Music,beer,chai and work-The Making of trbble
“Necessity is the Mother of Invention”
We’ve all heard this quote before, but up until eight months ago, I’d never really seen it in action. This was when my friend came up with an idea that today has turned into trbble — a website where you can Discover new songs by listening to their best part first. Think of it like Twitter for music — preview the most engaging part of the song first and then decide if you want to hear the entire song(which you can do on the website itself!).As 2paragraphs.com rightly put it, “trbble is an impatient app for an impatient world”. We went live on 4th Jan and were featured on Product Hunt on 3rd Feb where we managed to get a little over 550 upvotes and ended up being one of the top products of the day.
trbble is the result of a musician who just wants to get his songs heard and three other guys who just can’t resist the idea of being able to find to new music everyday. This is our story — I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed living it.
THE BEGINNING
Life’s hard for an amateur musician, and more so if your compositions belong to a genre that people around you just don’t get. This is the life story of Vinay Mimani , a Product Manager by day and a musician by night. He claims that his compositions are inspired by Deadmau5.Sadly, the others around him didn’t even know about Deadmau5, let alone connect the dots. All this meant that it was really hard for him to find an audience— he tried all sorts of mechanisms(including bribing his friends with beverages) . But the quizzical look on people’s faces when he played his songs left him listening to his music all alone, in the seclusion of his room.
One night, while listening to Dreams come true by Aerosoul, he realised that this part of the song was playing on loop in his head. It was the best part of the song — the Earworm, the hook , the essence! While humming this tune over and over again, he had an epiphany — why not use the best part of his songs to attract people to listen to his compositions — people would not mind investing 30 to 40 seconds , plus, if people like the best part, maybe they won’t mind listening to the entire song? Being a techie, he thought it would be nice to build something like this. Little did he know that this budding thought would materialise into a full fledged product in the coming months.
BUILDING A TEAM
Vinay reached out to Gaurav (affectionately called lambu), a tall,burly MBA grad, and his friend from college. Both of them mulled over the idea for over a while and sought feedback from friends,peers and strangers. After innumerable beers(only a few of which they paid for),a few bar hopping sessions and some dine-and-dash situations, they were finally confident that the idea was worth considering. The response was positive and overwhelming. The only thing that was left to do was to get a working prototype and charting out a plan to get the initial users on board. Or so they thought.
Vinay and I have known each other for around four years now and we’ve worked together for three . On our of our regular chai-sutta(tea and cigarette)sessions,he mentioned the idea. I absolutely fell in love with the it, (you could probably see the Dollar symbols in my dreamy eyes). Needless to say, I was onboard soon after that.
Over the next few weeks we ideated about how we met regularly at Lambu’s terrace and discussed “strategy” — how to get initial users onboard, how the product would look/feel , what features it would have. Being smart-asses, we thought it would take a few weeks to build and a few more to get to a million users! Notice that I mentioned strategy within quotes — we would soon realise that things would not exactly pan out the way we dreamt. Looking back now, we feel like we were such idiots back then . But as Nathan Bashaw says:
When you look back 6 months from today and don’t feel embarrassed by your naiveté, there’s a problem.
Now, there were three of us ,with a million ideas just oozing out of our heads but we needed someone who could build it all , someone with a pair of headphones and the ability to code. We needed a Tech-Cofounder. Looking for the tech guy is an extremely hard task especially if you’re not one. We searched for weeks , pinged everyone we knew, posted on LinkedIn, connected with random people and spent some more money to wine-and-dine the few applicants who came forward ,all to no avail.
Amidst all this ,came the Cricket World Cup — a massive event that most of the world was hooked onto, which meant Twitter India was running at full steam, preparing to capitalise on all the fanfare, which in turn meant that Vinay and I were hard at work at our regular day job.It was during one of the all-nighters at office ;Vinay was wrapping up a few tasks and Praveen, a developer who was with us at Zipdial, was hard at work alongside him. And suddenly, it occurred to him that Praveen could be the one! I still remember the look on his face when he rushed through lambu’s door, with Praveen at his heels — like a couple of lovers ready to elope! After a few days of bringing Praveen upto speed, we were all set. The final piece of the puzzle was in place.
Team trbble: L to R : Saket, Vinay, Gaurav,Praveen
Now that we had our team in place, the development of the product began. We got in a designer on freelance(whom we “poached” from a firm that I sold my laptop to) and a UI developer. It was time to get to the whiteboard, sketch out the roadmap, decide on the roles and code. We charted out the plan, decided on each person’s responsibilities and started executing. Every person had a deliverable and a timeline, which had to be met at any cost. We figured that without constant work and discipline, getting the product out would be impossible. As Chris Sacca says,:
Ideas are cheap, execution is everything
There was no pressure to quit our day jobs. But we soon realised that there was no other go. And just like that, each of us quit within the span of a month.
BEING ON PRODUCT HUNT
We released the first version of our product in mid November, after which we spread it among a few close friends to get feedback. We also started tweeting out to influencers in a bid to get some attention. Most of our hustles failed, a few of them, like this with Ryan Hoover,succeeded.
It was awesome to get acknowledgment and response and we couldn’t wait to show our shiny new website to the world, but our public launch on Product Hunt was still a few weeks away.
Then , one night, we got hunted. We got hunted and we weren’t ready. Panic ensued through the garage from where we working. It was probably the only time a startup wanted to be REMOVED from Product Hunt. Thankfully, after a few emails and a chat with the people at PH, we got an extension. A slight breather , but that meant that the next two weeks would be hell.
Over the next few days we slept in our garage, deciding what to implement, what to fix and then getting it done, with one hand on the coffee mug and the other on our keyboards.
One thing that a startup teaches but no B-School does is decision making and prioritisation under high pressure
The day of the launch finally arrived. trbble was to be featured at 12:00 am PST on product hunt and we were only partially ready. There were still many features to be tested, many issues to be fixed — we were 4 exhausted guys with 3 hours till showtime. Even Vinay’s laptop gave up on it’s master — the screen gave way. The timing could not be worse! Again, necessity paved way for innovation:
And we were back on track again! Tensions were running high, we had an hour to go and a few more tests to run, a few more bugs to solve and all fixes to be deployed on our servers. We were yelling across the room, screaming if bugs were not fixed and celebrating fixed bugs like we’d conquered Fort Knox. Every key stroke mattered now, It was a race against time. There were 5 minutes left and a few more bugs to fix. Four minutes, then three. And finally, with literally a minute to spare, we deployed all changes and were live! Our loud cheer woke up our neighbours ,a few of whom ran down the stairs thinking someone got into the building. Needless to say, we no longer are allowed into that building anymore.
PH day was a roller coaster ride on it’s own. The community’s response was both amazing and overwhelming at the same time. We had users giving us live feedback on issues they faced, bugs they found and we had only minutes to fix them. It was an really good test of our time management abilities. Luckily, our work paid off. We ended up being the 3rd best product of the day with over 500 votes to our name. Not a bad feat for four guys working out of the garage!
I should take this opportunity to thank Ben Tossell and Kate who were immensely patient with us during our panic stricken times.
trbble-THE FUTURE?
With the massive amount of content being generated every minute, the attention span of human beings is going down(less than 8 seconds as per research). That’s where websites offering snack-sized content ,like Twitter(for text) and Vine (for videos),win. We at trbble aim to offer the same for music.
Everyone wants new songs in their playlist from time to time. But only a few have the time and energy to patiently listen to new tracks and select the ones they like. The others rely on serendipity or mooch off of their friend’s playlist.trbble makes music discovery and artist discovery a short and easy process for everyone —so just listen to a trbble and decide if you want to hear more.
