@Pud can undeniably build products that are laser focused and useful.
And his minimalist approach to company building is epic and I am a fan.
But it's sort of disingenuous to play David Vs. Goliath here like his line about launching:
"I figured only a small number of smart people would somehow find us among the masses."
He's just like the rest of us - just build a great product and be lean guys!
But oh wait he launched DistroKid on the back of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of registered musicians already using his other site - Fandalism - founded years before.(1)
EDIT - why I am a fan of pud is in the children to this comment he brings a data-gun to a knife fight and sorts out my impression w some facts.
A similar situation: Jason Grishkoff built and grew his music submission site SubmitHub[1] "on the back of" his popular music blog Indie Shuffle. People said it therefore must have been easy, but that's not actually the case. He spent 4 backbreaking months sending over 1000 personalized emails to sign up the initial collaborators he needed to make the SubmitHub marketplace possible. The moral of the story is to be wary of succumbing to availability bias[2] and underestimating the work that goes on behind the scenes.
The other lesson is, as Pud said in reply to you, always be parlaying. Spending years building up an audience that you can market to might sound like "cheating" to those of us without such an audience... but then again, spending years acquiring programming skills before starting an online business might sound like "cheating" to non-developers. In reality, it's simply a smart idea, no more and no less, to leverage existing advantages like a unique skillset, valuable knowledge, an audiences, personal connections, etc.
Specifically, building an audience is a great precursor to launching an online business. Growth is hard, and starting from zero makes it harder. And anyone can build an audience! I recommend checking out Ben Gelsey's analysis of Product Hunt's rise.[3]
> But oh wait he launched DistroKid on the back of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of registered musicians already using his other site - Fandalism - founded years before
I think it's valid to say that's how his product gained traction quickly, but I doubt that's why DistroKid is a successful company (guess, I'm not in the know).
Did I miss where that's against the rules of legitimacy? Or am I misunderstanding what you're implying?
He is a good marketer. Good marketers are always building audiences and brands. Turns out that the audience for a failed brand can support a new one. So what if he uses previous audiences? The question is: why aren't you? (unless you are happy to be an anonymous employee (which is totally ok)).
> But it's sort of disingenuous to play David Vs. Goliath here like his line about launching:
Maybe not, people misunderstand David vs. Goliath as David being the underdog when David was a significantly a lot more skilled and was an archer[1]. @Pud was better, executed better and is beating the competition.
But he entirely bootstrapped fandalism too. So his argument is completely legit. Any one of those competitors could have built a fandalism for customer acquisition too. Anyway, his point is he did this stuff all as a one man shop with no funding. Nobody can dispute that. He is David.
Helps that DK is one of the very few services out there worth paying for. I can build most things myself.
The lesson here in the 'hey I did it' (and the implication) you can too! No you can't. You need some edge. Not you're smart, skills, or idea. That won't cut it. Way too many wanna be moguls out there already working on your idea. Bringing a built in audience, that's an edge. DK a great service however.
I love articles like this it's inspiring...but it really doesn't offer any new insights other than the fact that
Every one man success story on HN was largely possible due to existing audience from another entity that took years to grow
It's pretty disheartening once you read the article and it boils down to this very requirement: You Need An Audience First.
I'd like more insights and details in how lone entrepreneurs of HN were able to grow their audience.
Because when Step 1 is have a big enough audience the rest of the steps are pretty much a no brainer. It's this step that most of us are struggling with.
I've spent years in seclusion writing a SaaS that ultimately resulted less than the annual wage of a North Korean factory manager and it was rough both physically and mentally but it all boiled down to the fact that VC funded startups were able to do huge PR and buy ads, write blog posts, increase Adwords bid prices etc while I was not.
So yeah, you can succeed with a one-man biz outfit but not without an audience. It makes sense why Linkedin is valuable, why Pinterest, Whatsapp, Oculus, Twitch gets bought out even without revenues.
I very much like reading this type of stories where founders candidly talk about their business, how well they are doing, what did it take to get where they are (remove a good chunk of the usual BS, add some numbers). Indie Hackers is a great source (https://www.indiehackers.com) for this type of stories.
I have a feeling that this is the dream of a lot of people on HN. Having an easy to run business with a couple of people, without crazy competition, not needing to go sell it to VCs, and making a good amount of money while running it. Not judging, just observing.
