At 15 people, you can rely on 'tribal knowledge', where there is enough interaction between individuals that everyone is on the same page on most key points (company mission, coding standards, release processes, etc.)
As you grow, that stops being the case; to echo what @Peroni and @sloaken said - a good first step is good documentation and clear, repeatable and where possible automated processes. A second, related challenge is company culture - as you grow and interactions between each & every individual become less & less possible, getting everyone aligned on what it means to work at your company (and how to achieve company goals) is harder. You'll need to make a conscious effort to maintain that (see below).
The core team will need to start delegating more, which can be a hard if you're not used to it (some may also want to remain ICs), and will change the shape of your organisation. This is particularly hard to do gradually, as you'll need to work out the right point at which to transition different areas of the business. This comes with the risk of silos developing - a good way to work around that at mid-size is to continue arranging teams by project, but make sure that there are both opportunities to gather across functions (e.g. dev, qa, project management etc.) and more widely (e.g. company events, social events etc.). The main thing here is making sure people talk to each other, exchange information, getting good at collaborating with each other and know who to reach out to in case of issue. Again, you are going to have to dedicate time to this which will seem strange coming from 15 people (but will pay off handsomely in increased efficiency).
There are many good other points in this thread (on hiring experienced people even though they cost more, the importance of good hiring, clear ownership, us vs them), but a last one is the need more generally for the leadership team to adapt. They will have less visibility and control; the company will become less efficient which might be frustrating (it will still be able to do more overall); changes of direction will become harder and slower. This applies to all 15 people working there now, but particularly for the founders/leaders. Having some thoughts on how to handle this ahead of time (established reporting structures, clear goals and reporting metrics) will help minimise growing pains. It's always easier to say this than to do of course.
Source: did something similar a couple of times (4->25 people, 600->1000 people).
* Universal want TikTok to pay similar fees for use of music as other online platforms such as YouTube ($0.004 per stream) or Spotify ($0.0039 per stream for US listeners)
* TikTok views its platform as a means for artists to promote their music, and therefore doesn't think it should be paying anywhere near as much
Interestingly:
- there was a similar argument for the value of radio plays (pre-internet). Radio stations viewed themselves as a way to promote the artists' work, and argued that they therefore shouldn't pay any royalties.
- this has since been settled resolved in favour of the music makers; from what I can see, in the UK, BBC Radio 1 pays around £40/minute in royalties
- the amount of royalties an artist receives from the record company varies significantly, but is usually in the order of 10-20% (Taylor Swift will have a better deal than a small indie band); plus any publishing revenue. Some artists also have different percentages for different types of revenue (e.g. streaming vs CD sales)
> * Universal want TikTok to pay similar fees for use of music as other online platforms such as YouTube ($0.004 per stream) or Spotify ($0.0039 per stream for US listeners)
I don't think TT should pay such rates.
1) People don't go on TT specifically to listen that music
2) The music is generally a companion to the video which is centered on some silly dance or something
3) You hear fractions of the record 99.9% of the time.
I guess TT could and should negotiate to pay on the % of the time the song is listened. E.g. if a recording lasts 300 seconds, 10 views lasting 30 seconds should pay the entire royalty as in Spotify/Youtube.
That's the case now, but things can change. YouTube was originally not much of a platform for listening to music, and probably tried to make the same argument that it was all discovery. Now it's a common alternative to Spotify, so the music owners must be relieved they didn't give them a special low rate.
> I guess TT could and should negotiate to pay on the % of the time the song is listened. E.g. if a recording lasts 300 seconds, 10 views lasting 30 seconds should pay the entire royalty as in Spotify/Youtube.
This doesn’t work because publishers end up creating versions that are scaled to increase profits.
> this has since been settled resolved in favour of the music makers; from what I can see, in the UK, BBC Radio 1 pays around £40/minute in royalties (around 10,000 times more than Spotify)
That's not a comparable figure, there can be millions of people listening.
You are quite right, the structure for radio is different than for streaming. Also, at the time, records / CD / cassette sales were significantly higher than they are now, so artist revenue from radio then was a much smaller proportion of the total than streaming is today.
What I found interesting was the precedent; the argument that radio was a means to promote artists, and therefore shouldn't pay royalties, was discounted even in those (to artists) much more favourable circumstances.
You are right, they are not comparable; I have removed the comparison to the Spotify rate from the parent comment to avoid distracting from the precedent (which was the aspect I found most interesting).
I have understood that TikTok is per view generating less revenue than YouTube for example. As such they simply cannot pay as much. Which seems entirely reasonable. You cannot pay more out than you generate in income. At least not without someone keeping pouring money in...
