Le Web: Parker and Pishevar report from the startup coalface

Sean Parker, General Partner, Founders Fund & Shervin Pishevar, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

And we’re getting quite philosophical now. Pishevar is talking about people losing their fear – “fear becomes finite, hope become infinite” “We are not afraid of death…”

Parker thinks Spotify was his chance for redemption after Napster. He’s helping fix problems he created. At one point he couldn’t get meetings with guys in the record labels, and now he considers some of them good friends. Media business tend to be insular, run by a small elite. But it’s a shrinking industry, so it’s harder and harder from everyone from artists to publisher to make money. Parker’s (self-proclaimed personal) view is that the best music in the world is NOT being made today. The mechanism by which the music gets to your ears is unable to take risks with the artists that come to them. They let bands get a long way into their career before they fund them.

For music to go viral, we needed to establish a free tier of service, says Parker. By creating that with Facebook, we’ve allowed anyone to experience any music for free. Apple’s licensing model doesn’t support social distribution of music. Spotify is starting to answer the question of how we’ll find our new music in future…

Parker puts his biggest failure as the hiring at Napster – he got the wrong people, a certain breed of “parasitic leech”. You have to recognise that, and eradicate them as you would any insect. He was too you and naive to tell the difference between a competent executive. Pishevar learned from a period when he had custody of his kids, and was trying to write business plans while looking after his children. He also learnt that you shouldn’t build business 10 years ahead of its time.

And some guy is claiming to be Sean Parker’s son from 10 years into the future… One way to get a meeting.

Parker feels that the social media elements of politics haven’t been figured out yet. the 2008 campaigns made a lot of claims, but it was more about making the candidates seem relevance than any actual effects. He thinks next year’s election will be the one where social media comes of age. Social media can deliver a relationship between people more cost effectively than traditional methods – and that’s how it could change things, by letting a less well funded candidate win.

Someone from the audience asked why Spotify now requires Facebook. If you build a music  product that’s designed to be isolated, then social doesn’t matter, says Parker. If you want a network, then you really want everyone sharing, and so enforcing the Facebook login enables that. They made a bet that Facebook is so deeply penetrated that there’s enough people that it won’t adversely affect their growth.