on their phone and share it. Some people were really good at it. Like this is kind of like obvious now, but it wasn't back in the day. Like there was like technical challenges. There were, you know, people didn't think it would be a thing. Some people still don't think it's like a billion opportunity, but like, you know, we had to prove out that people would really record music on their phone. Like that was, it seemed so obvious. - What was the propeller heads app? Gosh, what was that called? - They've had a few, I think. - There was, there was, I remember that's bad podcasting. I don't know the name of it, but I remember there being such a really key, like music apps that were kind of around that era, right? It's like the phones were finally getting fast enough to be able to do this without like just falling over and dying in like 13, 14 timeframe. And Andrew, it's still like really freaking hard to get right. But I mean, over time, now we have like a process of like how we think about, you know, does our product work for a certain market and it's changed. Like I would say you never really, we're not in a desert, but you never stop wandering. Like your product evolves over time, the market evolves over time. We've seen different personas evolve and grow in our community over time. And now like I said in the early days, a lot of it was providing just like a fun social media app that was music based for everyone. And now while we do have those components, it's much more about providing a really great recording studio in your pocket with a community of creators for the everyday artists. Like so now we've actually, you know, zoned in a little more and focused on one or two specific segments. And we have really strong metrics, engagement, now subscriptions for that specific persona. So I think that's a big thing. Like in the early days, you read all these blogs and you know, what to look at for retention or what to look at for product market fit. But a lot of times it's not married with context of like personas. And so for the first three years, I mean, we're getting whatever millions of downloads a year, but like this person in India's here to have fun, this person in Georgia's here to take it seriously, and we were just looking at it all blended. And so like once we learn to actually be like, no, like now we literally ask, like why are you here? Like what are your aspirations? And then we view things through that lens. That's been one of the biggest unlocks. Like it seems obvious again, but if you don't think that way, then in the early days, you're just kind of like wandering. Like well, why is my day one retention like not changing? It's like, well, you know, you're getting 30% of your users from this like really bad channel and they're low intent. And like you should filter those out 'cause that's noise, you know? - It's so tricky though, because I was in this similar position when we were trying to work on growth at elevate. And you can really easily that thing where founders are trying to lie to themselves. Like it's a very easy way to lie to yourself, right? And be like, yeah, I have a great retention. If I just ignore all the users with bad retention, right? And it's like, yeah, yeah. - I think context is the important thing, right? It's like, okay, like what are the actual contexts for this? And I mean, it makes me think of the photo room founder who we had on a couple weeks ago. I don't know, ordering the pockets comes down, but they also had a similar situation where they found like within their greater user base, like a persona where retention was really strong, intent was really high. And then it's kind of great because it'll give you, I feel like from a founder and product perspective, it gives you license to focus, right? A little bit and be like, okay, like we found this profile that's going to be our most important. And we're going to like really put our energy here and it kind of clarifies a lot of like things for the, you know, product decision making. - One thing to interject on this real quick is that I think a lot of people underestimate just how amazing Facebook got at doing this for founders because that the feedback loop and Facebook's algorithm and how much data they had on people prior to app tracking transparency and Apple has kind of unwound all of this. But that's part of why Facebook has worked as the like user acquisition main channel for so many apps to grow is because all of what you were talking about Jacob and you were talking about Seth, they just do it automatically with really sophisticated AI and way more data than you're ever going to have to understand people's intent and the types of people who are going to work well in your app. So when you're feeding those subscription monetization events back to Facebook and Facebook's experimenting with $50,000 of your money, what are they really doing? They're doing what you can do. And now with app tracking transparency, we're going to have to do it more. Is there finding those personas and then advertising to them to get you that return on investment? And I think people underestimate how great Facebook did at finding those amazing personas that work in your