7 ms·

"That's what sold me. One slide."

83 points by cwan 15y ago

mcantor 15y ago
Perfect idea for a business-selling slide. It answers two powerful questions: 1.) What gap are you filling? and 2.) Is there a precedent for success when filling gaps of this type?
rauljara 15y ago
As this anecdote demonstrates, it is very powerful to be able to organize information in a way that reveals gaps and holes. Another famous example: the periodic table. What Ljung did was make a periodic table of social media. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the way he organized his table is not the only way one could do it, and that a different organization might reveal more opportunities.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
To me that slide says that SoundCloud is simply following a trend. A "___ for ___" company isn't one that I would bet on long term.
- simonw 15y ago
  Investors bet on that kind of pitch all the time. There's a reason it's such a common way of describing a company: it's really, really effective. If you can capture the essence of your startup in just three words you'll find it a lot easier to explain to people what it is that you do.
borism 15y ago
still haven't sold me on that one...
marquis 15y ago
For anyone who's curious John Cage would be considered the grandfather of 'sound'. Beautiful example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKE0f1FGiw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKE0f1FGiw When I watched the Soundcloud video, I thought of the sheer influence Cage had on modern music.
JoshTriplett 15y ago
I wonder how well that one slide would have worked in the absence of the numerous previous conversations.
mikeleeorg 15y ago
I love the lines: "I met Alex Ljung, founder/CEO of SoundCloud a number of times and each time he pitched me on his business. Each time I said no." I love them because they show how perseverance pays off.
Murkin 15y ago
Warning to visitors: The 3min video has no relation and DOES NOT show the slide in question.
- fredwilson 15y ago
  Warning to visitors number 2: The title of the post is Sound Someone put a new title on it here and changed the point of the post
  - groovy2shoes 15y ago
    Warning to visitors number 3: The video doesn't tell you anything about what Soundcloud does.
    - jaycieh23 15y ago
      soundcloud does sound.
kwamenum86 15y ago
Is it me or is a social network just for sound obviously a bad idea?
- recursive 15y ago
  It might be just you.
  - kwamenum86 15y ago
    Is this something that you find compelling? Does sharing sound intrinsically valuable to you? Do we need a social network just for sounds? I don't get it.
    - rudiger 15y ago
      Sharing music is inherently social.
      - mgkimsal 15y ago
        music yes, but not necessarily all sounds. However, if they'd pitched it as 'music', people would say 'myspace, been there, done that'. "Sounds" are one of those things that have to be consumed synchronously and as a whole (generally speaking). Long and short form text, and pictures, can be compressed, sliced up, moved around, and we may get the gist of it - and can easily share. Videos... not as much, but we can still take a small segment of a video/movie and get value from it. Songs, probably similar to movies, but sounds as a broader topic, not so much. At least, not to me.
        rudiger 15y ago
        What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
    - rhizome31 15y ago
      Sound can be music. SoundCloud is a very good platform for professional and amateur musicians to promote their work. The interface is slick and for the kind of music I'm interested in (reggae, dub, electronic music, drum'n'bass, dubstep...) there's a vibrant community of musicians regularly uploading great sound. I like the fact that SoundCloud does only one thing and does it very well.
pg 15y ago
I would not treat this story as a sign of how to convince VCs. It is almost never the case that VCs say yes because of one magically convincing point you make. Fred is not a purely functional VC (by which I mean not that he's dysfunctional, but that he's stateful). This slide was accompanied by lots of other evidence, including multiple prior meetings. The slide was just the final increment that pushed him over into yes. It is very unlikely that if a random person had walked up to him and shown him the same slide, Fred would have been convinced. What convinces VCs is, in order, (a) growth, (b) the founders' personal characteristics, (c) what you say to them. If you seem like an effective person and you have graphs that go up steeply, your pitch could be a bunch of platitudes and they'd still be eager to invest. (As would we, to be honest.) Whereas if you seem like an ineffective person and have no traction, you could have the best story in the world, and they will all say no. (Here we're a little more forgiving; we try to distinguish between genuine ineffectiveness and similar but curable phenomena like youth, inexperience, diffidence, and fear.)
- brlewis 15y ago