Met @pud once while he was CEO of Blippy. Very nice guy and great to talk to. I also absolutely love his post: "Why Must You Laugh at My Back End" (http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...). He's built lots of crazy impressive stuff by himself and DistroKid is no different.
Please correct me if I'm wrong - isn't this a terrible business decision? It took a small team a year to make a product that is apparently taking the market by storm. Their secret sauce is apparently not some special algorithm, but common-sense automation. If the barrier to entry is actually this low, and they advertise the fact widely enough, they will soon be joined by competitors trying to do the same. They may be ahead of the pack, but they lose their selling point and their advantage faster than they would have done otherwise.
It's one thing to talk about your plan, it's another thing to actually execute it. We've seen bloated startup after bloated startup, I think running a lean (and I mean lean, 3 employees is nuts to me) ship like this is very hard to do and also must be very tough being the sole programmer.
The opportunity already came and went. Four years in means four years of catching up to do. If you come at it with more funding and a larger company structure you might be able to kill DistroKid by burning through a lot of cash, but you won't achieve the same "bottom feeder profitability", and your company might go under afterwards.
Basically, the only productive way to challenge this company is to also go in solo and be tough as nails, and there are almost certainly less contentious niches you can take on if you want to do that.
> The only thing that surprised Microsoft about Netscape's strategy was the brazenness with which the upstarts shouted it to the world. Nathan Myhrvold told me, "There's a good analogy to bicycle racing. In bicycle racing, you don't want to be first until the end. What you want to do is draft the guy in front of you. And then, in the last minute, you dart out. The middleware gambit is about drafting the leader." Yet here was Andreessen publicly proclaiming in the summer of 1995 that Netscape's plan was to reduce Windows to "a poorly debugged set of device drivers." "They didn't save it up," Myhrvold said. "They fucking pulled up alongside us and said, 'Hey, sorry, that guy's already history.'"
Distrokid has been out for a couple of years now and it's easy to see that it's pretty damn popular. Sure someone can get a team together and create the next Distrokid (I'm sure it's happening), but they'll be behind a couple of years. By that time, @Pud will have made his millions and onto the next...
Good question. However, I'd argue the entry to barrier is actually very high. It boils down to their audience base they've already built up over the years. This commands a big market premium because it cannot be replicated with engineering.
So they aren't showing any of their hand (how to build audiences for customer development) but able to convey the image that they are somehow david vs goliath by sharing their stories like this.
> It took a small team a year to make a product that is apparently taking the market by storm. Their secret sauce is apparently not some special algorithm, but common-sense automation
They're taking a part of the market by storm.. specifically Indies with a "do it yourself" mentality.
Speaking as someone who works for a music distributor who has one of the "Big Three" Record labels as a client (Warner, Sony, UMG), I can say that in general we haven't been a great fit for really small time acts (though we're getting better). But the breadth of Distrokid's offerings wouldn't be able to cover that of a major label (and although they claim they could, there's no proof that they could handle that kind of scale either).
For instance, the base Distrokid plan doesn't even allow you to specify a release date (presumably it just releases it right away). Major labels often run promotions in different countries (necessitating different release dates per country). There's also pre-order dates, some of which are tied to instant-grat tracks for certain release dates in certain countries. The fine grained control necessary for a big act is missing from most DIY offerings.
Distrokid is serving a different market than the incumbents, and that's cool. I'd definitely recommend it over the other flat rate model distributors. But there's a reason Distrokid isn't delivering the next <insert big act here>'s album.
I wouldn't want to compete with this. It's a whole lot of schlep [1], and even if you match their features, you'd have to charge less than $19.99 per year. I don't think there's any more room for innovation or lower prices.
> Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Not saying that DistroKid is perfect, but sometimes all it takes to be the best in any given market is to be exactly what's needed and nothing more. It may seem like giving one's hand away, but what could there be to add? There's certainly not much fat to trim. How would someone else compete?
Minor complaint / remark: is there complete list of all stores and services that DistroKid supports (directly, or better even indirectly) somewhere?
All I was able to find were murky statements about 'dozen mayor services' and "150+ others" [0]. That page links "MediaNet Customers" page [0a] that displays 24 logos and links [0b] that displays list of 286 "MediaNet Content Partners". Is that it?
I was particularly interested about Bandcamp and all I've found that DistroKid mentions Bandcamp [1] and Bandcamp mentions DistrokKid [2] but no proof they really talk to each other.
