By, Abhishek Chhabra
As our first entry, I would like to share the story of Liveler. I’ll cover what I did before Liveler, how the idea of Liveler came to me, and where Liveler currently stands.
In September 2010, I started my first venture Talent Roof. It embodied my childhood love of music, technology, and disruptive innovation. Talent Roof is a 360 degree music firm which aims to bring urban music wave. It was a dream come true for someone who idolized P. Diddy and Pharrell Williams for their urban lifestyle empires. It has been a learning experience that I enjoyed. We became a team, invested our own money, launched new talent, and partnered with TV channels and radio stations for our content. During this journey, we became a record label, distributors, a production house and talent management firm. Most people around me thought it was a crazy step for an MBA and Engineer, but the output of our efforts really surprised everyone and more importantly it made them happy.
While working tirelessly at Talent Roof, I would occasionally take up internet consulting projects to keep my long term investment Talent Roof afloat. After working for almost two years on Talent Roof, I realized that Talent Roof is capital intensive, hard to scale, and it missed crucial metrics that can be optimized (music is subjective either you like it or you don't). My first startup taught me a lot and taking from the successes and failures, I decided to start a new venture.
As a fan of technology, I follow numerous tech startups and entrepreneurs. Even at Talent Roof, new media was integral part of our projects. I started exploring ideas and finalized the idea of a music-tech startup. There were three primary reasons why I honed in on a music-tech startup, one was for my love of music and technology. The second reason was the experience I had gained from Talent Roof and internet consulting projects. Lastly and most importantly, the need, which I had assessed while managing our shows and also by talking to industry professionals. Since the invention of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, I realized that the marriage between music and technology would never end.
My thought process begins with writing all my ideas on paper. I like to brainstorm my own original thoughts before I go on the web and Google them. I believe that everything we do should have the maximum amount of originality. Initially, I wanted to focus on four areas at the same time (silly me). Those four areas were tour management, A&R (artist and repertoire) management, music product management and marketing management. "We aim to build fresh and juicy management applications for music artists and industry professional to keep their world easy, productive and musical". -This was the initial startup description.
I have a habit of digging deep into whatever I do, so I started researching global tech startups and entrepreneurs. I went through numerous resources and came across 500 Startups, TechStar’s and Y Combinator. I even started going out to tech events. One fine day, I had discussed the idea of my music-tech startup with a cousin of mine from Silicon Valley. He had recently sold his company and everybody including him, suggested that I focus on one area, the product. He gave me an important piece of advice, most companies fail because they are unable to deliver that one product once the company starts to grow.
Although all entrepreneurs are crazy, I find that they respect advice and learning from peers and advisers. Based on everyone's feedback and my own experience, I finalized tour management as my area of focus. Stats also support that a major chunk of the music industry’s earnings comes from Live music. There is no room for piracy in Live music (as there is no replacement for Justin Bieber) and it alleviates the hassle of licensing fees. With the digital age and piracy, music sales may be going down but live music is here to stay. After countless hours of research and brainstorming, it finally hit me a project management and collaboration app for Live music industry.
I now thought of testing this concept with a few users. I shared the specs with one of the world's top music artists management (I can't disclose the name at this time, in fear that we might lose the client, just kidding :) This is not the right stage to share such big news and I promise that you will come to know it soon that will hopefully comes as a testimonial from the artist's management. I also shared it with a DJ management firm who manages multiple artists. I received positive responses along with great insight while talking to them. I even put out a Tumblr Blog and Twitter account to test the concept. The Twitter handle had 100 followers in a week. All of this helped me qualify the initial concept and gave me the signal that I was on the right track.
Liveler in its current form is "An easy way for music artists and industry professional to manage live shows, collaborate with team members, and keep track of show bookings." Liveler intends on being an integral part of Live music industry.
It was tough for me to step away from my first love Talent Roof, but I had to make a practical choice. Most importantly, I didn't let my experience go to waste. I am still apart of the music industry and I am still utilizing my experience and knowledge. I have always liked taking on challenges, easy things can be done by anyone. Another tidbit on my work ethic is that I am very particular about quality (we hired world renowned mastering engineer Chris Athens for our project, Chris works with artists like P Diddy, Sean Paul, and Jay Z). We maintained global standards at Talent Roof and I promise to do the same at Liveler.
We currently have a landing page www.liveler.com to receive beta sign ups. From this page itself we have already received a few beta signups already (some from very renowned artists).
Please wish us luck and keep showing your LOVE. If you feel Liveler is right for you, do signup and share your valuable feedback when we launch early next month.
Welcome to Liveler world!
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