app. But now like it's kind of back to doing what you've done. So I'd love to hear a little bit more. So early on just seeing it on, you know, Rapschat trending on Twitter and like following all that stuff. Like I think a lot of apps over instrument early and just need to like hit some critical mass first. But then as you get a little further along, you've talked about building this like product market fit engine. Like what's your stack? And then how do you think about measuring and learning about those personas and then kind of building for them and orienting the app around them? I mean, there's a lot there. So I mean, again, for context, like we are now just getting into that game, which is like the worst time ever to get into the game where, you know, we're actually trying to bring those users in with our dollars at scale. Maybe, but, but you know, it's been disrupted, right? So there's opportunity. Yeah, you'll have probably a better time than somebody who's trying to adapt from something they got used to. Right, we're going the other way pretty much. Like so. And Facebook charged a lot to do it. That's the thing. It's like they captured a lot of that revenue by figuring it out for you. But if you can figure it out and then find those channels that reach those personas in a more cash efficient way, you actually are at a better place. It's just more work on your side of things. But then you understand your customers better so there's benefits too. So, so maybe set put it on a timeline for me. So like you said, 2008 or 2009, so you're getting on a decade of working on this, right? It's been, it's been, how long have you been working on that? 20, 2013. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah, you're good. This is before the podcast, I'm sorry, I'm very broadcaster. So, 2013. So still, OK, 7, 8, 8 years or so. Yeah, yeah. When did, when I guess like, we are when did to kind of lead into David's question, like when did you kind of transition from like, maybe it's recently, but like at some point did you go like, OK, like, how do I grow this thing? Like, what's the, what's the, you know, I see this happen in a lot of these consumer apps because consumer apps really, maybe they're inherently viral, but they almost always have to have something like to drive the growth, right? Like some sort of mechanism. When did you ever have a point where you like started to transition and start to think about that more as part of the company building? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, to date, like, you know, we've had over 7 million people create music in over 100 countries and over 80% of that's been organic. So it's like, you know, we've really, that was our whole thing forever because we didn't have capital. We may have had capital, but we didn't have enough to like even have remotely a good budget. So we really, yeah, we kind of tweaked and refined our viral loops in the early days because that's all we had. So when I say scrolling on Twitter, that was like the first instance before you could eat. There was a time period where you couldn't even post on Twitter. You had to open the messages in the app. And then we made it really simple. Again, all this shit's so obvious now and how every app does it. But, you know, we made it really simple to like post a link to your rap chat to your Twitter and your Facebook. I remember as only Twitter and Facebook like two ugly square buttons 'cause those were the things at the time. And that worked though. I mean, we saw a 10X return on that. And I mean, to date, you know, that type of flow come in, create content, share externally, bring your friends in. Some of them will either have the app. Some of them will go to the landing page on the website, download the app, that loop. I mean, that's been millions and millions of downloads. So, you know, we're kind of lucky in that sense that, you know, being a UGC and having some network effects. Like, that's really been key. And just continue to like improve the onboarding, improve the recording experience, improve the sharing experience. Like, at some point, we, you know, added Instagram and video where we auto-generated a video for you. That was a really good moment because people, and now that's like our most used features, like sharing a video of your track 'cause those do better on social network algorithms. So, I think, you know, we've kind of had the core loop identified for quite some time. And it's just been consistently tweaking and investing and making that better. Now, since we've had that and that's kind of driven itself and still drives itself, you know, we're looking at all these different other components as well. So, we're testing out some paid stuff. We're testing out like different types of like content marketing and like we have our own podcast now. And we really are bullish on like, you know, creating educational content for the mass music maker across different channels. And think we can do some really cool stuff there. So, we're starting to explore different parts of like the growth stack and, you know, even web like SEO and web. We haven't invested in it. And we think it's a huge opportunity because we want to expose this content to everyone. And we can create unique experiences per platform. And we have the bandwidth to do it now. So, now it's kind of the fun part, whereas, you know, before it was, yeah, pretty much all organic. - Surviving. - Yeah, how did you make money with the app like throughout the history of money? Did you realize subscriptions were the only and best way to make money on the app store? - Yeah, nice plug. No, I mean, we didn't, we didn't make money forever like until last year. I think we hit like, we're hitting year one. So, we'll, you know, figure out these yearly renewals and all that. But, yeah, we didn't make money. Like, we basically punted making money. Jerry's still out. Like, I think if I were to start another app company, I would just implement subscriptions way earlier. But, you know, this is what, when we started and we raised our first round of fundings, we've raised, you know, three rounds of funding. And when did you raise your first round? - First draw was 2017. And it was very much like, of course, the investors are like, no, no, no, don't make money, you know, grow user base, do what Twitter did. And then you can always make money. I've got some right here, just keep raising money. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Essentially, like just get on the treadmill of M.A.U.'s and then at some point you can do an advertising layer. And that's how it's done. Like, that's, that's, and, you know, it's not like we had any much better ideas either. And we're like, all right, like, yeah, let's just keep growing the user base. How did you get this four years? You just like eating ramen and working side jobs and stuff? - Yeah, dude, yeah, yeah. I mean, so two of them were in college. There's like part time, you know, like grind in. It took a minute to just to get the test flight out and then the first version. Then after progressive, I, for a year, you know, I just, I mean, I cashed out my 401K and made some decent money at progressive and sold Bitcoin at like $250 of coin and things like that. So that was great. Maxed out some credit cards. I mean, whatever, though, like, yeah, I was surviving. - It was real scrappy until that, that first round. So I mean, that's, that's the trade off, though. Like you don't, either your app makes money and like you can flow and like kind of live off it. Or yeah, you got to do that kind of stuff and then eventually bridge to capital. So I was kind of curious like how you got there. - And to be honest, like that wasn't the only time we had to be scrappy. Like even after the first round, you know, like a lot of companies, we were kind of like, okay, we scaled our user base. Like I think, I don't know, 10X after the seed round, but it still wasn't quite like series A level. So we were kind of stuck in between rounds and it's like, oh shit, back off payroll. Okay, like here we go again. And you know, it's, there's been moments, multiple moments like that. And without revenue, it was like, you're kind of at the, you know, it's a, it's a safety net, right? Like it's something you can go back on, right? That, that, that, I've, I've, I've been the receiver of that advice, not, not in this round that building revenue cap, but in the past of the like, just go, go, go. And it's, it's not bad advice 'cause it does like, that's how Instagram did it, right? There's examples of companies that, but it's that classic like you, you know, people with a portfolio of tens or hundreds of companies giving advice to somebody with a portfolio of one. And like, good, I know. The risk, the risk equation is fundamentally different there, right? Between people. And it's just one of those tensions with venture capital that exists and like you just got to negotiate. So, yeah, it's, it's, yeah, you know, it's a story we've heard all too much. And I think it's why, you know, I, I beat, obviously I've got a horse in the race, but like, it's why I think subscriptions are great, right? 'Cause it just, like you can still use venture capital and in fact, like I think it's can be very accelerated, right? But, yeah, but like you have options, right? And you're like less fragile now. I mean, and I'm happy to say like after that grind, now we're absolutely in the best place we've ever been. We have, you know, recurring revenue. We have more cash at the bank that we've ever had, like multiple years of runway. And we should hit cash for the positive, like pretty soon. So it's like totally different ballgame. And I think, James, you heard the question. We turned on subscriptions, yeah, about a year ago. And it really changed the like perspective of product building too. And I think that's a fundamental difference. Like when we were raising our seed round and, you know, we had, I mean, we do. We have a social network on top of our tool. And people were like, hey, why don't you just try and get to like a billion users? Like that really changes how you build product and what type of futures you prioritize. Like, yeah, you're going to be more like, okay, let me put in another sharing. Like let me really nudge you to share, like eyeballs, right? You don't care, you don't care what's behind them, right? You're