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How we blew our shot at beating Spotify, spending two metric truckloads of cash doing it
1. How we blew our shot at beating
Spotify, spending two metric
truckloads of cash doing it
by Espen Dalløkken
JavaZone 2010, 8. september, Oslo, Norway
2. Who was I?
●
Espen Dalløkken, Folldal
●
Chief Technical Officer of Ezmo
●
Part of the Ezmo leader group
●
Became the owner of the Ezmo Wii
These are all my own subjective
opinions and might differ from
others...
WTF??
3. The Time line
●
2006 - FAST had developed mDisk and
worked on mMusic
●
January 2007 - mMusic became a
separate company: Ezmo
●
May 2007 – official launch of Ezmo
●
Autumn 2007 – lawsuit in Denmark(!)
●
March 14t 2008 – Ezmo shut down
6. The Stack
Player Uploader
Ezmo Web Application
Trans coders FAST Service Delivery Platform
(SDP)
SAN
Databases
7. How we'd make money
●
Recommendations from friends is the #1
reason for music purchase
●
Recommendations from friends in the player
●
Automatic recommendations
●
One-click buy option in the player
●
Advertising
●
Contextual advertising of music
●
Storage costs limited when detecting duplicates
with finger print matching technology
13. Numbers do not lie (well, not these ones..)
●
We did not convert traffic into users
●
There was no viral effect, people did not
invite their friends
●
Those who created accounts, were not
active
14. So what the f**k happened?
●
None of us played enough golf
●
We weren't a real star-up
●
Failed to understand what it takes to
innovate
●
Lack of a clear market leader and
competitors
●
Our timing, in hindsight, was not the best
●
We lost focus
15. The only sane thing about golf is...
●
Penalty strokes are added to your score
when they happen
●
Our over all Plan was not adjusted the first
time we knew it was flawed
●
We kind of ignored The Plan, while our
investors kind of did not
●
Recruited people according to The Plan
●
We should have faced the music upon our
first failure
16. Internal start-ups
●
You might end up living in a make believe
world
●
You're not feeling the pain you should
●
Your legacy will hold you back, they don't
care as much as you do
●
You should break all ties (but don't burn all
bridges)
20. The original quote
"If a man has good corn, or wood, or
boards, or pigs to sell, you will find a
broad, hard beaten road to his house"
Ralph Waldo Emmerson 19th century intellectual
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/6/1996_6_90.shtml
21. The American dream
"If you build a better mouse trap, the
world will beat a path to your door"
The movie “Field of Dreams”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097351/
22. The entrepreneur's motto
"Build it, they will come"
http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2007/the-book-the-myths-of-innovation/
23. No path to Easy Street when innovating
●
All the stories you hear about usually
mention the good things
●
Innovation happens through hard work,
dedication and sacrifice
●
Just having an amazing ideas has never
been enough
27. No real market leader
●
We where battling iTunes+iPod
●
Became a problem as investors did not
see how our company placed it self in the
marketplace
●
Most of our competitors are now either:
●
in permanent hibernation
●
or got swallowed by some weird company
●
everyone except Spotify, who rule!
29. Chose technology best suited for the problem
you're trying to solve and disregard your own
competency
30. The technology was not quite there...
●
State of mobile technology was pretty
bad when it came to multimedia
●
Social media platforms weren't open for
extension
●
Cloud technology was still wearing
diapers
●
Adobe AIR was still in beta
31. Show me your 'assets' there young man
●
Owning your core technology is very
important
●
“They” don't care as much as you do
●
Investors look for this when evaluating
your company
32. We didn't own our core technology
●
Third party platform helped speed up
development early on
●
Ended up hurting/killing us in the long
run
●
We “only” had the brand, the people, the
users, the knowledge and the player
34. Methodology is just a way...
●
●
..of motivating people who aren't
●
..of making people who don't care, care
●
..of spending time on something which
doesn't matter when you're a start-up
35. Democracy is overrated
●
“Design should not be a democratic
process”
Paul Boag http://twitter.com/boagworld
●
You need a champion / super star / (or some
crazy guy with a turtleneck sweater who loves apples)
●
Without clarity in decision making you
end up wasting time
36. Do you really need a methodology?
●
“Getting Real” by 37 Signals is all you
need
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/
●
Provides more insight for start up
companies than regular agile books
●
F**k Scrum: our method was Cake and
your iterations had themes based on the
team reward
38. Backlog or a long list of things to do
●
Can be a distraction from your actual goal
●
Can prevent you from changing decisions
●
Instead: focus upon the vision, not the
details of some list
39. In summary
●
Internal start up? Leave the nest!
●
Own your core technology
●
When you mess things up, tidy up at
once
●
Innovation= blood, sweat and no tears
●
Methodology? Totally overrated, daaah
40. I can't wait do something like this again..
●
I realized that you can actually have a
great job AND live in Norway
●
There is no better feeling than working
with what you think is the coolest thing
ever
●
Having failed once I know a few things
that I won't do again, which puts me one
step ahead of you other guys & gals
41. That's it! Thank you very much for coming
and I hope you all succeed where we failed!
Abuse, praise, money or whatever you like:
espen@dallokken.com
http://dallokken.com/espen
http://twitter.com/leftieFriele
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