  Therefore, if you have the best story in the world, take it to potential users first.
- mseebach 15y ago
  So it's a classic instance of focussing excessively on that single straw that broke the camels back, not the many, many straws that preceded it.
- NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago
  I don't quite 'get it': So, "Could you expand on your answer a little, please". You seem to be saying that the key is "traction", significant and growing rapidly. Then it sounds like someone who was just featured on the TV show 'Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" and has significant 'traction' growing rapidly would get a VC investment? Or so could someone who opened a pizza shop in a hot, new shopping mall. So, it sounds like nothing about the core technology, Buffett 'moat', potential business size, or business planning is relevant? Then, suppose the business is a new Web site. Suppose the founder gets from his ISP a static IP address and 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. Suppose his largest Web page can be sent for less than 200,000 bits. Suppose he half fills his bandwidth 24 x 7 for ( 15 * 10**6 ) / ( 2 * 200,000 ) = 37.5 pages sent per second. Suppose he sends three ads per page and gets $1 per thousand ads displayed (CPM). Then his revenue would be greater than 1 * 3 * 37.5 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1000 = 291,600 dollars a month. Now just why would he accept equity funding? Net, it sounds like, for an entrepreneur, when equity funding might help, his project is 'too early', and, by the time the funding is available, the VCs are too late. So, it sounds like VC funding is for where (A) the business has suddenly encountered some problem and needs cash fast or (B) the founder wants to take some cash off the table and not for usual business formation. Then back to the restaurant: All across the US, restaurants and Main Street businesses get built without VC funding, and commonly those businesses need much more in capital equipment, ovens, site renovation, trucks, etc. than a Web site filling 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. So, if those businesses don't need VC funding, why do new Web sites?
niklas_a 15y ago
That's just silly. If you seriously let one slide convince you, you are bad at making investments. What about the team, current progress, previous achievements?
shin_lao 15y ago
I don't like when people try to find a single reason for decisions, especially in that case. Generally there's a couple of reasons spread over time that eventually trigger a decision. The worst part is that it's very difficult for us to make a list of these reasons because: * We don't remember all of them and * We want to believe we are rational and therefore exclude the irrational reasons That being said I think it's paramount to be able to explain your business and why it will work in few words because that way you can spread the idea within and outside the company easily.
nirvana 15y ago
I must confess, I immediately started thinking about a similar slide for my startup, with each of the areas which had been successfully conquered in the past, and then a last one for us. It's kind of an easy formula, at least for what we're working on.
pace 15y ago
Strange post, feels like blogspam. As Murkin already said: the 3 minute video (which can't be forwarded) has nothing to do with this mentioned slide and as PG said, it was for sure NOT the slide that sold Soundcloud to Fred, it was clearly the traction at that time. Just check Alexa. Wondering why Fred posted this, maybe Soundcloud needs some attention. The Soundcloud founders did some really good job regarding building traction and raising dumb money. But c'mon this network IS about music and not sound. And it's so overrated, this thing is a kind of Dropbox for DJs with all the legal struggles the music industry will soon approach them with -- and then everyone including Fred will realize that an exit is far far away or never will happen ...
- fredwilson 15y ago
  The title of my post is Sound Someone changed it here It is not at all about the slide It is about sound and why it matters
CurrentB 15y ago
That video seems to be the exact opposite of a single convincing slide. I watched it and have no idea what SoundCloud is supposed to do. In the context of social media platforms, I would think that sound, for the most part, would be music. The video hardly mentions music and talks about generic "sounds", which may be interesting from some perspectives, but I don't have the faintest clue why it would be a be the basis of a missing youtube/twitter/flikr/whatever as the slide mentioned implies.
kgermino 15y ago
>That's what sold me. One slide. This 3min video expresses it well. I think that sentence lane makes it clear that it wasn't just the slide that sold him. The slide was the single thing that made everything click and allowed him to see the vision but if all he knew was the slide I doubt the guy would even get a second glance.

