Songkick Secures Sequoia's First Ever UK Investment with a $10M B Round

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/08/songkick-secures-sequoias-first-ever-uk-investment-with-a-10m-b-round/

by cecileb • 14 years ago

53 30 14 years ago

jpdoctor7• 14 years ago

> Something tells me there’ll be a few drinks sunk in Bar Music Hall tonight.

As I've said before: The fact that people "celebrate" a funding event is really bass-ackwards when you think about it.

It says that the company couldn't figure out how to grow without bringing in a bunch of financiers, who have a low hit rate (3 go north, 3 go south, 4 turn into the living dead), who provided negative 10 yr returns even with Google in the portfolio, and who take 2-3% + 20% of exit from their own investors.

Definitely an excuse to drink, but not for reasons of celebration.

gkoberger• 14 years ago

Growing a company takes money. Some people can manage to bootstrap it, and those people deserve a lot of credit. However, most can't. Employees need to be paid, and going from $0 to (($100k * # employees) + office space + hosting + etc) isn't something that can normally be done fast enough.

The challenge isn't to get funded. The challenge is to find a VC who can improve your valuation by more than the percentage they take. Finding that is worth celebrating.

jpdoctor7• 14 years ago

> The challenge is to find a VC who can improve your valuation by more than the percentage they take.

And considering that their IRR's are negative (they're not even making money for their limiteds), which VCs would that be?

pg5• 14 years ago

And as I've said before, if you're going to say something nasty, you'd better be right.

Practically all the most successful tech companies have raised outside funding. If raising money is a sign of lameness, then for some strange reason the most successful startups all seem to be the lame ones.

Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself. The Songkicks have worked hard. This is a big milestone for them. And you are pissing all over it without knowing anything about them, just because this news happened to trip some idee fixe you're in the grip of.

jpdoctor7• 14 years ago

> you'd better be right

Did I get wrong 1. hit rate, 2. negative IRRs or 3. the take?

> Practically all

But not all.

jamiequint• 14 years ago

> It says that the company couldn't figure out how to grow without bringing in a bunch of financiers

That is completely false. The most common reason companies raise VC money is so they can grow at a faster rate than they could without funding. If you have a business where X dollars invested in customer acquisition equals X+Y dollars in revenue but your revenue lags your customer acquisition by 6-12 months then you should go raise all the money possible given the size of the opportunity you are pursuing. Focusing on near-term profitability is not always the right decision.

rdl3• 14 years ago

I don't think anyone ever argued VC funding was sufficient to be successful -- it's just nearly necessary in some stages of many businesses to do certain things.

Series B investment is a lot different from "should I bootstrap or not" in the early stage. I think there are a whole lot more people who can work without salary for a year or two, and maybe dump a few hundred thousand of their own money into a business, getting it proven and to profitability, than there are people who can take a successful business, see great metrics, and decide to invest a spare $10mm in taking over the world.

It's useful to argue against VC financing as a "requirement" for early stage businesses (even though it helps a lot of businesses) mainly because it removes an excuse from people who can't raise money (by being in the wrong place, whatever) starting now.

There's very little point in arguing for or against Series B and later funding -- by that point, you either have a business or you don't.

johnndege• 14 years ago

congrats ian and team.

andreasklinger• 14 years ago

Congrats! Well deserved :)

rdl3• 14 years ago

I love Songkick -- I've wished for exactly that service many times, especially since I'm willing to see ok concerts in the Bay Area, or really great shows in a few other cities, if I know about them in advance.

Counting the PhDs at Songkick is interesting. Excessively smart people who are passionate about the problem domain (and luck) seems to be the only way to make up for the structural problems in the music industry.

pg5• 14 years ago

Me too. Songkick is one of the startups we've funded that has affected my life most as a user. Before Songkick, Jessica and I never went to see live music, because the bands we like are kind of obscure and we'd never find out they were coming to the Bay Area till too late. But thanks to Songkick we've now been to a bunch of concerts together.

spindritf• 14 years ago

I haven't heard about Songkick before, it looks great. I wish they enabled favourite bands import from Last.fm. EDIT: And country-wide tracking, that's a bummer.

iaskwhy• 14 years ago

It used to be possible to import from last.fm (and pandora) but, true, cannot find it anymore.

adrianwaj• 14 years ago

I wonder how much of SongKick's data is sourced from ArtistData: http://www.artistdata.com/us/network ?

jansen• 14 years ago

Wow, this is awesome! Always been a big fan of London-based YC startups :)

destraynor• 14 years ago

Delighted for the guys, I met a couple of them while I was speaking in Cambridge, smart team of fantastic and enthusiastic people. It's a really good consumer play solving a very real problem. Funding makes perfect sense for them, in my opinion.

I can't work out why jpdoctor is so down on this, but each to their own.

amirmc• 14 years ago

Off-topic: I'm curious. If a US VC invests outside the US do they have the same tax issues getting returns back into the country as other companies? e.g. Apple etc. Or does the money never leave in the first place?

staunch• 14 years ago

Congrats. Since I saw it I've wished someone would do this for comedians. I don't like live music, but I love live comedy. Get on that, someone!

Songkick Secures Sequoia's First Ever UK Investment with a $10M B Round

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