spotify Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/spotify/ Data-driven reporting on private markets, startups, founders, and investors Wed, 26 Feb 2020 21:53:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.5 /wp-content/uploads/cb_news_favicon-150x150.png spotify Archives - Crunchbase News /tag/spotify/ 32 32 Process Street Raises Accel-led $12M Series A For No-Code Workflow Builder /venture/process-street-raises-accel-led-12m-series-a-for-no-code-workflow-builder/ Thu, 27 Feb 2020 15:00:25 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=25884 , which has developed no-code workflow builder, has raised a $12 million Series A led by .

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, 1 and others also participated in the round.

Australian-born came up with the idea for Process Street when running a distributed marketing agency through contractors all over the world. The spreadsheets and project management tools were causing more problems than solutions, he said.

So, the concept behind Process Street was born. Initially, it was an internal tool to structure and manage internal workflows by doing things like documenting and tracking simple checklist-based processes for Patankar’s company.

But then Patankar teamed up with to form a company based on that initial concept while both were staying at a hostel in Argentina.

Today, Process Street has evolved into “a fully-fledged no-code workflow builder with an easy-to-use interface that can handle almost any type of business process, from client implementation to employee onboarding and content approvals,” according to Patankar. And it does this by giving small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises the ability to create those workflows without having to write code. (Customers are mostly SMBs, with 10 to 20 percent being enterprises.)

The company services over 450,000 registered users – both free and paid – including enterprise customers like , , and , as well as institutions like and .

“Process Street lets you build these workflows and plug them into other SaaS products, all without engineering,” Patankar told Crunchbase News. “It’s the same as a SAP workflow, for example, but for those you need an engineer to come in and design the flow, build integrations and connect the whole thing. Instead, we sell directly into sales or to a customer success manager.”

Over time, the company realized that remote team use was still a “pretty small market,” despite growing fast. So it began to focus on an even greater market–enterprises with distributed teams “looking to standardize and automate work across vast geographical areas.”

“So, while some of these companies are not technically remote, they have a lot of the same challenges as a larger, distributed team,” Patankar said.

As a fully distributed company itself, Process Street has 45 employees working across North America and Europe. It’s grown its revenue to the $3 million to $4 million range and previously raised about $3 million across two seed rounds.

The strategy

The choice of investors was largely strategic, according to Patankar. As part of the financing, Accel Partner will join Process Street’s board. Accel, Patankar said, made sense to lead the round considering its understanding of the SaaS space.

“ is a very intriguing story of a fully distributed team building no-code workflow tools for all types of other distributed teams around the world,” Wong told me.

The company’s customers integrate with hundreds of different SaaS products, and Salesforce, and are among the most popular, according to Patankar. As such, Salesforce Ventures and Atlassian were “obvious partners.”

“Process Street workflows are tightly integrated with other SaaS products and rely on the data and activity happening in these systems to automate work,” he said.

Looking ahead

Process Street’s ultimate goal “is to be the no-code workflow solution for teams everywhere.”

As part of that mission–and what some of its new capital will go toward–the company will be launching a mobile app, introducing more enterprise features and opening up greater API access so that users can control their data and build custom automations.

Process Street also has a large library of premade plug-and-play process templates created by its team, customers and partners. It plans to grow that library with the goal of making it “the largest repository in the world for all business processes and operational playbooks.”

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  1. Salesforce Ventures is an investor in Crunchbase. They have no say in our editorial process. For more, head here.

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Austin’s Swivel Raises $8M For More Flexible Office Leases /venture/austins-swivel-raises-8m-for-more-flexible-office-leases/ Tue, 18 Feb 2020 13:00:07 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=25502 A little while back, I wrote about how an emerging new category of workplace alternatives are attracting attention from both the venture community and some of commercial real estate’s biggest players.

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One such company is Austin-based , which has developed an agile leasing platform and network. The startup just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by of (who’s also backed the likes of and ). Breyer is contributing $5 million of the capital. , the venture arm of commercial real estate brokerage giant , put up the remaining $3 million. The financing brings Swivel’s to $14.6 million, according to its Crunchbase profile.

Swivel raised an $850,000 seed round in 2016 and then another $1 million in June 2017. In 2018, the company in what Swivel founder and president described as a Seed 2 round.