Ah yes! The CFML guy - @pud (that's how I always remember him from that one blog post he wrote)!
This is really cool, and love hearing about stuff like this. I love the idea of running a small team and scaling a product which doesn't have a huge overhead to make something which beats out the current market by just doing a few things better. Hats off to you man. Great stuff!
I love what you're doing! But have to observe disparity between:
> beating VC-backed startups
and
> DistroKid intentionally has a small team and no investors. We’re here to make the world a better place for musicians — not to make billions from them. We’d make ludicrously more money if we charged what the other distributors do.
It sounds like you're coexisting quite nicely with different objectives.
@Pud, would be great to hear your take on what it has been like dealing with the record companies. According to YC:
> Because the alumni network is so large and tightly knit, investors or companies who try to maltreat a YC-funded startup can usually be made to stop. [--> footnote] Except for the record labels, which are effectively a rogue state with nuclear weapons. There is nothing we or anyone else can do to protect you from them, except warn you not to start startups that touch label music. [0]
Your service does various tasks such as cover song licensing which are record label-facing. What has that been like?
Eh, I go with CDBaby because the math doesn't work out for me as a small artist. I'd rather pay $50 and just have my album up forever. 9% doesn't matter much to me because I'm making peanuts anyway. Maybe if I get bigger I'll consider switching over.
It would be really slick if DistroKid had some kind of conversion process for CDBaby / Tunecore customers.
VC cash is great for business that want to be infrastructure for the world. VC cash is a tool, to build a certain kind of large business. You just have to recognize that.
I didn't get the feeling that the point was he didn't benefit (directly or indirectly) from VC funding at all. Only that he was able to remain competitive with companies that were VC funded.
I started a one-man biz that's beating VC-backed startups
Click-bait title in my opinion. It's not because you don't need VCs to satisfy your customers that VCs are bad. They are good when you need them to satisfy your customers. Now distrokid-competitors' problem is not that they have VCs money, it's that they "hired" bad ones. Now, I grant you, good VCs for startups, those who gonna understand whats good and not for your customers may be rare... But look at google and facebook, they did right by taking VCs' money don't you think.
Amazon Video Direct is a worthwhile enterprise to explore. It takes effort. Quite a bit of legwork to fill out forms. Also, the content MUST have a subtitle file...but those things considered, it's highly competitive and gets things on Amazon Prime and pays out real $USD.
Fandalism launch in January 2012. Distrokid in mid-2013. Considering it took @Pud near 4 years to reach these numbers with DistroKid, the year and a half of building a user base with Fandalism is not that big a deal.
This basically would be the same as all the freemium companies out there that offer everything they do for free for a while till they build their product enough to start charging for it later.
My favorite line is in the original DistroKid TC article where @Pud says the goal wasn't to make money with this but to get more people to the social network.
[+] [-] aresant|9 years ago|reply
And his minimalist approach to company building is epic and I am a fan.
But it's sort of disingenuous to play David Vs. Goliath here like his line about launching:
"I figured only a small number of smart people would somehow find us among the masses."
He's just like the rest of us - just build a great product and be lean guys!
But oh wait he launched DistroKid on the back of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of registered musicians already using his other site - Fandalism - founded years before.(1)
EDIT - why I am a fan of pud is in the children to this comment he brings a data-gun to a knife fight and sorts out my impression w some facts.
(1) https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/06/philip-kaplan-fandalism/
[+] [-] csallen|9 years ago|reply
The other lesson is, as Pud said in reply to you, always be parlaying. Spending years building up an audience that you can market to might sound like "cheating" to those of us without such an audience... but then again, spending years acquiring programming skills before starting an online business might sound like "cheating" to non-developers. In reality, it's simply a smart idea, no more and no less, to leverage existing advantages like a unique skillset, valuable knowledge, an audiences, personal connections, etc.
Specifically, building an audience is a great precursor to launching an online business. Growth is hard, and starting from zero makes it harder. And anyone can build an audience! I recommend checking out Ben Gelsey's analysis of Product Hunt's rise.[3]
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/submithub
[2] http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/availability-bi...
[3] https://medium.com/@theunixbeard/product-hunt-s-rise-d49249a...
