๐ Earlywork #70: What Founders Can Learn From Musicians
How one of Australia's top rising startup founders draws inspiration from his music career
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In startupland, thereโs often shortsightedness in what content folks read & listen to.
Whether itโs the latest business book, or a trending tech & VC podcast, there can be a tendency for aspiring founders to fetishise building products & shipping features.
There are valuable nuggets in that world, but a lot of the skills to go from 0 to 1 exist outside the traditional frame of business & tech.
Andrew Akib is a standout story of alternative approaches to building the founder skillset. His background makes for a most unusual founder resume:
Released electronic music as a teenager that got picked up by music blogs, got involved with labels, and toured around Europe
Studied a Bachelor of Sound & Music Design, which A Current Affair notoriously listed as โthe most pointless degreeโ
Currently the director & performer of Salty Marco, an experimental โspaghetti western cabaretโ trio blending storytelling, world-building, and music
Working on a graphic novel about his band, and performing at festivals, bars & theatre shows
Co-Founder & CEO of Maslow: a fast-growing startup in Startmateโs accelerator which helps people with disabilities and their families manage care and rehab from home
A proponent of the view that โbands are the original startupsโ, his contrarian belief is that โstartup founders should learn to lead less like engineers and more like artists.โ
Here are the 5 biggest founder skills & principles Andrew has picked up from being an artist:
๐ย #1: Storytelling
Pitching as Performing
A make-or-break skill for early-stage founders is the ability to craft a compelling story around the product theyโre building.
โYour vision needs to resonate with your audience, your team, your partners, and your investors,โ he notes, and each of those have different needs and perceptions.
Being used to โgetting on stage and being in characterโ, Andrew draws the parallel that โPitching is like performance art, pitch nights are like gigs, and crafting a pitch storyline is like crafting a gig setlist.โ
Importantly, a great musical performance isnโt always about having the perfect technique.
โWhen I sing, I donโt give a shit about the technicals. I just have to mean everything I say. Bob Dylan isnโt a brilliant singer, but he means everything he says,โ Andrew notes.
For founders in the early stages, he mentions that โAs a startup founder, youโre the same. You donโt have to be perfect. Figure out the simplest way to connect.โ
His time as a performer has helped him to โbe more captivating in what Iโm doing and be intentional about how I tell my story,โ coming to pitches with a mindset of โusing business as a medium to connect.โ
๐งญย ย #2: Navigating Ambiguity
The Skill of Improvisation
โImprovisationโs Latin root is listening. Listen to the vibe of whatโs happening in the audience.โ
When Andrew does a gig, despite coming into shows with an idea prepared of what to perform and how to perform it, heโs often encountered a need to adapt his sound mid-performance based on what his audience resonates with.
โSometimes Iโve come into a show with a certain setlist, but you canโt bring a party set to a wine bar.โ
Thereโs a skill in โpaying attention to the intangibles of your audience and your band while on stageโ and changing accordingly, a skill he notes jazz musicians excel in particularly.
The startup lesson heโs taken here is that โEarly-stage startups are super ambiguous so you need to listen constantly. Listening to the market and listening to your customers.โ
You might have what you think is a great product ready to launch, but you need to be extremely attentive to how itโs received and be comfortable changing your approach rapidly.
โItโs not about making the perfect decisions, but about listening to what happens when you try something,โ he says.
๐งชย #3: Creative Process
Generating Ideas, Testing on Stage
Anytime you use a well-designed tech product, it likely took a lot of painful and clunky iterations to get to that point.
This is truer than ever in the context of songwriting.
โAs a musician, one thing you get incredible at is building an audience experience on the front that is engaging and cohesive, even when on the backend, it can be super messy and scrappy,โ Andrew says.
Of his songwriting process, he notes: โYou canโt go setting out to create the perfect song. You need to generate a lot of ideas, acknowledge nothing is a bad idea, but be willing to throw things out.โ
In how heโs brought this to his role at Maslow, he notes that โRapidly experimenting is valuable across all domains of our business. Be willing to be wrong; donโt assume you come up with the perfect idea/strategy in your head.โ
For Andrew, his approach to agile product management stems from his experience with โagile music developmentโ.
He believes you should โshow rough songs as jams between songs when performing, show scrappy things to your audience early before recording, and see the way people groove and dance to it.โ
Some โexperimentsโ will flop and thatโs okay. โThereโs tons of stuff that we perform that we never record. Testing on stage helps us to find the golden nugget and build a better song around that,โ Andrew says.
And when it comes to producing a great product, he calls out a powerful lesson that โthe best recordings are the ones that youโve performed a hundred times.โ
Whether tech or music, โthe only way to see what works is to generate lots of ideas and see what works in reality,โ Andrew says.
๐ฆธโโ๏ธย #4: Build Roles Around People
Leveraging Your Bandโs Superpowers
When it comes to a band, great music isnโt just about throwing the most technically proficient musicians in a room and hoping it works out.
As Andrew puts it: โA band goes: what instruments do people play, what areas & styles are they good at, and are there any special skills they have?โ
โWhat are their superpowers?โ and โWhat is going to motivate them?โ are the sorts of questions he thinks about in building a great band.
This is a frame of thinking that ties back to a core principle of Andrewโs: โPeople around you are your most valuable assetโ
In applying that belief to his work at Maslow, Andrew notes โWe adjust roles around people, not people around roles.โ
โCreate a context where everyone in your team can thrive and be good at what they do in the way they do it,โ he says.
For him, the role is secondary to the number one most important criterion: โChoosing people that care really deeply about this problem.โ
๐งกย #5: Showing Vulnerability
Opening Up To Your Audience
Vulnerability is not the first trait that comes to mind when you think about the typical Silicon Valley-type founder.
But the ability to express himself was one of the most powerful things Andrew has brought across from his time in music.
As a creator and performer, Andrew says โMusic, and art more broadly, is a vulnerable manifestation of your emotions and intent.โ
When we express ourselves to those around us, we better connect with like-minded souls.
โMusic is just an emotional drawcard, but the community around music has a very functional purpose. People you can learn from and collaborate with,โ he notes.
In translating to the world of startups, Andrew believes that โAnyone can learn to rehearse a great 2-minute pitch.
When things donโt go to plan, thatโs when you see who people are.
You need to be vulnerable to connect with investors, partners, and customers.โ
Summing up
If youโre entering the startup world with a background in music:
Lean into your performance skills to tell better stories
Use your improvisational flair when things donโt go as planned
Donโt set out to build the perfect product straight away; keep testing and refining like writing a song
Think about your team as a band, and adjust roles around their skills
Channel the emotional vulnerability of artistry into how you run your business
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