What a year.
2020 kept us busy. We had to scale up operation at Soundwise on all fronts, from infrastructure to user support. Because despite the pandemic shock, we had the largest increase in user base since our inception. Over 3000 audio publishers now use Soundwise to share knowledge and entertainment with their audience across the globe. And thousands of listeners tune in on our apps daily to be educated and inspired by brilliant creators like you.
While that seems like decent progress for a weekend project that started two years ago, it’s no where near the pace of growth commonly expected for a technology project to be considered “successful” in the age of Facebook and Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg’s famous quote— "Move fast and break things." — inspired a generation of startup entrepreneurs to keep their hustle on overdrive, iterate relentlessly, and grab market shares at all costs.
But if anything, we’ve been doing the exact opposite.
At Soundwise, we’re shameless slackers when it comes to hustle, but overwhelmed with guilt whenever something breaks.
And more importantly, we believe in being deliberate and intentional. We believe in building a product that has a point of view and unique insights. We believe in sustainability over speed. We believe in making thoughtful product decisions that will make us proud when we look back, a long time from now.
And these are the perspectives that I invite you to consider for your business as well.
In an age where attention is scarce and everything moves at a breakneck speed, most online creators are pressured to believe that they have to make more and more content at a faster and faster pace, in order to survive the competition. After all, if people can pay $8.99 a month to access an open buffet of thousands of titles on Audible or Netflix, how can you, an independent creator, ever beat that, without creating more, faster?
Unfortunately, you can’t. And the result of attempting that is often massive depletion, in both adrenaline and creativity. That’s why so many books, albums, and TV shows are formulaic and boring these days— not because the creators don’t smoke enough weed, but because they are forced to industrialize a creative process in the name of speed and productivity.
Here’s the thing though. Although you can’t beat Audible or Netflix at the game of being cheaper and faster, you can choose to play a different game.
You can choose to play the game of being more insightful, more particular, more quality, and more soul. Those are the qualities in severe shortage, in an age where run-of-the-mill, industrialized content is in perpetual over supply. Those are the qualities that will allow you to break through the noise, attract a tribe, and charge premium price.
But you need to be crystal clear about which game you’re playing first, and make decisions accordingly, because the environment is constantly tempting you to believe that churning out more content faster is your only way to win.
Herman Melville spent 18 months writing Moby Dick—that’s a long time, in fact, a whole year more than what Melville wanted. But people are still reading Moby Dick almost 200 years later. I don’t think Melville would have beat himself up for being too slow if he had known how long his impact would last.
Be patient. Move slow. Play the long game. Trust.
And finally, I want to tell you that we have a lot of exciting initiatives planned for our users in 2021. For instance, for the first part of the year, we plan to allow listeners to create their own playlists on the app for better organization and retrieval, and allow publishers to create custom categories on their storefront for better navigation and highlighting the right soundcasts. We’ll also be introducing the Soundwise Creators’ Lab on Slack, a virtual community for our publishers to exchange knowledge and help one another. Look out for an invitation in your inbox soon.
Thank you for being part of Soundwise. We look forward to growing together with you in the new year.
Wish you a creative and thriving 2021.
