In my vision of the Music Industry near-future artists will be entrepreneurs, and Major Labels and future music companies will turn into investment companies, and both will relate in a similar way as technology start-ups and venture capitalists do. Paul Graham is a partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator, and has funded more than 200 start-up companies in the past 5 years. When Paul is asked what he looks for in a start-up team when deciding whether to invest or not, we can easily translate this into a conversation about band and team dynamics. It’s impossible for a band to become truly successful without a great team around them, and by having their inter-band team dynamics worked out. When a record company or manager takes on a band and invests time and money into them, they similarly will look at the people involved and make a call on whether or not this will be a wise investment. We can learn from Paul’s experience and method below and ask similar questions. Just replace “start-up” with “band” or “team”.
Paul on what he looks for in a start-up team:
“The founders are a lot more important than the idea. We have a lot of questions about the founders and the relationship between them. [We look for] people who’ve been friends for a while, have worked together on things, so they actually know one and another’s capacities. What we don’t like is people that only came together for the purposes of doing this start-up, because that means the only thing holding them together is the start-up. If they’re close friends, they’ll keep working on the start-up, even if after a while they think it seems worthless, in order to not let the other one down. And it will often turn out, they were wrong and it wasn’t worthless, even though it seemed it was doomed. Every start-up up has a point in which it seems it was doomed, so oddly enough, mistakenly continue to work out of misplayed loyalty to your pal, is good. Eventually everything gets better.”
We can draw parallels to many successful bands that were founded on top of existing friendships. The Jackson 5 (family), The Beatles (childhood friends), Radiohead (college buddies), U2 (secondary school), The Rolling Stones (childhood friends), etc. There are also plenty of examples of bands on the verge of success, with the first bits of money trickling in, only to implode under the pressures of inter-personal conflict or the famous “creative differences”. Sticking together when times are tough can be very difficult if you don’t have a supportive internal set of relationships that have you willing to fight for each other, even if you might disagree on something. It’s also important to have talked through a lot of scenarios, so that you’re emotionally prepared and can make rational decisions. People that have a history together, often work better together as well since they have an internal context that’s easier to read than with new people. They know when the other is annoyed but not letting it on. They also know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Johnny might be an amazingly expressive front man, but he is a horrible sales person off-stage, and bass player Phil knows this so he makes sure he mans the merch booth after the gig. Manager Josh knows that a balance needs to be kept inside of the band as far as how many songs by each singer/writer should end up on the album, to keep the peace. Constant communication and the managing of expectations is key.
Of course, we can’t always just pick some folks that we’ve known since childhood. When founding a band or a team, we can create an atmosphere that similarly supports the creation of a good team dynamic, crafting something less strong than an old friendship, but something that has the chance to grow into one. Keep lines of communication clear, determine everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, be honest, manage expectations and keep your word. Remember you are in this together, and if you won’t fight for the others in the team, you’re just another person unknowingly fighting against your own success. Once you, as an entrepreneur artist, start approaching people to join your team and possibly invest money into the project, they will be looking at your band and team dynamic as well, and ask all these same questions. In the next article in this series I will further delve into the question: “Why Should Anyone Invest In Your Band?”
Check out Paul’s interview with TechCrunch below for some more tips from his end, all easily translatable to our music experience.
Recommended Reading:
- Another VC man, Fred Wilson, speaks on reassembling start-up teams later on for new projects in “Putting The Band Back Together.”
Related Reading In The “Artist As An Entrepreneur” Series:
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