83 points by cwan 15y ago

Perfect idea for a business-selling slide. It answers two powerful questions: 1.) What gap are you filling? and 2.) Is there a precedent for success when filling gaps of this type?

rauljara 15y ago

As this anecdote demonstrates, it is very powerful to be able to organize information in a way that reveals gaps and holes. Another famous example: the periodic table. What Ljung did was make a periodic table of social media. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the way he organized his table is not the only way one could do it, and that a different organization might reveal more opportunities.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago

To me that slide says that SoundCloud is simply following a trend. A "___ for ___" company isn't one that I would bet on long term.

simonw 15y ago
Investors bet on that kind of pitch all the time. There's a reason it's such a common way of describing a company: it's really, really effective. If you can capture the essence of your startup in just three words you'll find it a lot easier to explain to people what it is that you do.

borism 15y ago

still haven't sold me on that one...

marquis 15y ago

For anyone who's curious John Cage would be considered the grandfather of 'sound'. Beautiful example here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKE0f1FGiw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KKE0f1FGiw When I watched the Soundcloud video, I thought of the sheer influence Cage had on modern music.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

I wonder how well that one slide would have worked in the absence of the numerous previous conversations.

mikeleeorg 15y ago

I love the lines: "I met Alex Ljung, founder/CEO of SoundCloud a number of times and each time he pitched me on his business. Each time I said no." I love them because they show how perseverance pays off.

Murkin 15y ago

Warning to visitors: The 3min video has no relation and DOES NOT show the slide in question.

fredwilson 15y ago
Warning to visitors number 2: The title of the post is Sound Someone put a new title on it here and changed the point of the post
- groovy2shoes 15y ago
  Warning to visitors number 3: The video doesn't tell you anything about what Soundcloud does.
  - jaycieh23 15y ago
    soundcloud does sound.

kwamenum86 15y ago

Is it me or is a social network just for sound obviously a bad idea?

recursive 15y ago
It might be just you.
- kwamenum86 15y ago
  Is this something that you find compelling? Does sharing sound intrinsically valuable to you? Do we need a social network just for sounds? I don't get it.
  - rudiger 15y ago
    Sharing music is inherently social.
    - mgkimsal 15y ago
      music yes, but not necessarily all sounds. However, if they'd pitched it as 'music', people would say 'myspace, been there, done that'. "Sounds" are one of those things that have to be consumed synchronously and as a whole (generally speaking). Long and short form text, and pictures, can be compressed, sliced up, moved around, and we may get the gist of it - and can easily share. Videos... not as much, but we can still take a small segment of a video/movie and get value from it. Songs, probably similar to movies, but sounds as a broader topic, not so much. At least, not to me.
      - rudiger 15y ago
        What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
  - rhizome31 15y ago
    Sound can be music. SoundCloud is a very good platform for professional and amateur musicians to promote their work. The interface is slick and for the kind of music I'm interested in (reggae, dub, electronic music, drum'n'bass, dubstep...) there's a vibrant community of musicians regularly uploading great sound. I like the fact that SoundCloud does only one thing and does it very well.

pg 15y ago

I would not treat this story as a sign of how to convince VCs. It is almost never the case that VCs say yes because of one magically convincing point you make. Fred is not a purely functional VC (by which I mean not that he's dysfunctional, but that he's stateful). This slide was accompanied by lots of other evidence, including multiple prior meetings. The slide was just the final increment that pushed him over into yes. It is very unlikely that if a random person had walked up to him and shown him the same slide, Fred would have been convinced. What convinces VCs is, in order, (a) growth, (b) the founders' personal characteristics, (c) what you say to them. If you seem like an effective person and you have graphs that go up steeply, your pitch could be a bunch of platitudes and they'd still be eager to invest. (As would we, to be honest.) Whereas if you seem like an ineffective person and have no traction, you could have the best story in the world, and they will all say no. (Here we're a little more forgiving; we try to distinguish between genuine ineffectiveness and similar but curable phenomena like youth, inexperience, diffidence, and fear.)