The startup has been testing its model across Texas, mostly in Austin and some in Dallas and Houston.

“Everything seems to be proven right and working,” Harmon told Crunchbase News. “So we raised this round to scale up nationwide.”

How it works

founded Swivel in late 2016 with some initial incubation capital from . He and Floodgate Co-Founder had started and sold a software company together in the late 1990s called , and decided they wanted to work together again.

They both ,” Harmon said, and felt like the commercial real estate office market needed to be disrupted.

Swivel Founder Scott Harmon

So how does it work? Pre-qualified member companies can contract with Swivel’s landlord partners for turnkey office space on flexible terms with little or no upfront capital expenditure and no lease lock-in.

Landlords use the company’s agile leasing platform to backstop their leases for member companies. (I wrote about a similar startup, Landing, recently that is focused on flexible apartment leases). Using Swivel, leases are typically a 12-month commitment with a maximum of four years.

Clients are able to use Swivel’s software to configure and design the space however they want; most offices are between 3,000 and 10,000 square feet. Companies need only to give 60 to 90 days notice before moving out and then are not charged any penalties or move-out fees, and don’t have to deal with subleasing.

Since its network launch in 2019, Swivel has signed up over 30 landlords representing more than 150 properties across Austin, Dallas and Houston.

What it is and what it’s not

Harmon is quick to point out that unlike other flexible workspace operators such as or , Swivel is not a landlord. It does not lease space.

“We’re more like a VRBO for office space,” he told me. “People who own properties use our technology and platform to lease to new tenants on more flexible terms. Landlords make the money and share their profits with us.”

For example, a landlord can open up two floors in a building specifically to be listed via Swivel. They can charge a (10 to 20 percent higher) price per square foot because of the flexible terms, but it will still come out to about half the cost of a co-working space, Harmon said. Swivel will completely furnish the space, and “the building becomes more valuable,” according to Harmon.

“We work with hundreds of landlords,” Harmon said, “and we allow them to make more money by bringing a different kind of client into their building and providing a new class of service.”

Swivel is also not out to replace commercial real estate brokers, opting instead to partner with them so it saves money on marketing as well. It works out well for all involved, Harmon said.

Looking ahead

Swivel’s target market is tech-enabled companies in their growth phase, which make up about half of the tenants leasing through its platform. (It works with tenants such as Dremio, Graylog, Guideline 401k, hOp, Plivo, Samcart, TalentRobot, and Vertify.)

The process is a more appealing one to tech upstarts that simply prefer a more digital process in general.

“They’re just used to flexibility and that sort of convenience in other parts of their lives,” Harmon said.

But Swivel has also helped a number of multinational companies that require flexibility for their satellite offices.

The company plans to use its new capital primarily to expand across the U.S. in 2020. It is in talks with landlords in Boston, New York, Northern Virginia, Charlotte, N.C., Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Utah, Denver and San Francisco.

“Expansion cities are a finite list and expand based on how our landlord partnerships unfold,” Harmon said. “Landlord partners will determine the order and timing of opening up each market.”

For his part, Breyer believes Swivel’s business model is an ideal approach to help landlords be able to meet the evolving needs of tenants.

“As a VC, one of my mantras [to portfolio companies] is ‘don’t sign anything longer than two years,’ ” Breyer told me. “Real estate hasn’t kept up with that, as the leasing business hasn’t yet been tech-enabled, particularly in very important markets, like Silicon Valley and Austin.”

In general, he also believes flexible leases will become more and more important in general given workforce needs.

“The next generation thinks about flexibility first and foremost,” Breyer told me. “Swivel gives landlords the opportunity to attract the tenants of the future.”

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SoundCloud Gets $75M Investment From SiriusXM To Bring Its Ƶ Over $500M /venture/soundcloud-gets-75m-investment-from-siriusxm-to-bring-its-funding-to-over-500m/ Tue, 11 Feb 2020 16:21:02 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=25294 When it comes to success in the music industry, it all depends on the number of ears you can convince to listen.

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Case in point: Music creation platform has received a $75 million investment from audio company two years after it was notoriously just “.”

