uberlife Real Champions Series: Hanging out with Alex Ljung
uberlife’s Real Champions Series has seen us hanging out with inspirational individuals who have worked hard, smart and with passion to achieve great things to inspire and motivate those starting out.
This time we talk with Alexander Ljung, the CEO and founder of SoundCloud, the audio platform that enables anyone, anywhere to create and share their sounds on the web. Prior to SoundCloud, Alexander worked in sound design for feature films, co-authored a book on online sociology and co-founded a consultancy network. Alex was born in the UK, grew up in Sweden and the Middle East and now splits his time between Berlin, Germany and San Francisco, US.
Sanchita Saha (SS): Who, in the last 12 month, is the most inspiring person or people you have hung out with and how did they inspire you?
Alex Ljung (AL): My co-founder Eric. We started Soundcloud together and before that we were working on a lot of projects as well and we work very closely we are super good friends and we work together all the time. We inspire each other a lot. Whenever I say something silly he is my toughest challenger and he’s also sort of the biggest inspiration as well when I am dry on ideas
SS: If you could choose anywhere in the world to hang out where would it be and what would you be doing?
AL: That’s easy - Berlin. Berlin is the best place in the world. I’m been lucky enough to travel quite a lot and I’ve been to a lot of great cities in the world they’ve got a lot of great places but Berlin is just phenomenal - there is nothing like it at the moment. There is so much art and creativity and there is such an edge to everything that is going on. We kind of joke about it - the underground is mainstream in Berlin. There is no general mainstream. Everybody is doing things their own way and being very innovative and not just following the stream. So Berlin is really like my number one place in the world.
The last 12 months have been pretty meteoric really for you guys. If you could pin one moment down can you name what your highest has been in the last 12 months?
AL: That’s hard there has been so many great things over the last year. The team has just been on fire. Our users have been awesome because they are starting to use Soundcloud in so many new ways. We have done a bunch of integrations.
SS: Any fist punching in the air moments?
AL: One of the KPIs that we track is the number of high 5s per day at the office that we track on a chart and that one is growing so that’s a good thing. The single moment, that’s really tough - I think it’s a little bit from last year but more reconfirmed this year - we always hoped that Soundcloud would be a platform for all types of sound. We believe that everybody is potentially the creator of sound whether it is music or a voice diary or a parent recording their kid’s first words, Russell Brand reporting from his new book. I think we’ve really been able to see that very prominently this year with a lot of people who are using Soundcloud in a really broad range of ways. I think even if it wasn’t a specific moment just having the realisation that that’s actually happening, that sound is becoming a key part of the web and we were part of making that happen, that feels good.
SS: On the converse, it’s challenging for any start up whatever the stage but the bigger you get, the bigger the challenges become. What moment in the last 12 months would you say has been the worst or the hardest and how did you recover from it?
You can have specific moments where you are having for example an infrastructure challenge and it’s very intense or you have a moment before launch and something goes wrong but I think those are sort of bearable. I think the toughest thing is when the team grows, expands, and as a founder and CEO you spend a lot more time really working with your team and making sure the whole organisation works and whenever there’s some person who has a problem around something like that those are the moments that are the toughest. But the whole team has been amazing this year. We have grown from about 30 people to almost 80 people now and everybody is being super responsible and made sure that we have managed to grow so we can build way more stuff but we still have the same kind of vibe we had when we were like 5 or 10 people.
SS: It’s amazing that you have been able to keep that with that kind of growth
AL: Yes it’s because everyone on the team is committed to keeping that spirit as well so it is an effort that everyone has to be a part of
SS: Offline networking versus online networking in a boxing ring - Who wins?
AL: I don’t think there is a winner. I think they are different and some people ask us what’s best - photos or videos or sound. It’s the wrong question in a way - they are different things and they are good for different things. I think online is never going to replace off line completely and offline obviously we wont revert back to only being offline and they are both very powerful by themselves
SS: Let me rephrase - where do you think the value of offline networking over online networking and vice versa.
AL: It’s a huge community and engagement driver. Absolutely massive. If you have a social website which is about community and people interacting with each other, if you can bring that offline and have people meet each other in real life and re-establish that bond (I think there are a lot of companies who are saying we are doing local meet ups) I think you can get a tremendous increased passion, for users, for each other, for the community, for the product so I think there is a tremendous big area.
SS: Thanks very much Alex for your time.
What an end to 2011!
We’ve finally recovered from our week of hanging out euro-style at Le Web in Paris and then in Berlin. They were both awesome experiences and we met so many great people. At Le Web we heard from some of the most successful startup CEOs and founders (see below) that got us really inspired and ready to kick ass in 2012.
We also managed to grab interviews with the super-nice Dennis Crowley (foursquare) and Alexander Ljung (SoundCloud) that we’ll publish on our blog in the new year as part of our upcoming Tech Champions series to inspire others starting out. What we can say is that these guys are so down-to-earth and the challenges they face daily are the ones that we all as startup founders go through, so it was great to hang out and keep it real with them.
Karl Lagerfeld was the opening keynote! An interesting choice for sure and certainly the first (and possibly last) time we’ve ever been in the presence of such a fashion legend. These were the really cool live drawings from the guys at LiveSketching.com capturing some of the main messages from each interviewee, including Kevin Rose below…
Kevin Rose live sketch (Digg, Milk Inc)
Bill Gross (CEO of UberMedia) was one of the most inspiring speakers at Le Web. So much great advice in 12 steps!
Our favourite founder and CEO Dennis Crowley (foursquare) - such a genuine and humble guy. Probably the most inspiring person we had a chance to hang out with at Le Web.
And then there was Berlin…. The hangout that we arranged in Berlin straight off the back of Le Web to meet some local startups went better than we could have imagined with around 15 - 20 people from the tech, music and design scene coming down for a few beers to say hello.
And - serendipitously enough, London’s very own Mike Butcher happened to be in Berlin that night and made it along to hang out with us too! It was a great night and we made so many new Berlin friends, we’re looking forward to coming back soon for our hangout number two there next year.
It has been an incredible 2011, loads of challenges, highs and lows and most significantly the year that we saw the conception and birth of this, our newest project, uberlife.
We’re so excited about 2012 and everything that we want to achieve. But for now we’re going to power down for a few days. When we come back in the new year we’re kicking off with our second “Meet the neighbours” all-American BBQ in Old Street, for Silicon Roundabout’s best tech, music and design companies to get together, chew the fat, catch up on all the Xmas and NYE goings on and set our 2012 resolutions in place.
In the meantime, have a wicked Christmas everybody and here’s to hanging out more in 2012!
