GershonMedia News: Rexly Acquired by Live Nation Labs!
THIS News is, obviously, NOT as big as the Yahoo news -- but it did happen today and they are good guys!
CONGRATULATIONS to Joel Resnicow (@resnicow) and the Rexly team! GershonMedia has been an Advisor to Rexly.
On a personal note, Joel is a good friend and a former employee at Disney. He built a great team and a terrific product and I'll be sure to help him with his next project - whatever it is!
This blog post is from Joel and his team!
The Shape of Things To Come
We are ridiculously excited and deeply humbled to announce that Rexly has been acquired by Live Nation Labs, an innovation group inside Live Nation Entertainment that is building a portfolio of digital products from scratch and overhauling the Fortune 500 company’s brand. Team Rexly will open a San Francisco office for Live Nation Labs and focus primarily on mobile. The Rexly iOS App will remain available and continue to be developed.
Rexly is joining forces with Live Nation Labs first and foremost because of shared values and vision. We are all lean entrepreneurs. We obsess over user-driven design and data-driven decision making. Most important, we are deeply committed to creating phenomenal experiences for music fans, nurturing the music tech community and breathing new life into a challenged industry.
Live Nation Labs was established through the acquisition of Big Champagne, a ten year old bootstrapped startup, and will continue to work like a startup. But unlike a startup, we are operating at scale out of the gate, inheriting products with millions of users and visibility that would make any founder quiver. The group has a blank slate and an enormous mandate – have we mentioned how exciting and humbling this is?
We’re recruiting a team of like-minded builders immediately in San Francisco. We’re seeking iOS developers, front-end developers and mobile designers to start ASAP. If you’re a music freak and want to hack on the world’s biggest stage, please do drop us a line. As our mandate is too big for us to handle alone, Labs has launched a fund to foster innovation in the music tech ecosystem.
Despite what Sand Hill Road might say, this is absolutely the best time to work in music tech. The current social/mobile platforms, API ecosystem and licensing landscape create enormous opportunities for music entrepreneurs to build their dreams and reach large audiences quickly. Yes, it will always be hard to raise money, but you don’t need that much. And if you’re in this only for the money, you definitely won’t succeed.
To everyone who helped us along: A huge thank you. Investors, advisors, family and friends—we wouldn’t be making this announcement today if it hadn’t been for your unconditional support. It’s a lot easier to reach for the sweetest fruit on the farthest branches when you know there is a bouncy castle below full of advice, feedback, ramen, band aids, and tissues. We are deeply grateful, and will pay forward everything we’ve received.
To our startup friends in the trenches: Stay relentless. We almost failed 100 times. We never had enough money. We took enormous competitive risks. We spent a lot of time on things that didn’t move the needle. We almost gave up, more than once. But we kept moving in the right direction, and that’s all that matters. This acquisition isn’t an exit – it’s a next step. We’re still doing everything we can to move forward.
Good times,
Joel Resnicow, Co-Founder & CEO Kyle Fleming, Co-Founder & CTO Bradley Lautenbach*, Co-Founder Emeritus
*Bradley is now VP of Creative Development & Production at Zuckerberg Media