SoundCloud is a platform for individual audio creators to upload content, attracting the attention of average listeners like you and me, lesser-known artists and celebrities such as The Weeknd, Kehlani, and Lil Yachty (even before they got famous).

The company is a home for independent, unsigned artists, and like many social media platforms it creates the opportunity for one-time nobodies the possibility of going viral and making it big.

SoundCloud was founded in 2007 and claims it has over 200 million tracks from 25 million creators heard in 190 countries. The startup has over $500 million in funding to date,

Sirius XM’s investment in the company will be used to work on “product development and enhance the services that fuel its global community of creators and listeners,” .

SoundCloud’s CEO Kerri Trainor also claims that, “three consecutive years of strong financial performance directly reflect the success of our creator-led growth strategy.”

SoundCloud’s growth is notable. According to the company, it has a $200 million revenue run-rate based on the financials of fourth-quarter 2019. For those that don’t know, run-rate is a metric that helps forecast the year-end revenue by multiplying the performance of one quarter. That said, it is often employed by younger companies, and SoundCloud is over 13 years old at this point.

To unpack how this company went from almost closing to its recent news, a look as today’s investor is telling. According to the company, an ad and sales partnership with Sirius XM subsidiary made the platforms the “largest digital audio advertising marketplace.”

“The agreement enables advertisers and brands to purchase SoundCloud’s U.S. ad inventory directly through Pandora, leveraging the company’s direct sales capabilities, targeting data, and audio programmatic platform,” per the release. The combined audience is more than 100 million unique active listeners, a spokesperson for the company told Crunchbase News this morning. For context–streaming platform has 271 million monthly active unique users according to its latest earnings report.

Beyond partnerships, there’s definitely other factors at play that propelled the company past its layoffs and shutdowns–including support and public rallying from Chance The Rapper, .

But it was likely from and in 2017 that helped SoundCloud stay afloat. It also led Alexander Ljung, the founder and chairman of the company, to step down as CEO. This kicked off a companywide restructuring.

Per Ljung, the 2017 investment promised a musical future.

“This financing means SoundCloud remains strong & independent. As I said, SoundCloud is here to stay,” at the time.

Today’s minority investment will allow two board seats for Sirius XM.

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Tuning Into This Year’s Podcast Investment /venture/tuning-into-this-years-podcast-investment/ Mon, 04 Mar 2019 17:34:16 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=17513 Morning Markets: Another week, another huge podcast round. Let’s recap some of the activity from the space to get our heads around it.

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The Internet enabled a host of video entertainment options that could have supplanted our interest in audio content. After all, after the rise of television, radio never had the same preeminence again. But in the era of esports and high-def streaming video, the time when , humble audio is having a moment.

Sure, your friends listen to podcasts. But even if you don’t partake in hipster radio, recent news has underscored the scale to which the podcast genre has moved from the fringes to the mainstream.

, and the stakes are rising, financially and otherwise. So it’s a good moment to remind ourselves what has happened recently in podcasting-land.

Recent Doings

Most recently, a company called “emerged from stealth mode” over the weekend . They report Luminary has raised $100 million in capital and intends to rent access to its podcasts (helmed by big names like Hannibal Buress, Russell Brand, and others, according to its website) for $8 per month.

That’s a staggering amount of money for a company, which, , was founded in 2018.

But it’s not the first podcasting company to raise $100 million this year. Amazingly, a company called Himalaya Media raised $100 million as well. That news broke in February.Himalaya’s lead investor is , a Chinese company that as a “spoken word audio platform.”

But there aren’t only big rounds available for podcasting-focused companies. You can raise less, it turns out. (Check our mid-2018 look at the podcast industry here).

As reported (co-host of , a show that I take help out with), podcast production company called raised $4.3 million last month. The WaitWhat Series A is not the only smaller investment into podcasting-related companies. It turns out that , a tool that we use on for analytics has raised $1.2 million towards the end of 2017, for example.

And, of course, no podcast summary is complete in 2019 without reminding ourselves that Spotify spent over $300 million buying (lots of well-produced podcasts) and (online podcast distribution). Those exits tell investors that there’s M&A activity in the space, meaning that they may be able to exit podcast investments sans the need for an IPO.

