The Startup Kids Page #2

more people I could relate to

and I knew that Silicon Valley

was the place to be, so I'm

going to go check it out and

see it with my own eyes

was it really "Nerdtopia", as

they called it, is it actually

that awesome. So I flew down and

cold emailed just people.

I figured, you know, what is the

worst thing could happen if I

email all these people and they

say no, OK great, I was not even

going to meet with them, in the

first place

By emailing people in Silicon

Valley Brian managed to get

meetings with some of the

world's most respected venture

capitalists and entrepreneurs.

He got a job at a startup named

Digg, a popular social content

website. Digg had to lay off

40% of their staff, and after

only a year Brian was fired.

I had like 2000 dollars left on

my bank account, I was about to

go bankrupt, bed was like

fifteen hundred, it is not cheap

to live in the city and I

remember talking to some of

my friends that I made over the

last few months and I was like

hey I have got this idea and

they were like, hey I know this

VC, Adam. And I met with Adam

for coffee and Adam was like,

well, this is cool, you know,

cool pitch, bla bla bla

Usually you never hear back from

them ever again but then Adam

the next day called me and he

said, hey, you want to do

a partners meeting. I didn't

even know what a partners

meeting was, at the time, you

know, what is a partners meeting

And I realized it was a very

important meeting, clearly,

because that is where they were

making the decision and the week

after that I had a term sheet

and as a nineteen year old,

sitting looking down at that

many zeros you are freaking out

because this is the most amazing

thing you have seen in your

whole life then I realized it

was my ticket, it was a very

chance thing, I got very lucky.

True Ventures's investment made

Brian able to start the company

he had dreamed about. He was 19

years old at the time which

makes him the youngest person to

ever receive funding by

a venture capital firm, beating

founder of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg by one year.

Next 6 months was very clear to

me beyond that I couldn't see

anything, but I didn't really

care because I knew we had six

months or less to prove a lot

out so it was just a race

against time to make things

happen and I was so determined

to sit down, and be like, I'm

not leaving this room until

something happens and this is

going to make the world

a completely different world in

the next few years and you are

going to help me change that and

people were there to be a part

of this vision and I couldn't

thank them more, there were lot

of very early supporters that

believed in this crazy Asian kid

and his random idea about real

rewards and virtual achievements

it is like the people who have

supported me, I thank them and

they are part of their lives

even till this day

Being an Internet entrepreneur

is hard work. The freedom of

not having a boss comes with

strings attached.

Vacations disappear into the

mist of long hours, money

problems and sleepless nights.

Bootstrapping, the art of

building a business with little

or no money, is the most common

way to start a company today.

Sometimes I get worried about

these young entrepreneurs who

spend 10 years trying to be the

next Steve Jobs or Mark

Zuckerberg and they are sitting

in a dark room coding and they

miss out of the best years of

their lives. You need to

When I was an entrepreneur and I

think still now, it was, go to

sleep after a long night of

coding you wake up late usually

because you just need to sleep.

You drink a lot of soda, eat a

lot of junk food, you don't

dress necessary that well, I

didn't dress that well, and you

kind of just work all the time

and that is your entire life.

It is always a roller-coaster

ride, you know, every time I

hang out with one of my

entrepreneur friends, it is

always like, let's just get it

out of the way, are you on,

like, are you on a high part of

the cycle or are you down in the

depths because it is pretty much

going to dictate how the dinner

or the meeting goes, you know,

a lot of times, people are like:

we are killing it, we are going

to change the world, and you

like talk to them tomorrow and

they are like, dude, I don't

know why I am doing this, I

should have just been a banker.

This is the most manic

depressive way you can possibly

live life, right, you are never

having a good day, you are

either having the best day ever

or you think you're about to die

I know people who run a startup

who manage to balance things and

do other stuff in life as well.

I'm not one of those people.

Alexander Ljung is the CEO and

co-founder of SoundCloud,

an audio platform that enables

anybody to upload sounds on to

the web. SoundCloud is one of

the fastest growing companies

in the music world. The

company's headquarters are in

Berlin but because of their fast

growth they have opened an

office in San Francisco so

Alexander splits his time

between Berlin and Silicon

Valley.

Alexander grew up in Sweden

and went to the Royal Institute

of Technology in Stockholm where he

studied human computer Interaction.

I didn't have the typical

entrepreneur background of, you

know, opening up a lemonade

stand and, you know, selling

magazines to the neighborhood,

but I realized in hindsight like

that, I was always doing these

intense projects.

I would come up with an idea and

then, you know, cut out

everything else in my world and

only focus on that idea so in

that way I was very

entrepreneurial in terms of

doing projects and creating

things but it wasn't in business

sense but I definitely always

had the tendency to go, you

know, over the top with project

that I was doing, weather it was

installation of interactive

shoes that made noises or ping

pong table that you could make

music with or what ever it might

be so I had a strong drive to

create things, but it wasn't,

I didn't think of it as business

quality or anything like that.

Alexander met his co-founder

Eric Wahlforss, in college when

they bonded over being the only

ones using Mac computers.

They both had a background in

music and were familiar with the

problem of collaborating with

other musicians. They decided to

create SoundCloud to solve that

problem.

In the beginning we were really

excited but I think it was, we

were more excited about it

because like we wanted this

product, and we were like, this

has to exist because then we can

do this and we can do that. I

think we were so obsessed with

what it would do for us that we

didn't necessarily see the full

potential of how big of an

impact we could actually have on

the web and the world outside

of it.

After graduation in 2007 he and

Eric decided to move away from

Stockholm to be able to focus

totally on building of the

company. They traveled around

Europe looking for the best

place for a tech startup.

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