Startups and Rock Bands have more in common than you might think.
Do you remember Linkin Park? The rock band from Washington DC? Or was it Philly? Or Jacksonville? It’s difficult to remember because there is a Lincoln Park in just about every city in America – therein lies the genius of the bands name. Every time they toured a new city, everyone thought that was their home town.
But that is not the focus of this blog. This blog is about what startups can learn from Linkin Park and what rock bands can learn from startups. To begin with, lets look at some fundamental similarities between a newly formed rock band and a startup. Both don’t know exactly what problem it is that they’re trying to solve (an odd viewpoint for a band, but an important one none-the-less), nor do they know who their customers (fans) are, nor what product (or songs) should be made. So they start hypothesising about what the problem is, what they’re going to build and who is going to buy it.
When launching a new startup, if using Lean Startup Methodology, an early milestone is to release a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and begin the #flearning (fail+learning). The goal of a MVP is to test fundamental business hypotheses. When Linkin Park launched back in the late 90s, they were effectively a startup and like a startup they built a MVP. Their MVP were demo’s. They didn’t record and produce an entire album, instead they wrote a couple of songs and began a dialog with their fans (customers) by sending out their demos (product) in order to get feedback (validated learning). They were validating some fundamental hypotheses that musicians make when recording an album: People will listen to our music; People will tell their friends about our music. Linkin Park did this remarkably well, listening to their fans (customers) and adjusting their product (iterating) based on their feedback (validated learning), eventually confirming that people wanted their music (product/market fit) by gaining a significant following (traction), all achieved before releasing their first album. When they did release their first album, they put the PR/Marketing machine into full swing (scale) and the album sold nearly 5 million copies in its first year, became the highest selling album for that year and won them the Grammy for best hard rock album (according to Wiki). Not bad for a startup.
But not all rock bands are lucky enough to follow this same trajectory, just like not all startups can scale their very first product. I feel for those bands. If Sandi Thom (2006) can post a video to youtube and have a record deal and hit record within 1 year, or if Lana Del Ray can reach 2 million youtube views with no promotion or marketing within one month (before she got famous), then surely other bands can to. If they just keep writing more songs, playing more gigs, doing more facebook promoting, recording better quality albums, working with more experienced producers, getting a better drummer, a better guitarist, a better manager…
Sometimes a band needs to re-evaluate their current direction and make a fundamental change in the music they write, just like a startup sometimes needs to. The Lean Startup Methodology proposes that startups set clear goals and hypotheses before setting out, then analysing key metrics enabling them to prove or disprove their hypotheses. In the case of disproving their hypotheses and failing to reach their goals on numerous successive occasions, the startup is better positioned to make the judgement call of whether to Persevere or Pivot because they can see their track record. Rock bands also face this problem, however they do not have the framework with which to recognise it. For example, they’ve been playing gigs for a year, released a couple demo’s or maybe even recorded an EP yet they can still only get 20-30 people to each show. They’ve got a website, they’re on youtube, facebook, twitter, myspace, soundcloud, iTunes. They’ve got a steady stream of visits/downloads/followers, but its not increasing. So they keep persevering despite all the evidence that they need to Pivot.
Perhaps someone should publish ‘The Lean Songwriter: the Lean Methodology for Songwriting’. Unfortunately I don’t think many bands or songwriters would follow this methodology because most “don’t write songs to make money.” But perhaps they should. Is that not the easiest way in which they can make a living from their profession, by writing songs that people want to pay money to hear? Why has it become acceptable for rock bands and songwriters to hide behind the veil of “it’s not about the money” as an excuse to run their businesses poorly? Should the music schools who are training tomorrows rock bands and songwriters be teaching their students to analyse their businesses using principles from the Lean Startup Methodology?
After all, what’s the point of spending all that time and money creating a product (music) that nobody wants?