I didn’t think that we’d have multiple nine-figure rounds into podcasting companies ever, let alone a few this year. And with Spotify dropping big dollars into the genre, other major music platforms could follow suit. Of course, going from renting or selling the work of others (iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify’s work with music) is different than creating your own work. But Apple is getting into original video content as we all know. And audio is cheaper to create.

At least I thought it was.

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Scooters And Podcasts Bag $640M As Tech’s 2019 Starts Hot /venture/scooters-and-podcasts-bag-640m-as-techs-2019-starts-hot/ Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:52:44 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=17236 Morning Markets: Quick notes on three financial events that happened in tech over the last day that caught my eye. Naturally, scooters are involved.

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Three things happened in the last 24 hours that help detail the current state of the technology market: its long-running, nine-figure venture round; buying some podcasting companies; and another podcasting shop .

Each of the events is bullish. That Lime, a scooter unicorn and venture darling, managed to raise $310 million more implies that there is lots of ready money available for risky, growth-oriented bets. The $230 million Spotify deals to purchase and help us understand that growing companies in yet-nascent markets (the whole podcasting industry was ) can secure big exits to the right acquirer. And the fact that Himalaya, a podcasting service that brings tipping to the game, can raise $100 million in a single go hints that optimism is still the leading emotion among technologists and their supporting financial class.

The collection of news is bullish, I think. Yet another scooter round and a triple-hit on the podcasting front all at once makes the start of 2019 feel pretty hot.

However, a lot of what we are seeing announced by startups and venture capitalists has been in the works for weeks and months. So what 2019 itself will bring is probably just starting to become clear. Do not over-index you expectations completely to the energy of the above news; the rest of the year might look different.

That said, our running count of $250 million rounds keeps growing and we haven’t even reached the mid-point of February. And there’s more: Kleiner Perkins has a new fund, andcloud stocks are back near record highs. The external signals that we chase look strong.

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Tencent Music’s Updated IPO Docs List $1.4B Raise, Record Profit /public/tencent-musics-updated-ipo-docs-list-1-4b-raise-record-profit/ Tue, 04 Dec 2018 17:35:07 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?p=16541 Morning Markets: Tencent Music filed a new IPO document this week detailing how much money it expects to raise and its most recent results.

This week filed a new document, , updating its financials and providing new notes on how much money the firm expects to raise in its impending listing on the .

When Tencent Music, the Chinese entertainment giant, first filed to go public we noted that it was in strong financial shape. Unlike many companies looking to go public in 2018, the Tencent-backed firm posted both growth and profits. The combination was also in contrast to , the European music streaming firm, which amid growth.

The company expects its IPO, underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan,Deutsche, and BofAMerrill Lynch, to raise as much as $1.41 billion, listing at a price between $13 and $15 per share. (In its IPO, each share sold will be worth two Tencent Music Class A shares, boosting its per-share price but lowering the number of equivalentshares used for calculating certain metrics.)

Notably, about half the shares offered in the IPO (discounting the ) will come from extant shareholders, limiting the amount of capital that Tencent Music itself will raise in its flotation.

But that only matters so much. The company’s quarter ending September 30, 2018, included its largest quarterly profit listed in its filing. Tencent Music’s quarter saw a hair under 5 billion RMB (around $727 million) in revenue, an operating profit of 1.06 billion RMB ($155 million), and post-tax net income of 964 million RMB ($141 million).

The firm grew just over 10 percent from the sequentiallypreceding quarter and 71 percent from the year-ago quarter. Not bad.

Why Doesn’t It Lose Money?

Tencent Music is profitable, and Spotify isn’t. That might seem odd, but the two firms are far less of product cognates than you might have expected.

The company generated just under 30 percent of its revenue in the first three quarters of 2018 from its “online music services” and just over 70 percent from “social entertainment services and others.” Its “social entertainment” category is comprised of “live streaming, online karaoke, sales of music-related merchandise and certain other services.” That’s not what Spotify does of course.

The Chinese music and entertainment company doesn’t break out its cost of revenues for each revenue category, but I would wager you breakfast that the majority of its margin comes from its larger revenue category.