- TikTok revenues were estimated at $9.4 billion in 2022, at a $75bn valuation. Add revenue is projected to rise to $22bn in 2024. ByteDance (parent company) profit estimated at $6bn in 2023. They seem to have enough money to pay for the content which enables this growth (this may not just apply to the music element).
- The fact that they don't generate as much revenue per stream as YouTube is of no use to the artists whose works they are using to generate that revenue. Their work is still being used; and they should be paid for that usage. If TikTok's business model doesn't support payments to the artists, then that is TikTok's problem to solve - not the artists'.
I think a good argument is the point above that as only a fragment of a song is typically used, the amount should perhaps not be as much as a full song stream e.g. on Spotify or YT Music. Though that does open the question as to whether a stream of a Pink Floyd song should be paid as much as a stream of a Ramones song - given the difference in length!
>TikTok is per view generating less revenue than YouTube
plus appartently there is not proper consideration for
>the difference in length!
Oh, well.
There's lots of unresolved fundamentals when revenue is not coming in per view or per length, but people are trying to use things like this as a KPI.
Misguideds gonna misguide.
For the vast majority of artists and music lovers, the ideal model so far is not a "business" model, more along the lines of the free sharing proven by the likes of Napster. Artists didn't make any money off of Napster, but most of them don't make any money from rights organizations either, or when they do it's closer to zero than it is significant.
The only way to surpress the free file sharing was to offer a paid service that was insignificant in cost to so many mainstream consumers that it was marginally viable, and go from there. Consumers paying for it in some way was the main consideration, not paying the artists very much. So this is all we got now and ever since.
Until the price rises enough to no longer be insignificant, and naturally triggers Napster-like procedures to trend back toward becoming undisrupted.
There's just not enough money for any significant middlemen between an artist and the lovers of their music.
With more than one rights brandisher "competing" by failing to lower consumer prices as the streaming services splinter, and trying to prolong a business model where the artist gets less than the majority of revenue generated, all that's got to lead to alternatives where once again the savvy consumers get everything free and the rightsholders and their artists get nothing directly.
It works perfectly for reading documentation, writing code, and browsing the web. The refresh rate is fast enough to watch movies, but I haven't done that yet. Switching windows leaves faint artifacts on the screen, but I barely notice them, and there's a refresh button if I want to look at a detailed still image. I use it as my only monitor, and keep my laptop screen turned off. About once per week I'll toggle to my laptop's color monitor to view the art of a Kickstarter campaign, etc.
I don't miss color syntax highlighting, and it's much more relaxing on the eyes. I could imagine others using it as their main monitor in a joint display setup, code in e-ink, browser in color.
Founders usually give up their family lives, social lives, leisure time, and sometimes their reputation, sanity, initial investment in the startup and self-esteem on top of what you list, depending on the outcome. The stress level for a founder is usually quite high, and the success rate is quite low.
When you are the person worrying about making your number on a monthly basis, so you can pay your team ... whom aren't worried about this, because they get a salary ... and you sometimes/often can't pay yourself, so that you make sure that everyone else gets paid ...
... yeah.
When you do that, you are putting real skin, real risk into this game. Your reward should be commensurate with that risk if it pays out.
In my case, it didn't.
I got all the stress, pain, heartache, overdue bills, while dealing with skittish customers, people who demanded free things, etc.
All the while, growing a business from nothing to millions in revenue, with no VC involvement (not for lack of trying). To watch it shot in the head by the bank after sinking my entire worth into it.
I understand why founders/CEOs should expect excellent return upon a positive event. If they don't, then why, exactly, should the bust their behind as hard as they do?
> growing a business from nothing to millions in revenue, with no VC involvement (not for lack of trying). To watch it shot in the head by the bank after sinking my entire worth into it.
I'd be interested to hear more of the story if you're willing
Early startup employees are risking almost the exact same set of things. The moral of the story is that even as an employee, you're playing the lottery with a startup and you should only join on that will reward you as such if everything works out.
Depends a lot on the startup, especially outside the Bay. In other parts of the country, you usually don't get substantial stock grants from corporate employers, and you usually do get market salary or close to it from a startup. There's a relatively small difference between working for a startup and working for a corp, but there's a huge difference between founding a startup and working for a corp.
