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[MUSIC PLAYING]
-So my name is Alex.
I'm the founder and CEO of SoundCloud.
And SoundCloud is the world's leading social sound platform.
So we allow anybody in the world to take
sounds that they create and share them
with anybody all across the web.
So it could be my cousin recording his children,
sending that over to me.
Or we have users like 50 Cent or Nicki Minaj or Mayor
Bloomberg in New York and other people.
So any kind of sound, really, that you
want to share through the web, SoundCloud
is there to help you out.
There were two things going on at the same time.
My co-founder Eric and I, we've always
been into sort of creating sound and also really
into the technology at the same time.
And the social web was starting to explode,
and we had all these new great services for sharing photos,
sharing videos, sharing texts.
But our passion was always in sound.
And so we were talking a lot about that.
And at the same time, one day, we just needed a simple tool
to be able to send sound files back and forth
and put comments on them.
So we started building that.
When all of a sudden we realized, like wait a minute,
it's not just that problem.
It's the whole part of sound being missing from the web.
That's what we need to do.
And from then on, we just decided that this is it.
We didn't have a clue about everything that you need to do.
I think we understood maybe half a percent of everything
that needed to be done.
But we were just so excited about what SoundCloud could be,
what the impact could be, that we actually
didn't think so much about what it would actually
mean to do it.
It wasn't this very thought through, here's the plan,
this is what we're going to do.
It was just like, OK, this has to be built.
We have to do it.
So we dove into it.
And I think maybe one of the things
that we completely underestimated
was that we were product guys.
We were just thinking, OK, we need to build this thing
and get it out.
And then all of a sudden you realize
that to really do this on a big level,
like we are building a product, but more importantly,
we're building an entire team.
We're building a company.
And that company creates its own sort of unique culture.
And that's where everything drives from.
And I mean, we were both at engineering school.
We had no idea about that part.
But it's a really fun thing to do.
One early moment that I had was that I was checking every sign
up that happened on the site.
And then one day, there was just too many.
So I couldn't keep up with it.
And then I realized, wow, this is really something.
That was still very early, and it was still really small.
And then I think a big moment for me, as well,
was starting to see how people used it
for really unexpected things.
So in the beginning, it was mostly musicians.
And all of a sudden, we start seeing like politicians,
authors, and just regular people audioblogging.
And that was starting to happen really fast.
And for me, that meant that it wasn't something
that we necessarily expected, but when
I saw that, I was like, OK, now this
is useful for every single person on the planet.
And that was, I think, a big moment for me.
Quit your job.
Stop thinking.
And do it right now.
It's as simple as that.
Because the thing is, you won't be able to figure it out
before you try.
Most of the stuff you need to do you're
going to learn and have to learn while you're doing it.
So don't overanalyze it in the beginning.
Just jump in.
And if you fail, that's a good thing.
That means you learned something,
and then you start another thing,
and then you will have learned from that.
So to not start your own thing is crazy.
I don't understand why you wouldn't do that.
It's a lot of fun.
[MUSIC PLAYING]