Fyre: The Greatest Party That Could’ve Happened
Fraud aside, five things that could’ve gone right
Two of the leading streaming services are competing to tell the story of the Fyre Festival. From different PoVs, they let us in on how it all panned out. I watched Netflix’s Fyre and Hulu’s Fyre Fraud and decided to write some notes on some things to consider when building anything. The biggest factor here was Billy’s propensity to scam. However, I’m going to dwell on the other factors provided that was not involved.
For context in case you don’t know, Billy created an app that makes booking artists super easy. Think an Uber, but for artists. Fyre connects talents with those who need their services. To boost user base on both fronts, Billy and team decided to host a music festival. Fyre Festival was supposed to be the most ‘exclusive’ luxurious music festival in the world. Think a Coachella for top influencers and people who have the money. However, it didn’t happen because of so many avoidable reasons.
Think Big, Start Small
This is a popular quote but I can’t find the source. “Billy’s problem is that he can’t not think big” This is a direct quote from Hulu’s version of the documentary. It’s obvious that he thinks really big. From his Spling idea to Magnises and Fyre, he’s not interested in playing small. In fact, there was a particular instance where he was said to have the Mark Zuckerberg vibe. While it is not a crime to think big, execution is a more gradual process. Facebook didn’t hit a billion users in one day. There was a lot of things that went into play from a strategy, operations, business and engineering standpoint between 0 and a billion users.
The point here is for Billy to have set reasonable milestones while trying to achieve the end goal. Another saying goes, “life is a marathon not a sprint”. It’s okay to say I want to organize the biggest exclusive party in the world. It’s okay to say I want to do this in 2025. It’s okay to start with a super cool and extremely exclusive house party. It’s totally okay. That’s so obvious, yeah? Sadly, Billy didn’t think so.
Hire the smartest people and listen to them
This is a two-sided advice. Billy did so well on the first part but failed woefully to deliver on the latter. He got the best hands on his stuff. After all, he’s a salesman. He can sell a vision so nicely, you’d have FOMO if you don’t jump on it with him. Getting smart people is not his issue of course but he doesn’t take advice from them. He is a smart dude and knows his stuff “to some extent” but he’s definitely not smarter than everyone in the room.
The Yoruba were right to say “Orí bíbẹ́ kọ́ni òògùn orí fífọ́” loosely translated as “Beheading is not the remedy for headache”. You need to make conscious efforts to resolve issues.
There were instances where experts say it’s not possible to pull the event off with such a limited timeline and all. Billy turned deaf ears. At a point, Keith (his logistics guru) tested out the idea of using tents by spending a night there with his wife. The horrible experience they had made him ‘strongly recommend against it’. Instead of listening, Billy had him fired. He was also the same person who proposed planning for plumbing and infrastructure. Guess what? Billy spilled beer on his map.
Don’t lie to your team (or anyone)!
Another Yoruba adage says “Òkú ò kín farapamọ́ fún ẹni t’ó ma sín” loosely translated to “The dead doesn’t hide from who will bathe it”.
You have to open up to the people you’re working with so everyone is really looking for solutions not looking based on the information available. As Kindo puts it, “Billy is really good at keeping a level of information below and above”. This is not really a good place to be as an entrepreneur. They are your team, come rain, come shine. Carry them along as much as you would. Billy has lied to three set of important stakeholders: his team, his investors and his users.
“Aṣọ ò b’Ọmọ́yẹ mọ́. Ọmọ́yẹ ti rin ìhòhò w’ọjà” meaning “It is too late to mend”
He could’ve postponed the show early on to give more time to work on it. He could’ve told the users he was not able to make it work and begin a refund process. He could’ve done this very early on before it turned into a vivid mess. Again, he didn’t take to any of the advice that suggested those.
Influence right
One of the key things the documentaries show is the power of social media influence. Celebrities posting about a certain topic didn’t only create a buzz but got the festival to sell out in 48 hours. Someone described it as “Instagram coming to real life”. Everyone wants to live the affluent lives of the people they look up to on social media and will jump at any opportunity to do so.
The onus is on social media influencers to give their fans full disclosure. One of the reasons Fyre Festival got so much attention and interest is the fact that the posts were made to look very organic. None disclosed that they were running an ad or sponsored post. Fans naturally gravitated towards such without making additional findings.
Focus on the core, everything else is add-on
How many times was the Fyre app mentioned in the festival assets and ads? Did we even remember that the entire idea was based off the insight that they can get more users and artists by throwing a party? The Fyre app was supposed to be a platform that connects artists with people looking to book them and the entire idea of the festival was to grow usage for the app. However, the founder and visionary lost his focus and turned what was supposed to be a software company into an events company.
“Odò t’óbá gbàgbẹ́ orísun ẹ̀, ó ṣetán àtigbẹ” loosely translated as “A river that forgets its source will dry up”
As much as possible, don’t just overhype your shit, do the real work as well.
All-in-all, the festival and almost everything Billy did was a very huge scam. However, those were the five lessons I think we can all learn from the festival mishap.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
