3 Things I Learned from Chris Barton
Co-Founder and former CEO of Shazam (music discovery platform)
Shazam, the music platform we use to discover songs and add them to our Apple Music or Spotify playlists, took nearly 6 years of hardship to start picking up significant traction.
Chris’ journey encompassed employing dozens of young people to work 8 hours shifts by “copying” down and digitizing record labels.
Even engineers and PhDs in audio signal processing, music and acoustics from Harvard, MIT, Stanford doubted the technical feasibility and concept of Shazam. However, through strong cohesion with his co-founders, Chris and his team made a revolutionary breakthrough in the music industry.
Shazam became the 6th largest acquisition by Apple.
Here are the most cornerstone lessons I took away from his exclusive keynote today:
1. Don't Build with Existing Technology
The most dangerous trap for startups is what Chris calls "the slow death of building with existing technology." When Shazam's original idea wasn't working with current tech, Chris faced a choice: compromise the vision or create something entirely new. He chose the latter, and it made all the difference.