27:45How Tim Westergren Went From $400k in Debt to the Founder of a Public Company - Hustle Con 2015
From My First Million · Published Jul 7, 2015 · Watch on YouTube
TL;DR
Tim Westergren recounts Pandora’s origin: the Music Genome Project (a manually built 450-attribute musical taxonomy) led to a prototype in Excel, survived the dot-com crash with 50 employees working unpaid for two years, and after 348 investor pitches secured a $9M Series B in 2004.
Key insights
- The Music Genome Project began as an unscalable, manual process: 75 musicians scribbling song attributes on pencil and paper, then transferring to Microsoft Excel.
- Early prototype output (typing a Beatles song returned a Bee Gees song) initially seemed wrong but proved correct because the algorithm found a musically similar early Bee Gees knockoff.
- Westergren deferred his own salary first (“first in, last out”) and maxed out personal credit cards to $400k–$500k in debt, calling credit card use a “bad mistake” he does not recommend.
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