Regardless of how it makes its money, Tencent Music looks healthy and ready to go. So, while we thought that the IPO season was coming to a close, perhaps we have one more debut to get into 2018. We’ll see.

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Checking In On Dropbox, Spotify, Zuora, And DocuSign /startups/checking-dropbox-spotify-zuora/ Mon, 30 Apr 2018 14:59:48 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?post_type=news&p=13792 Morning Report: We spend a lot of time looking at late-stage tech companies as they work towards getting public. And even more time when they finally begin to trade. But this morning let’s check in on what’s happening with a number of big names that went public this year.

2018 is hot for IPOs, doubly so in contrast to the last few lackluster years. Yes, , and , and 2017 were disappointments of varying degree for venture capitalists and employees alike who were hoping that long-held shares might shake loose from the private market.

But the fourth time’s the charm, I suppose and 2018 may make up for some lost time. To that point, a few companies have managed to go public this year that stood out from the normal springtime enterprise IPO cycle.

Indeed, we’ve seen some famous unicorns finally go public in 2018, and it’s been annoyingly satisfying to write some conclusory notes concerning companies that spent more time in the shadows than perhaps anyone might have anticipated.

But how are they doing now, with a little bit of time on public markets? Let’s quickly take a peek at a few unicorn IPOs that we have seen this year and how they are holding up:

  • Dropbox
    • IPO price: $21
    • Price today: $30.10
    • Percent change: +43.33 percent
  • Spotify
  • Zuora
    • IPO price: $14
    • Price today: $19.62
    • Percent change: +40.14 percent
  • DocuSign
    • IPO price: $29
    • Price today: $38.69
    • Percent change: +33.41 percent
  • Pivotal Software
    • IPO price: $15
    • Price today: $18.42
    • Percent change: +22.8 percent
  • iQiyi
    • IPO price: $18
    • Price today: $18.35
    • Percent change: +1.94 percent
  • Bilibili
    • IPO price:
    • Price today: $10.40
    • Percent change: -9.6 percent

All but one of the companies I felt were big enough to warrant mention today are up. Not bad.

Some of the above names are less well-known, I admit. But it is critical for us at Crunchbase News, and everyone, really, to keep eyes on China’s startup market. There is so much money flowing through the world of Chinese venture that it’s nigh-staggering.

The scale of that cash and the value creation it implies (through spiraling valuations, and so forth) is a global story. And, therefore, so too are the exits of those same companies, especially when they list abroad.

Moving past China, what we can see in the list is a very warm welcome from the markets to recent, large tech IPOs. And all those companies went out before the markets fall apart! That makes the permabear that sleeps on top of my heart happy.

More when the next set of IPOs list. (Just for fun, .)

From The:

U.S. wireless carriers Sprint and T-Mobile announced plans to merge in a stock transaction that values the combined company at around $146 billion. The combined company, which will go by the name T-Mobile, also plans to build a nationwide 5G network.

, a provider of logistics software and services for freight shippers, announced that it has raised $100 million in fresh funding from Chinese courier firm SF Express. The new round brings total funding for the five-year-old, San Francisco-based company to more than $300 million.

The Hive raises new fund for AI

, a Silicon Valley venture investor and startup creator, has raised $26.5 million for a new fund that will focus on artificial intelligence-powered applications for the enterprise.

Latina founders challenging the diversity stats

Crunchbase News profiles three Latina founders who are scaling up startups in areas ranging from smart mattress covers to legal tech to mobile networking.

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Spotify Opens At $165.9 With Reported Valuation Of $29B+ /public/spotify-opens-165-9-reported-valuation-29b/ Tue, 03 Apr 2018 16:53:23 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?post_type=news&p=13495 Today Spotify began trading at $165.90 per share in its unconventional direct listing. According , the value of the company is now around $29.5 billion.

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In the first two months of this year, Spotify shares traded between $90 and $132.50, creating a wide range for the company’s value. The company’s shares traded on an even wider band in 2017, with sales ranging from $37.50 to $125.00.

As of the time of writing, the show Spotify’s gains from its $132 reference price that was set before its opening:

According , Spotify’s start of trading was “officially the latest open for a NYSE-listed stock on record,” noting that “Alibaba opened at 11:53 am,” earlier than when Spotify started to trade.

