Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 29. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Mission control:
Learn -> Founder favorite resources
Free money -> Discount codes
And who am I?
I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.
Let’s get it.
This Week’s Episode (Ep 29) 🧑🎤
Guest -> Ray Smith, Founder & CEO of BeApp
Mission -> BeApp’s mission is democratize access to artists through livestreams on your phone
Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website
In this episode we talk with Ray about…
💥 Covid’s impact on the live events industry and how it sparked BeApp
🔮 The future of the live events space - how live, virtual and AR/VR will play a role
🏁 How Ray pioneered a livestreaming empire for music festivals and concerts
⚙️ How the music industry actually works
🌿 A powerful wellness routine that has prevented illness for 8+ years
Summary 🔍
What is BeApp and how did Ray get started?
Ray grew up in West Philadelphia and always dreamed about traveling the world.
After graduating high school and then USC for college, he found himself in Palo Alto, working in management consulting for the booming startup scene.
One of the tech phenomenons at the time was peer-to-peer file sharing, birthing a new world of music discovery across sites like Limewire, Kazaa, and Napster, and opening Pandora’s box for those who had previously been constrained to local radio.
Ray discovered a love for dance music and found that listening to European festival sets was a game changer for his runs. He knew that if he couldn’t be at those festivals in person, he wanted a way to see what was happening firsthand.
And that’s what led him to start his first company, Be-at.TV.
Over the past 13 years, Be-at.tv has been the leading distribution and content channel for music festivals, sporting the highest quality audio and video experience on the internet.
When Covid hit in early 2020, and music festivals essentially went to zero, he knew that although the in-person experience was on hold, there was still a need to democratize the artist experience for fans all over the world.
This was the kernel of inspiration for BeApp.
Today at BeApp, Ray and his team are delivering artist access through a virtual portal on your phone.
On the BeApp, a user is able to virtually attend concerts with mainstream artists like Katy Perry, Miguel, Kaskade, DJ Khaled, Gryffin, Steve Aoki and Flosstradamus, as well as local artists performing new music every day.
And these concerts aren’t your typical grainy Zoom call – the app supports an extremely high quality audio and video experience that lets fans engage directly with the artist and jump to the virtual front row for everyone to see.
And there’s a lot of exciting things on the roadmap. At the end of the conversation, I chat with Ray about where BeApp is going and some incredible features in the works.
Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about the future for BeApp:
Live engagement with artists is traditionally pretty bad. In this virtual era, artists could have tried to self-record via Zoom or Instagram Live, but the sound and video quality just isn’t good. There was no way for the artists to bring in a high quality camera crew to film them, so they were kind of left without options. The BeApp bridges that gap and brings high-quality audio/video in an experience that the average consumer already understands
They have some incredible functionality on the roadmap. What started as music inspired, the BeApp is quickly turning into a livestream machine where users will be able to join virtual rooms and watch others watching any event. Picture a group of 10 ChicagoBears fans watching a game and then you can choose to tune into either the game itself or watch those fans watch the game. When it comes to this watch party type functionality, I think the sky is really the limit
Ray’s Startup Manifesto 📜
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask all of my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Here’s what Ray had to say:
Don’t run out of money – live by the DROOM mentality.
If you truly believe in what you’re doing, never quit. The Hard Thing About Hard Things from Ben Horowitz has one of the best lines. When you’re in the tech startup world, there’s two states of mind – pure bliss and pure hell. If you’re not comfortable living in those two states, then don’t do this job. If you can’t handle those swings, the startup game might not be for you.
Never give up – there were 3 times where I almost walked out. One of the great things about meditation is that it teaches you things are always changing. Sometimes things get bad and you just have to have confidence that it will get better.
Realize that you’re not alone. A lot of times people paint a rosy picture about what it’s like to run your own company. Hearing the other trials and tribulations from other founders is helpful to know that everyone goes through these headaches. That is what it takes to be successful.
Be very careful about who you take money from. Sometimes you can take money from the wrong people and that can hamper your business if they take you off track.
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with Ray, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:
Live events in the future 🤯
I’m going to try and make the case that the live events space will actually be better off in the future.
Prior to Covid, live events could only be attended in-person. So in an arena with 35,000 seats, the artist or performer could sell 35,000 tickets and that was the max.
I know those venues are hurting right now and some may go out of business because they can’t afford their rent without any revenue coming in.
For those venues, this unfortunately doesn’t apply.
But for those that do make it, there will likely be an emphasis put on live streaming. For the interim period — once live events start happening again but before the country is complete back to “normal” — venues will likely have some sort of live streaming set-up. This creates infinite leverage.
In theory, now a venue that has 35,000 seats, may sell only 20,000, but may have a reduced price “ticket” for those that want to stream the event and/or watch it on their TV/computer/phone.
For a live event where people don’t typically fly in all over the world (like a Coachella), the addressable population of ticket buyers would be that local market (e.g., if Drake comes to Cleveland, the only people who would potentially buy tickets would live in or around Cleveland or be willing to travel in). In this live streaming enabled world, if someone is Brisbane, Australia wants to stream that concert, they can pay to do so.
In my mind, what you lose on in-person seats, you will gain in streaming revenue.
Then, what happens when things are back to normal and those 35,000 person venues are full? Well you still have all the streaming infrastructure set-up, don’t you?
So why not do both? Then you’ll have unlocked more revenue than you could have ever forecasted.
And I think this is what we will see. The reason we maybe didn’t see it in the past was because people might have thought it was corny to have an event live streaming while people were in the audience. Or because venues didn’t see the need to invest in that infrastructure because their business was already good.
But that’s what they already do for things like awards shows and sporting events, right? It’s just free to watch with you television streaming service.
Now, in addition to being able to watch those types of events, all paid events should be streamable and then can maximize revenue for the artist or performer.
If I was a venue, I would be installing these live streaming capabilities right now. Once enabled, the venue could either charge the artist to “rent them for the night” and the artist keeps all net-new streaming revenue, or the venue could give access to the equipment to the artist for free and split the streaming revenue with them.
Both are compelling and create a better situation for live event venues and performers in the future.
Mic drop.
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! If so and you want to help support my journey to bring The Founder to millions of people across the world, here’s a couple things that would be really valuable to me and the show:
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Till next time ✌️
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies we’ve featured on the show!
— 🌵 25. The Sill | Eliza Blank
— 🥦 22. Levels | Josh Clemente
— 🧑🦰 17. Kombo Ventures | Kevin Gould
— 💍 11. The Clear Cut | Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon