Pivoting from a music discovery app to startup studio
The first twelve months of Combo
March, 2016.
Jamie and I had just left our jobs at London startup Dojo, armed with enough ramen money in our savings accounts to keep us alive until the end of the year.
The goal?
Build the best damn music discovery app the world had ever seen.
We designed, built, tested and launched our app, Combo.fm, to the public. We were live! We just needed some funding, some talent to help us keep up the curation, and uh…a business plan.
But first? Both Jamie and I felt we were long overdue a weekend break away from the product.
The following week, we both of us came back with the same realisation:
Back home
The last weekend of August, 2016 was spent at my Dad’s place in Wales — it had been his wedding, and as my father’s son (with a track record of being “quite good with the camera” — his words, cheers Dad), I’d spent the majority of the Saturday frantically dashing after family members, balancing my Canon SLR in one hand, a half-full solo cup of ale in the other; the sound of the shutter falling drowned out by hits of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
The Sunday that followed was fairly docile in comparison. The reception had been held at the back of my Dad’s place, and as a result, was overrun with beer cans and discarded leftovers. I dragged myself out of bed and began tidying up after last night’s guests, before conceding to a nearby deck chair after a fairly successful cleanup operation.
I went to grab my phone from my pocket, only to realise I’d left it plugged in indoors.
I was torn.
Give in to laziness and remain in the deck chair, or subject myself to further physical movement (ugh) to provide myself with some cognitive stimulation in the form of a Twitter feed…?
Jamie, my co-founder’s voice, rung out through my head at that moment. “Sit still”, it beckoned. “Don’t do anything”.
The value of doing nothing
I should explain; Jamie’s encouragement to relax was nothing new. Since we’d embarked on building Combo.fm earlier this year, I’d had repeated concerned requests from his part to take it easy.
To not spend the entire weekend developing the new API.
To just relax.
Spend time away from the project, he said. “It’ll be good for you”, he said.
But of course, from my perspective, Jamie; he simply didn’t get it. Of course you need to spend every evening and most weekends on your startup! Otherwise you’re not dedicated to your company and you’re destined to fail, right?
…Right?
I briefly revisited a list of the five million times he’d proven me wrong over the past six months, surrendered to Jamie’s bodiless urges to calm down, and remained slumped in the deck chair.
Then something weird happened.
For the first time in about six months, I did nothing.
I sat completely still, and began to think.
Not about Combo.fm’s next feature. Not about what the next marketing push looked like. Not even about the fact I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.
I thought about the future.
I thought about what my next few years might look like.
At first, I thought about the worst-case scenario. Short-term, of course.
I pictured struggling for six months. I pictured fighting our corner in investor meetings and telling these people how Combo.fm was going to change music discovery forever. Somehow.
Somehow.
That word. It kept coming up. “Somehow”. Uncertainty. A lack of clear vision. Weakness.
That was when I realised the stress I’d been nursing for the past 6 months was born almost exclusively out of a complete and utter lack of security.
Walking away
It was all a bit surreal. It felt like I was having somewhat of a quarter-life crisis, sat slumped in a deck chair in the middle of Wales.
Out of all the negativity, however— I was hit with a tinge of freedom.
Yeah, I’d made a realisation that maybe the dream app I’d always hoped to build perhaps didn’t have a clear, viable business model. Maybe Combo.fm wouldn’t be the runaway success that I’d always secretly dreamed it’d be.
The upside, however? The next decision for what happens to the company (and the both of us, in turn) was entirely in our hands.
That freedom entitled either of us to walk away.
This is going to sound really, really cliché — but in all honesty, the mere thought of deserting my co-founder sickened me.
The last two years had given me more growth than I’d ever experienced before.
A large part of that was down to Jamie. Coming to that conclusion, I was immediately overcome with worry. Fear.
I was going to need to tell my co-founder my realisation in less than 48 hours, and I didn’t have a single idea on how he might take it.
Back to the big smoke
Jamie and I went for a walk on Regents’ canal the next morning. We’d both just emerged from a meeting together, and were in dire need of something to render us slightly more coherent.
We ducked in to a little café at the side of the canal with the intent of buying breakfast. After a sweeping glance at the shockingly pricy menu, Jamie and I settled on single cans of cream soda. We were basically the only two people in the entire place (with prices like that, it’s not entirely surprising).
I sat down opposite Jamie, swigged the soda, dropped the can down on the table, and came clean.
I told him everything.
The fear of failure, the ever-diminishing savings, the instability, insecurity —the fear we were “doomed” to work on this single product for the forseeable future, it all came pouring out in one long, semi-coherent sentence.