[+] [-] pud|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deedubaya|9 years ago|reply
I think it's valid to say that's how his product gained traction quickly, but I doubt that's why DistroKid is a successful company (guess, I'm not in the know).
Did I miss where that's against the rules of legitimacy? Or am I misunderstanding what you're implying?
[+] [-] pud|9 years ago|reply
I just made that up. Maybe it'll become a thing.
[+] [-] pryelluw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeblau|9 years ago|reply
Maybe not, people misunderstand David vs. Goliath as David being the underdog when David was a significantly a lot more skilled and was an archer[1]. @Pud was better, executed better and is beating the competition.
[1] - https://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story...
[+] [-] jhong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpweb|9 years ago|reply
The lesson here in the 'hey I did it' (and the implication) you can too! No you can't. You need some edge. Not you're smart, skills, or idea. That won't cut it. Way too many wanna be moguls out there already working on your idea. Bringing a built in audience, that's an edge. DK a great service however.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dpflan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jhong|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] brilliantcode|9 years ago|reply
Every one man success story on HN was largely possible due to existing audience from another entity that took years to grow
It's pretty disheartening once you read the article and it boils down to this very requirement: You Need An Audience First.
I'd like more insights and details in how lone entrepreneurs of HN were able to grow their audience.
Because when Step 1 is have a big enough audience the rest of the steps are pretty much a no brainer. It's this step that most of us are struggling with.
I've spent years in seclusion writing a SaaS that ultimately resulted less than the annual wage of a North Korean factory manager and it was rough both physically and mentally but it all boiled down to the fact that VC funded startups were able to do huge PR and buy ads, write blog posts, increase Adwords bid prices etc while I was not.
So yeah, you can succeed with a one-man biz outfit but not without an audience. It makes sense why Linkedin is valuable, why Pinterest, Whatsapp, Oculus, Twitch gets bought out even without revenues.
[+] [-] jtth|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inopinatus|9 years ago|reply
Steps to reproduce:
1. Identify a poorly served professional segment where the business processes are not the primary task,
2. Automate their processes with vision and passion and empathy for the customer,
3. Make fans for life. Maybe also profit.
Minimum requirements to execute: at least one seed customer; wifi; coffee; time.
Rock on pud.
[+] [-] tom_pulo|9 years ago|reply
I have a feeling that this is the dream of a lot of people on HN. Having an easy to run business with a couple of people, without crazy competition, not needing to go sell it to VCs, and making a good amount of money while running it. Not judging, just observing.
[+] [-] econner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minxomat|9 years ago|reply
Edit: For reference, here's the old website: http://web.archive.org/web/20071019010255/http://xeround.com...
[+] [-] nagvx|9 years ago|reply
Why give away your hand like this?
[+] [-] 40acres|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buzzybee|9 years ago|reply
Basically, the only productive way to challenge this company is to also go in solo and be tough as nails, and there are almost certainly less contentious niches you can take on if you want to do that.
[+] [-] adventured|9 years ago|reply
"The untold story of the Microsoft antitrust case and what it means for the future of Bill Gates and his company."
https://www.wired.com/2000/11/microsoft-7/
> The only thing that surprised Microsoft about Netscape's strategy was the brazenness with which the upstarts shouted it to the world. Nathan Myhrvold told me, "There's a good analogy to bicycle racing. In bicycle racing, you don't want to be first until the end. What you want to do is draft the guy in front of you. And then, in the last minute, you dart out. The middleware gambit is about drafting the leader." Yet here was Andreessen publicly proclaiming in the summer of 1995 that Netscape's plan was to reduce Windows to "a poorly debugged set of device drivers." "They didn't save it up," Myhrvold said. "They fucking pulled up alongside us and said, 'Hey, sorry, that guy's already history.'"
[+] [-] huangc10|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brilliantcode|9 years ago|reply
So they aren't showing any of their hand (how to build audiences for customer development) but able to convey the image that they are somehow david vs goliath by sharing their stories like this.
[+] [-] seabrookmx|9 years ago|reply
They're taking a part of the market by storm.. specifically Indies with a "do it yourself" mentality.
Speaking as someone who works for a music distributor who has one of the "Big Three" Record labels as a client (Warner, Sony, UMG), I can say that in general we haven't been a great fit for really small time acts (though we're getting better). But the breadth of Distrokid's offerings wouldn't be able to cover that of a major label (and although they claim they could, there's no proof that they could handle that kind of scale either).