What i see around, ie. friends & acquaintances, is at some point, usually after a good stint at one or a couple places a midlevel manager/executive decides "time to make next level of money", and together with several like minded guys and established good connections they pick up some investors from a line up of the investors eager to get in, and the rest is a well defined process. There is no risk, no giving up of any live, reputation, etc. There is only improvement on all of these fronts. If their venture doesn't make it big, it will be acquired with a nice premium and they would end up somewhere at the same or higher positions anyway. One such is already a unicorn in a pretty short, even by SV standards, time. List of the advisers/investors and other involved people of another such venture, started pretty recently, is impossible to read while maintaining steady breath :)
It sounds like you're complaining, but if it is really so easy, just become a founder. In a way, it is impossible for there to be an unfair distribution of wealth between people who do A and people who do B if everyone has the choice whether to do A or B.
you've missed the important point. It isn't for everybody. I specifically mentioned that it is already successful people with a lot of good connections. Thus such a startup is just the next step in the career progression. For a plain engineer, like me for example, who can't make even a CTO/VP of engineering of a small company or a Director/division Chief Architect/etc. at a BigCo creating a startup would be exactly or even worse than described by grand-grand-parent. There is a reason that early stage VCs, for example YC, invest in people, not ideas/business. One of the friends got invested with "just name the number" amount right on the spot the moment he mentioned that he got his own startup even without telling what his startup is intended to do (of course there were due diligence done by small people afterwards before things formalized on paper) Where is couple other friends, engineers more like me, who went through a very harsh interviews at those few VCs who agreed to listen to them and got, unsurprisingly, nothing, and still sitting as engineers.
>It sounds like you're complaining,
there is huge difference between recognizing reality and saying that the reality is unfair (which it just can't be by virtue of being the reality)
Starting a business isn't for everybody, but not for the reason you stated. You're making the mistake of believing the VC hype. You don't need and probably shouldn't seek funding until you can articulate a need. So suggesting that you can't start a business because you won't get funded when you don't actually have any need for funding is absurd.
Starting a business isn't for everybody because it's a lot of stressful work. You have to wake up early and stay up late laying the foundation while your friends or spouse or kids or work are vying for your attention. You have to scrape together your savings or max out a couple credit cards to actually launch your product. Once you start hiring you are responsible for putting food on other people's tables. And even once you start making money, you have no idea what you're doing pretty much every step of the way.
If you actually do want to start a business, just fucking sit down and do it. There are a ton of profitable, bootstraped SaaS companies out there. Build a product, pay for the first couple months of hosting out of pocket, bill yearly, profit. (Notice "get funded" isn't a required step.) Complaining that VCs probably won't love you is just an excuse to take the path of least resistance and stay mediocre.
OK, sorry that I misunderstood you. But for what it's worth, lots of people with no connections have bootstrapped or gotten into incubators and then gotten funded or just hustled and got funded. For instance, just yesterday I talked to a woman with no connections or track record who got seed funding for her startup, but it took her over a year of "making friends with investors". Obviously it is a lot easier if you are well connected though.
This comes across as a somewhat hysterical response to a fairly measured comment ("Yes, hello, reality calling").
That doesn't feel like the HN ethos. People working for any company should feel comfortable posting here, without feeling like they are the subject of a witch hunt imho.
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As you grow, that stops being the case; to echo what @Peroni and @sloaken said - a good first step is good documentation and clear, repeatable and where possible automated processes. A second, related challenge is company culture - as you grow and interactions between each & every individual become less & less possible, getting everyone aligned on what it means to work at your company (and how to achieve company goals) is harder. You'll need to make a conscious effort to maintain that (see below).
The core team will need to start delegating more, which can be a hard if you're not used to it (some may also want to remain ICs), and will change the shape of your organisation. This is particularly hard to do gradually, as you'll need to work out the right point at which to transition different areas of the business. This comes with the risk of silos developing - a good way to work around that at mid-size is to continue arranging teams by project, but make sure that there are both opportunities to gather across functions (e.g. dev, qa, project management etc.) and more widely (e.g. company events, social events etc.). The main thing here is making sure people talk to each other, exchange information, getting good at collaborating with each other and know who to reach out to in case of issue. Again, you are going to have to dedicate time to this which will seem strange coming from 15 people (but will pay off handsomely in increased efficiency).
There are many good other points in this thread (on hiring experienced people even though they cost more, the importance of good hiring, clear ownership, us vs them), but a last one is the need more generally for the leadership team to adapt. They will have less visibility and control; the company will become less efficient which might be frustrating (it will still be able to do more overall); changes of direction will become harder and slower. This applies to all 15 people working there now, but particularly for the founders/leaders. Having some thoughts on how to handle this ahead of time (established reporting structures, clear goals and reporting metrics) will help minimise growing pains. It's always easier to say this than to do of course.
Source: did something similar a couple of times (4->25 people, 600->1000 people).