just like, you basically focus on the top of the funnel instead of the middle bottom of the funnel. And like the subscriptions, right? Yeah, I mean subscriptions to bottom bottom of the funnel. And that's cool because it kind of focuses, it focuses you more. And that's, that was just a really, it was all big unlock like last year. And, you know, frankly, we had to figure out how to make money. We were kind of like in between again. And yeah, it just came to us. David came to us and convinced us to do revenue casting. Yeah, I forgot that that was the, that was the case. I mean, that was, you know, part of the thesis of what we built too was to like, ideally lower the barrier and stuff like that. So, but how has, like has, has that? Because I think there's one that you kind of mentioned, just like top of funnel versus bottom of funnel. And you think of an app that's driven by virality. There's like this advantage is to reducing, right? To like, so you must be balancing that really delicately, right? Because you still, you don't want to, you don't want to take the gas out of that, that viral loop. Yeah, I mean, especially a year ago when we're like, oh man, we've had a free app. We have like, you know, 400,000 maus or whatever it was at the time. And we're about to introduce this like paid product. You know, it was kind of nerve-racking and how to do that tastefully. But, you know, we took the approach where we didn't pay well any of the current functionality. Like you could come in, you could do everything you did before. In fact, we upgraded the free functionality as well. And then we built new stuff. So like new vocal effects, new ways to like automatically make your song sound better using algorithms. And a few other cool things that people wanted. And we pay well like additional functionality. So I think that was really crucial to do it that way. And we spent, you know, a few extra months building that. But that was key. And then people converted. And they're still converting. Because it's just like you get the core experience you come in. And then, you know, we gradually level them up. And we've launched one subscription products. We have rap chat gold, which again, unlocks the premium creator tools. But now we're working on a second one that we're going to layer on top that helps these artists make money and get their songs on Spotify and Apple Music. And that's going to kind of complete the artist journey. So building subscription products can be like really fun and fulfilling for both parties. You know, it's like we're finding ways to help you in your career. And also like we don't have to starve either. You know, it's like we can both grow together. And that probably sounds too happy. But like really it is like it's been awesome. You know, it's almost like an efficient market, right? Where people are paying for value to turn for value. You know, you're getting created, right? Like, oh, it's almost like a good way of doing commerce. Like who knew? So tell me a little bit more about the fundraising process as an app and kind of being-- and you said there was that kind of in-between time where it's like you had all these signs of product market fit. You were going after the big opportunity. And then when you switched to subscriptions, it wasn't too long after that that you wouldn't raise money, right? So did the subscription product really take off or was it just early and signs of it really taking off that seed investment? When we close that round, you're talking about that's whatever public and that was around Nico. And adjacent came in. You know, we were a couple of months into subscription. So it's not like we had a ton of data. And we weren't even like fully rolled out. Now, we had proof that people liked it and good conversion rates and stuff like that. But I think that was iteration one of the paywall and iteration one of the flow. And like, really early. But I do think it changed how investors perceived our company. And we proactively changed it, too. We're like, no, we're building subscription products for our best users. And like, you know, we were able to kind of take control to pitch more so than before, where it's like, you're not making money. How are you going to make money? Are you going to be a social network with ads? Or are you going to be like a tools company? It's like, no, like this is what we are. Like, you know, and that really put us in control. And yeah, once we got Nico and a few other, like, it was also just a good time in the market. Like, I feel like in the past couple of years, you guys have seen, there's been a lot of activity on the investor side getting into subscription apps on the market side with IPOs, on the founder side, with building really great apps that scaled. I mean, a Jason's whole portfolio as an example. So I think people were also, like, that was the first time where the market worked in our favor. Because before we were a music tech social app, it's like, no, I want to fucking touch that. Oh, you're like, you're like, yeah, you're like Instagram, but smaller. Yeah, yeah, right, like, and so it also, like it was kind of a perfect storm, I guess. And yeah, we were very fortunate to get in the right investors that understood the market and also understood, like, the vision, like, the vision was a lot clearer. And like, I know Nico really latched onto it. And his kind of thesis was perfect for like, what we're doing for music. So yeah, it just, it was a good fit. And obviously, like, Sony was in it. And like, you know, that was kind of a big key moment to get validation from like the actual music industry where it's like, oh, there are a lot more open and flexible to some of these new coming technologies and apps and companies. And in fact, like, see value and working together, that kind of knocks down that historical music tech graveyard of the industry killing every music tech startup. They learned their lesson once, probably. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I'm really curious about Sony specifically. And then, you know, you've already been talking about Nico, but you after after raising that round and go through that process, what's your perspective? And maybe even any advice to people thinking about this, about that kind of strategic alignment and the kind of value ad, you know, finding that, that company investor, founder, fit, any lessons you've learned from that? Yeah, I mean, it's hard. One, like, I was going to say, I was going to ask like, why, how you, because it sounds like your leverage different change, probably, right? From like, this first guy, because I can imagine, did you raise his first rounds in Ohio? Yeah, it's some in Ohio, some in the Midwest, a couple, you know, small funds on the coast, but mostly it's got to have changed drastically since even those first couple of rounds, right? Like, it's gotta be. Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, we have a lot more live. I mean, we're, we can be a lot more choosy. We've got to pick like really great investors as of late. It's a whole different. Yeah, it's been, it's been crazy, crazy awesome. But yeah, I mean, working, I don't know, you'll get a lot of different advice in working with strategics or big industry partners. And depending on who you talk to, someone will say, don't touch them at all. Someone will say, if you can work with them, work with them. You know, all I can say is from my experience, like, it's, it's not easy. Like, you're working with a massive, usually a public company and they have a lot more process than than you do. So like, literally getting a deal done is just going to take longer, be more strenuous, probably have a couple strings. We were fortunate enough for it to be like a really good, like clean, same terms type deal. But like, it's, it can be really difficult. And that's kind of up to the founder and the company to figure out, like, is it worth it? You know, for us, major record labels are like, still kind of the end state for a lot of potential artists in their journey. Like, they still provide a lot of value if you get to that point. So like, of course, we want to like, for the long tail, for our, you know, millions of creators give them that opportunity. And if we can help bridge the gap to like, get signed at some point, that's really, that's really interesting to us. But yeah, it's hard. And again, it's very contextual. It depends on every deal. It depends on every company. And in general, it's just, it's going to take, it's going to take some time, yeah. - Dealing with like a big company like, like Sony, like a venture deal is probably the only thing you're probably told for at this stage. 'Cause like, that's a bit cleaner, right? Like a venture deal, it's like, they invest money. Yeah, if you can get it on the same terms as like another venture investor, like it keeps it clean. Versus like, if you're working on partnerships or something like that, it gets more complicated. And I think those differences, and I'm sure that's probably something you're thinking about going forward is like, how do you actually like, begin to really engage on those partnerships? I think that's even harder. So, in this specific case, or like maybe a more general case, like a venture, a small like venture investment, can be like a nice way to kind of just like, get your foot in the door with a company, or like a strategic, just kind of meet people, just kind of give them some visibility. And then as you grow up, I would caution against like, trying to engage on some big hairy strategic like partnership deal, I would like push that out until you get a bit bigger. And like you said, like, can match the like, the band with differences a little bit better. Yeah, have like, our own general council for a little bit. Yeah, a partnership first. I mean, you need to make it run partnerships, right? Or CIO's main job, right? Like, yeah. And that might, it's probably not the best you see your time at this stage, right? So, no, I totally agree. I mean, that's pretty spot on. I mean, how did you even get an intro? I mean, if you don't mind sharing, it seems like it is such a perfect fit, but even though it's perfect fits, like sometimes it's hard to just even get your foot in the door. Email, CEO, Sony.com, right? Can we get a Zoom call? Honestly, like, that's, shit, I don't even know. I mean, I think someone