brlewis 15y ago
Therefore, if you have the best story in the world, take it to potential users first.
mseebach 15y ago
So it's a classic instance of focussing excessively on that single straw that broke the camels back, not the many, many straws that preceded it.
NY_Entrepreneur 15y ago
I don't quite 'get it': So, "Could you expand on your answer a little, please". You seem to be saying that the key is "traction", significant and growing rapidly. Then it sounds like someone who was just featured on the TV show 'Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" and has significant 'traction' growing rapidly would get a VC investment? Or so could someone who opened a pizza shop in a hot, new shopping mall. So, it sounds like nothing about the core technology, Buffett 'moat', potential business size, or business planning is relevant? Then, suppose the business is a new Web site. Suppose the founder gets from his ISP a static IP address and 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. Suppose his largest Web page can be sent for less than 200,000 bits. Suppose he half fills his bandwidth 24 x 7 for ( 15 * 10**6 ) / ( 2 * 200,000 ) = 37.5 pages sent per second. Suppose he sends three ads per page and gets $1 per thousand ads displayed (CPM). Then his revenue would be greater than 1 * 3 * 37.5 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1000 = 291,600 dollars a month. Now just why would he accept equity funding? Net, it sounds like, for an entrepreneur, when equity funding might help, his project is 'too early', and, by the time the funding is available, the VCs are too late. So, it sounds like VC funding is for where (A) the business has suddenly encountered some problem and needs cash fast or (B) the founder wants to take some cash off the table and not for usual business formation. Then back to the restaurant: All across the US, restaurants and Main Street businesses get built without VC funding, and commonly those businesses need much more in capital equipment, ovens, site renovation, trucks, etc. than a Web site filling 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. So, if those businesses don't need VC funding, why do new Web sites?

niklas_a 15y ago

That's just silly. If you seriously let one slide convince you, you are bad at making investments. What about the team, current progress, previous achievements?

shin_lao 15y ago

I don't like when people try to find a single reason for decisions, especially in that case. Generally there's a couple of reasons spread over time that eventually trigger a decision. The worst part is that it's very difficult for us to make a list of these reasons because: * We don't remember all of them and * We want to believe we are rational and therefore exclude the irrational reasons That being said I think it's paramount to be able to explain your business and why it will work in few words because that way you can spread the idea within and outside the company easily.

nirvana 15y ago

I must confess, I immediately started thinking about a similar slide for my startup, with each of the areas which had been successfully conquered in the past, and then a last one for us. It's kind of an easy formula, at least for what we're working on.

pace 15y ago

Strange post, feels like blogspam. As Murkin already said: the 3 minute video (which can't be forwarded) has nothing to do with this mentioned slide and as PG said, it was for sure NOT the slide that sold Soundcloud to Fred, it was clearly the traction at that time. Just check Alexa. Wondering why Fred posted this, maybe Soundcloud needs some attention. The Soundcloud founders did some really good job regarding building traction and raising dumb money. But c'mon this network IS about music and not sound. And it's so overrated, this thing is a kind of Dropbox for DJs with all the legal struggles the music industry will soon approach them with -- and then everyone including Fred will realize that an exit is far far away or never will happen ...

fredwilson 15y ago
The title of my post is Sound Someone changed it here It is not at all about the slide It is about sound and why it matters

CurrentB 15y ago

That video seems to be the exact opposite of a single convincing slide. I watched it and have no idea what SoundCloud is supposed to do. In the context of social media platforms, I would think that sound, for the most part, would be music. The video hardly mentions music and talks about generic "sounds", which may be interesting from some perspectives, but I don't have the faintest clue why it would be a be the basis of a missing youtube/twitter/flikr/whatever as the slide mentioned implies.

kgermino 15y ago

>That's what sold me. One slide. This 3min video expresses it well. I think that sentence lane makes it clear that it wasn't just the slide that sold him. The slide was the single thing that made everything click and allowed him to see the vision but if all he knew was the slide I doubt the guy would even get a second glance.