I concluded with theatrics; without lack of direction or income, Combo.fm was tearing me apart.
I looked at Jamie for a response.
He shrivelled his nose, leaned back and uttered;
“Yeah. Yeah, same here.”
We both burst into laughter. Bizarrely, Jamie explained that he had made a similar realisation at the weekend, too. Combo.fm was something driven by passion — and as wonderful as it would be to keep dedicating all of our time to it, we simply didn’t have the runway to find a way to make it work as a sustainable business.
So, together, sat opposite each other just like we did in Deptford less than six months ago; we discussed the future. The past. The highs; the lows, the dreams of what our company could be when we started out — and how many of those actually became a reality.
After a good back-and-forth of what could have been, what should have been and what actually was, we stood up to leave. Sliding my arm through my jacket sleeve, I prompted Jamie with a relatively open-ended question;
“What’s been your favourite bit?”
He leaned over the table, swigged the final dregs of his soda before answering bluntly:
“Just…just making stuff, really.”
Same name, different game
That conversation happened six months ago, and I’m pretty stoked to reveal what we’ve been working on ever since that moment:
Creating products for others. Creating them for ourselves. Didn’t matter. Like Jamie said, our favourite parts of our working lives were when we were making stuff.
The most exciting and interesting projects we’ve worked on have come from excitable entrepreneurs that have passion for what they’re doing.
That’s in bold, because that’s the bloody key.
And that’s our shiny new studio’s positioning; an early-stage startup studio designed to ship high-quality MVPs for passionate founders.
The last six months
And on that note, I can finally begin to bring this massive post to a close.
It feels like forever since I wrote the first lines of this article (just looked it up — it’s actually been four months since I started the first draft), but so much has happened since.
- We’ve spoken to the amazing people we met whilst creating Combo.fm to find our niche as a startup studio.
- We’ve not taken a single penny of external funding.
- We’ve worked with one of the biggest names in immersive experiences.
- We’ve kept our passion project alive and kicking (despite not being quite as vigorous about updating it as we’d like…we’re working on it.)
- Just like we hoped — we worked with an incredible entrepreneur, Carl Martin, to launch Ping; a product that made it to one of the biggest home screens in Silicon Valley.
The next six months
- For Combo.fm? Well, sadly, development on the product has slowed to an almost standstill. Our entire focus has been building the foundations of the studio for the last six months; and that’s meant a whole lot of time spent on meetings, emails; and, of course, working with those glorious startups I mentioned.
- For our studio? We’re focusing exclusively on designing and launching products for startups. Like Jamie said on the canal, making stuff is our favourite part of what we do; and making stuff for young entrepreneurs and small companies is what we’re laser-focused on.
- With that in mind; the dream for Combo.fm is far from over. We’ve spent evenings and weekends going back and forth about what the future looks like for the product, and we’re stoked to say we’ve come to some pretty exciting conclusions. In the name of theatrics; watch this space.
- Finally…we also know the future success of the studio is down to outrageously passionate, caring people who can not only make the work happen, but genuinely give a shit about what they’re doing.
And on that note…
This is Marco.
Marco Martignone is a wonderful iOS developer from Venice, Italy, and since we started Combo.fm a year ago, he’s been nothing but supportive and keen to hear about everything we’ve done.
When we were building Ping, we needed help. The product was slated to launch in January, and we’d mismanaged our deadlines rather massively.
Marco was the one who took the project through to the App Store and launched it.
And so we’re super stoked to say that as of literally last week, Marco’s joined our team on a full-time basis.
This is really, really huge for us. I don’t think Jamie or I imagined when we kicked the tyres on Combo that we’d be in a place where we’d be able to support our first hire within a year — let alone six months.
Like we’ve mentioned, our sole focus right now is to keep our studio spinning. With every new launch we take part in, we’re learning more about what it looks like to design, develop and deploy products. We want to lend every one of those learnings to other people that we work with — whether that’s with a client, a Combo team member, or even ourselves as a studio to grow and ship our own products.
To sum up; we’re still not entirely sure exactly what the future holds for our little combo of people.
And that’s fine.
Bloody hell, you’re still here! I’m always impressed by anybody who actually gets to the end of these. I’m massively self-conscious that even though I cut and edit these down like crazy, they come across as ramble-y and overly theatrical, so thanks for sticking around.
If you have any feedback on the writing, interested in working with us — or just keen to chat about whatever, drop me an email on sam@combostudio.co.
For their amazing help and assistance in giving me feedback on this mammoth post, I’d like to thank: Carl Martin, Faheem Patel, David Darnes, Visual Idiot, Sally Stenning and Jacob Dixon. You’re the best 😘