may have introed us, or I reached out to somebody. I mean, we've had a lot of different contexts. I mean, over the years, and you guys know this, but like, now, okay, we've been startups for five, six years and have pretty good network and investors, partners, founders, and it's just kind of a flywheel. Like now, you know, things come in, things go out. Like, it's kind of an engine. I think with that one, it was later on in my like, startup journey. So I had a lot of kind of connections out there already with the other major labels too. It's like, you know, we've talked to, we've kept in touch. That was one thing I think we've done really well throughout, like, our time, even though we've, you know, we've been around for a minute, but we've consistently like kept people updated, whether it's investors, whether it's potential employees, whether it's partners, and, you know, sometimes like the guy you knew or a girl, or whoever, four years ago that you were talking to at a specific part of a bigger company is now leading venture, right? Like in that, that type of stuff happens a lot, and I don't think this is one of those instances, like I literally think we talked to one division of Sony, and then someone like introduced us to another, like, oh, you should talk to the US music department or whatever, and, you know, all that to say, like, it's just happens. Like you just reach out to people or people reach out to you. There's no like magic formula. These big places have venture teams, typically, right? Or they have like some venture part of their corp dev wing that's like, has, you know, funds, and knows what they're doing, usually. But, yeah, I mean, it's tricky too to like pick partners, like, 'cause, yeah, you also, like, we're an interesting company in this instance, like, we have kind of many implicit partners, right? - Yeah, right. - And, you know, there's no like, there's no like, cap table, you know, wedding rings between any of us, - Sure, sure. - Which, maybe Simplifiers or doesn't. - I thought you guys owned like 10% of our app chat. - Yeah. - Yeah, that was, that was, that's how you got our free plan. - Right. - In the early days. So you didn't read the full, you didn't read the entire terms of service. - Sorry, parody, parody, comedy. - Hey, I did, I did wanna ask Facebook, kind of jumped into your space not too long ago. - Where were you? 'Cause you, you, you remember when you saw this, but what were you doing when, like, you saw like, Facebook like cloned you guys? - I honestly think I might've been sitting right here. Like, I think I was just working. (laughing) - It was nothing special. Like, that's like a founder moment. Like, there's these moments where you're like, oh, somebody just like a bullet just grazed my ear. - Yeah. No, I wish I could say I was like, at the gym on the treadmill and then it came in and I like jumped off the treadmill. - Statistically, it's most likely you're sitting in your desk, but. - Yeah, statistically, yeah. No, it was, it was kind of a, like, I don't even know how to describe the emotions. I mean, I was just like, I kind of laughed. It was just like, okay, you know, I definitely wasn't like scared or super worried or freaking out, like, you know, it's maybe, I don't know, 2019 me or something. Or in the early days, I would have like, oh shit. Like, now I can't get venture funding or now I can't like keep building. Like, they're gonna crush it. But, I mean, we've been around and cemented ourselves. So, yeah, I just, it was kind of funny and ironic and then it went like many viral on Twitter with a lot of, you know, my network and other people. And then I had friends sending it to me like, oh, dude, what do you got to do? And I'm just like, I don't know, man. Like, just probably download it and see how bad it is and go from there. Yeah. Yeah, it was, and honestly, it was just kind of a fun thing. Like, you know, it did, like we got press around the round and then some people could, you know, write about that. And it was kind of a funny story and somewhat of a badge of honor. Like people, you know, they copy a lot of the top apps. And again, it's just kind of like validation that like clearly you're onto something. I mean, they use the same color scheme emojis at, okay, one of my most proud things. That's the stuff that makes you angry, right? As a founder, it's not that they cloned you. It's that they stole the little details, right? That's what makes me mad. The thing that really got me was like for our like button, right? It's a flame. It's like an emoji. And like when you hit it, it like turns into the actual emoji flame. And I always thought that was like the sickest thing ever. Like they did the same exact thing. I was just like, like, I mean, that's what the little things are what confirmed that they actually kind of like really looked at your, your app. But no, it's been, I don't even know what they've been up to. I don't even know if they shipped updates. It's zero concern to us. And I think it was just kind of fun. It was like funny to share with the team and investors. And, you know, a lot of investors are like, hell, yeah. Like I think it's fine. Like keep going and you hired somebody of that team. Yeah, right. Oh, trust me. I would love to. Cause like, just think about like, yeah, I, I think you've got the right mentality about it. I'm not even telling you this is like trying to make feel better. Cause like think how much more skin in the game you have. And I don't know who built this is probably some product managers, like promotion packet project or whatever. I'm being condescending to people working big companies. But, but but think about it. Like this, you know, this is a, this is a one time thing. There's trying out, right? This is your passion, right? This is your life. I have less whatever years, right? Like good luck. Unless they just happen to be way more towns and way more funded, which may be Facebook is, but like they're not, they don't execute perfectly on everything, right? So I just think you just smile. You just feel like, yeah, let's go, right? It's not like Apple's competing with you and being like, we're preinstalling a chat rap app on the, uh, on the phone, which, you know, could happen. But it does sleep. Yeah. I mean, garage band. Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, the thing is also like, look, in the early days, we were, I'm just sharing this for context. Like we were, you know, one of the first apps that actually, that you record your voice over a beat and share. Like that was like new, okay? Now there's plenty of apps where you can come in record vocals or, you know, different types of audio repeats and like music making apps are kind of a commodity. But what we've done that I mentioned and we kind of fell into this was like, we built that social layer, that community layer and you can't replicate that. You know, like they can come in and replicate the tool and have a feed, but like, no, dude, we already have like hundreds of thousands of like passionate creators have been with us and have been riding with us. And my favorite thing was when Complex tweeted it out and like Complex being like a very like cultural industry outlet and they tweeted out and the responses to that were just like the most hilarious thing. I don't know, I can say like half of it. But it was like basically like, zuck this like reptile coming into like, you know, culture, culture, culture and like all shit that like would be my worst nightmare people said about us and they don't. I guess just are we're authentic and, you know, we really care about the community and that's, you know, that's number one. - That's awesome. Well, I think that's a great place to wrap up. We're coming up to the top of the hour. But I did want to give you a few seconds to pitch. Yeah, I knew you're hiring and you get a lot going on right now. Any specific roles at the company that you think our audience might be a great fit for? - Yeah, for sure. I appreciate that. I mean, really just like product builders and I say that like broadly. So engineers, designers, growth marketers, we're looking for really great people to help us scale. Again, we're still a small team. 10 people, fully remote and, you know, really looking to scale the product and the company and now that we have some stability, it's a great time to jump on board. And yeah, I mean, we really like, you know, we really think that this era of mass music creation has begun and we kind of kickstart it, but we're only getting started, right? And we just have, you know, a really strong opportunity to provide, you know, the everyday stack for the everyday artists and that's our passion. - Yeah, that's amazing. I took a look at your cruise page. It looks like there's some great opportunities there across the whole stack, which is fun. So yeah, which position were you looking at, David? (laughing) - You guys are welcome to have this conversation, but just let me leave the room, please. (laughing) - I'm kidding. - For Mark. - I mean, I do have a background in recording. - I do a engineering. - It does. - Yes. - True. - Now, I'm not in the market. I have too much fun having conversations like this with people like you, Seth. - All right. Thank you for listening to Subcut Podcast, right? (laughing) - Now, that's a great place to go out on that. Thank you so much, Seth, for being on the podcast. And, man, it's been great. You've been so generous with your time and just sharing, and Seth's been on multiple other podcasts. He's been on App Promotion Summit. And so, I love it when people in the space are open and share about the successes, the failures, how they're building things. So thanks for your time today. And for being so active in the broader App Maker community. - Yeah. No, I mean, and I just want to say thanks. Thanks for you guys. The podcast is awesome. I listen to it every episode. And yeah, not to plug your product, but your product, like, you know, we love it. And it's been instrumental in building a real business over here. So we're really excited. And yeah, I just appreciate you guys. - Get dusty in here. (laughing) - Thanks, Seth. It was great to meet you. - All right. - Yeah, likewise, man, let's hang out. So, you guys take care. - To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player. Thanks so much for listening. It's all next time. (upbeat music)