If the day’s trading goes well for Spotify, the firm will have set an interesting precedent for highly-valued private companies. Perhaps we’ll see more of the same. But with only minutes of trading under its belt, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

For noteson Spotify’s financial health and a link to its F-1 document, head here. And for more on how Spotify has the long-game in mind for its financial model, . Spotify is on the hunt for better margins, a nearly existential quest. It’s first earnings report should be interesting as all hell.

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What To Keep In Mind During Spotify’s Direct Listing /public/keep-mind-spotifys-direct-listing/ Mon, 02 Apr 2018 21:03:28 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?post_type=news&p=13485 Tomorrow, Spotify’s direct listing will kick off per the company’s prior notes. The impending results may become a critical event in the tech world.

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Unicorn liquidity has long underperformed paper gains. Why that is the case isn’t hard to grok: turning assets into liquid gains often requires the public market, and IPOs over the last few years have been scarce.

Enter Spotify’s non-IPO, which, if successful, couldencourage other startups reticent to pursue a traditional IPO to go public using a direct listing. (It could also do the opposite, no one really knows.)

Given that question mark, and a number of others, what follows are some thoughts on Spotify as it waits out the last hours of its life as a private company.

(Lack Of) Price Clarity

In a traditional IPO, the company in question prices, sells a large bloc of shares, and then begins to trade. The pricing dance (which takes several steps) is then followed by orders until a final, opening price is decided.

Spotify only has historical, private trades to help set expectations for its per-share value and the price range of those trades is enormous. on the company’s most recent private market transactions:

As you can see in the chart below, in 2017, Spotify shares were bought and sold privately for anywhere between $125.00 and $37.50, which is a pretty wide range.But in the last two months the value has become a little more defined, with shares trading anywhere between $132.50 and $90 in January and February 2018.

We might as well throw a damn dart.

Will Anyone Sell?

Bloomberg’s Matt Levine . He noted that if “not much stock changes hands on the first day then you have a weird situation where the public market for Spotify is a tiny fraction of its market capitalization.” A limited float could lead to dramatic price swings, as the supply side of the supply-demand equation would be more limited than in a traditional offering.

Tight supply could lead to sharp price fluctuations and potentially a public float that grows in relation to share price increases, resulting in chronic rise-fall gyrations of Spotify’s market cap.

However, if a lot of Spotify shareholders decide that they’d like to buy houses and the like, then the market could be overburdened by non-locked-up shares, driving the price down. Instead of a limited supply (the inverse of what we saw in the preceding example), panic-induced selling from extant shareholders could result, harming Spotify’s value in the market.

Regardless, we don’t really know how much demand there is for Spotify shares as the firm isn’t selling a bloc before it begins to trade at a price that we understand. The scuttlebuttaround the net seems to be that quite a lot of people are going to want to pick up shares. So demand could be quite high, or it could be low.

And, of course, there won’t be banks on hand to help stabilize the price of the company’s shares.

Lots Of Questions

If that felt like more uncertainty and shrugging from us than usual, it’s because no one seems very certain about what will happen tomorrow—aside from Spotify’s CFO. The executive appears dead-set on a direct listing as the right move Indeed, , the following stuck out regarding the CFO’s push to pursue a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO for Spotify:

But people who know McCarthy say he does not care about the broader implications of his plan — he isn’t motivated by some ideological crusade to stick it to Wall Street, nor by some high-minded attempt to chart a new future for the technology sector.

“I don’t think it’s a middle finger to Wall Street because he comes from Wall Street,” said Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, where McCarthy was its CFO for eight years. “He’s as Wall Street as it gets.”

So this isn’t a vendetta, at leastnot according to Hastings. It’s a business choice. As such, we’ll be able to grade it tomorrow on the measure of its dollars.

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Quick Notes On Spotify’s April 3rd Direct Listing /startups/quick-notes-spotifys-april-3rd-direct-listing/ Thu, 15 Mar 2018 20:01:01 +0000 http://news.crunchbase.com/?post_type=news&p=13306 At the start of its investor day, Spotify announced that it intends to begin public trading on April 3rd, or less than three weeks from today.