For instance, the base Distrokid plan doesn't even allow you to specify a release date (presumably it just releases it right away). Major labels often run promotions in different countries (necessitating different release dates per country). There's also pre-order dates, some of which are tied to instant-grat tracks for certain release dates in certain countries. The fine grained control necessary for a big act is missing from most DIY offerings.
Distrokid is serving a different market than the incumbents, and that's cool. I'd definitely recommend it over the other flat rate model distributors. But there's a reason Distrokid isn't delivering the next <insert big act here>'s album.
[+] [-] luckystartup|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html
[+] [-] phantarch|9 years ago|reply
Not saying that DistroKid is perfect, but sometimes all it takes to be the best in any given market is to be exactly what's needed and nothing more. It may seem like giving one's hand away, but what could there be to add? There's certainly not much fat to trim. How would someone else compete?
[+] [-] b_emery|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pud|9 years ago|reply
We also have optional paid services, such as cover song licensing ($12/year per cover song), YouTube ContentID ($4.95 per single) and a few others.
[+] [-] myfonj|9 years ago|reply
All I was able to find were murky statements about 'dozen mayor services' and "150+ others" [0]. That page links "MediaNet Customers" page [0a] that displays 24 logos and links [0b] that displays list of 286 "MediaNet Content Partners". Is that it?
I was particularly interested about Bandcamp and all I've found that DistroKid mentions Bandcamp [1] and Bandcamp mentions DistrokKid [2] but no proof they really talk to each other.
[0] https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1276117-... [0a] http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/customers.html [0b] http://www.mndigital.com/about-us/content-partners.html [1] https://distrokid.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/1601235 [2] https://bandcamp.com/help/selling
[+] [-] urs2102|9 years ago|reply
This is really cool, and love hearing about stuff like this. I love the idea of running a small team and scaling a product which doesn't have a huge overhead to make something which beats out the current market by just doing a few things better. Hats off to you man. Great stuff!
[+] [-] georgespencer|9 years ago|reply
> beating VC-backed startups
and
> DistroKid intentionally has a small team and no investors. We’re here to make the world a better place for musicians — not to make billions from them. We’d make ludicrously more money if we charged what the other distributors do.
It sounds like you're coexisting quite nicely with different objectives.
[+] [-] startupdiscuss|9 years ago|reply
There are many people who want to know about your tech stack. I think the thinking goes: with one developer, it must be an insanely productive stack.
http://pud.com/post/9582597828/why-must-you-laugh-at-my-back...
is old, do you still use the same set up?
[+] [-] leroy_masochist|9 years ago|reply
> Because the alumni network is so large and tightly knit, investors or companies who try to maltreat a YC-funded startup can usually be made to stop. [--> footnote] Except for the record labels, which are effectively a rogue state with nuclear weapons. There is nothing we or anyone else can do to protect you from them, except warn you not to start startups that touch label music. [0]
Your service does various tasks such as cover song licensing which are record label-facing. What has that been like?
And, congratulations on getting engaged.
[0]: http://www.ycombinator.com/atyc/#n3
[+] [-] dyeje|9 years ago|reply
It would be really slick if DistroKid had some kind of conversion process for CDBaby / Tunecore customers.
[+] [-] omarchowdhury|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahyarm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lojack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idoh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmason|9 years ago|reply
All but one of his companies (the one unsuccessful one) were powered by CFML.
[+] [-] quadcore|9 years ago|reply
Click-bait title in my opinion. It's not because you don't need VCs to satisfy your customers that VCs are bad. They are good when you need them to satisfy your customers. Now distrokid-competitors' problem is not that they have VCs money, it's that they "hired" bad ones. Now, I grant you, good VCs for startups, those who gonna understand whats good and not for your customers may be rare... But look at google and facebook, they did right by taking VCs' money don't you think.
[+] [-] erichocean|9 years ago|reply
Anyone know if there is an equivalent for independent films?
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naryad|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajaimk|9 years ago|reply
This basically would be the same as all the freemium companies out there that offer everything they do for free for a while till they build their product enough to start charging for it later.
My favorite line is in the original DistroKid TC article where @Pud says the goal wasn't to make money with this but to get more people to the social network.
[+] [-] tomclancy|9 years ago|reply
Just curious, what % of artists gross over $19.99 a year?