The music-powered firm is going public using a direct listing, a method of flotation that will not see the company sell new shares in its debut. As such, there’s no traditional underwriters or other such trappings.

It’s a slightly odd, probably risky plan. There is uncertainty in the market that the firm is taking a reasonable approach to going public — — but Spotify has shrugged off the commentary and is moving ahead with its plan.Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, noted in his introductory remarks that the company was not focused on the “pomp and circumstance” of a normal IPO.

Regardless of how well the direct listing goes, the market will have a new data point regarding unicorn debuts.

Will Spotify’s direct listing drive more of the same form other, similarly valuable companies? Probably not, ironically, as most other unicorns aren’t free cashflow positive, and thus probably need their IPOs to be cash-accretive.

Let’s talk about .

Concerning Spotify

Central to Ek’s investor pitch today was the maturity and size of Spotify. After noting the company’s age — over 10 years — Ek disclosed the number of employees that Spotify currently employees: over 3,500. The goal of the speeech seemed to be to establish the company not as some sort of upstart, but instead the leading player in music streaming, a market category that Ek noted was driving growth in the music business after years of decline.

And, as the company’s F-1 is public, Spotify detailed a few non-GAAP metrics that are worth sharing. First, that the company has a hugely young userbase, with 72 percent of its monthly actives under the age of 35.

I suppose we can read that as Spotify showing that its product is connecting with people in their youth, which implies that its current customer acquisition work could yield long-term revenues from subscribers who continue listening to music for years.

(Thus bringing Spotify buckets of subscription dollars as they age, of course.) But, music is what Spotify has long done best, so how does it intend to keep its market position? A few ways. Let’s explore.

Free, Freedom, And Data

How will Spotify defend its subscriber base and keep growing in a crowded market? Condensing from brightly-colored slides and spoken paragraphs, Spotify thinks it can stay on top due to its freemium model, multi-platform strategy, and data creation and usage.

Briefly, the first point deals with Spotify’s free, ad-supported tier. It’s been controversial with some artists who worry about devaluation of their creation, famously with some , and some artist’s . However, Spotify noted that its free service creates a critical on-ramp for paying users (Variety has a good quote on the matter ).

Second, Spotify exists everywhere, regardless of where the user may be at any given moment. As I write to you, for example, I am running Spotify on a Macbook Pro, which is linked to my iPhone, which in turn is sending audio to a large, portable speaker. I use the Mac to send directions to the phone, which then plays on the speaker.

Now that’s not the most efficient setup, but it shows off what Spotify wants to do: be everywhere, and work well wherever it is. This is in obvious contrast to other companies, especially platform players, that have a focus on only their own ecosystems. But more on that in a minute.

Lastly, Spotify made noise about data, both for and from users and for artists themselves. Spotify’s massive user base creates huge stacks of data which power consumer features like playlists, and also help artists learn from their fan base. Here I have to mention that Spotify gave Metallica a shoutout, which was great. The band, it seems, can tailor set lists for concerts depending on which tracks are popular in the city they are playing in.

There is an implicit flywheel in the above. Free users help Spotify generate more data than it could with just paying users, allowing it to build a more intelligent service for both music fans and artists, thus creating a better service, enticing those same free users to become paying subscribers. And so forth.

Those Other Players

Before we simply point you back at with a directive to do your own research and not trust in a company’s self-hype, a little note on Spotify’s take on rival streaming providers.

First, recall who else is in the music business: Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook (kinda), and not-really-anymore-Microsoft. Amazon has music for sale, and free streaming through Prime membership. Apple has both iTunes track sales and Apple Music streaming. Google has Google Play Music, not to mention all music ever (legal and not) on YouTube. Facebook has to do something with music. And Microsoft (Groove is now dead. I still miss Zune.)

So, Spotify is swimming with the biggest fish in the sea. To that end, the company emphasized its multi-platform strategy and focus. Spotify doesn’t want to sell hardware or books, it joked, potshots at Apple and Amazon. It just wants to do music, and maybe other audio-related work.

And that brings us back to Spotify’s core pitch, really, that it does music best because it does music first. And it’s been doing music for a long time.

If that, combined with its deeply unprofitable operation, is enough to entice investors will be seen on April 3rd.

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