The theme for this year’s Baton Rouge Entrepreneur Week is “Stayin’ Alive,” and one of the keynote speakers said the Bee Gees’ disco-era classics are appropriate for people looking to launch a fledgling business.
Dhiraj Mukherjee is one of the co-founders of the popular song identification app Shazam, which was acquired by Apple in 2018 for $400 million. Shazam became popular in 2008 when it was introduced to the Apple App Store. Easily identify songs playing on the radio, restaurants, and bars.
Shazam has been around since 2002, in the early days of mobile phone technology. At the time, to use the service, customers dialed a number on their mobile phone, the number answered, listened to music for 30 seconds, and then sent a text identifying the song that was playing.
“We were doing everything to survive and not run out of cash,” Mukherjee said in a speech at Mid-City Tower on Thursday morning. “As an entrepreneur, if you run out of cash, you’re done.”
Mukherjee and the other founders used all sorts of methods to get Shazam off the ground. They created a digital signal processing system that identifies a song’s unique audio fingerprint. To build a library of songs that would allow for identification, they signed a deal with one of the UK’s largest music distribution companies. I also manually ripped songs from millions of CDs, a process that took months. Without money for equipment, they built their own cheap computers and sometimes stuck them in racks to store their songs.
“It was all about survival,” he said. “Because when the money runs out, the party’s over.”
Mukherjee said Shazam pawned its technology as CD sales declined and customers flocked to download services like Napster. They sold this identification service to song rights companies that could monitor the songs being played on the radio and collect royalties.
Entering the Apple Store and integrating Shazam’s technology into the iPhone was a big step for the company, Mukherjee said. It took Shazam 10 years to get 1 billion users, it took him 1 year to get another 1 billion users, and it took him 10 years to get another 1 billion users. It took him two months.
“We were very, very lucky,” he said. “It was like the stars aligned.”
But there were other factors contributing to Shazam’s success, he said. The founders believed in themselves and each other. They were focused on one job and thinking only about the company. However, he said they are having fun and don’t take things too seriously. “Every day was an adventure,” Mukherjee said.
Mr. Mukherjee is currently an active investor in more than 250 companies involved in everything from harnessing geothermal technology as a source of clean power to leveraging technology to eliminate racial bias in employment. provides funds to companies.
Another keynote speaker is also involved in supporting entrepreneurs.
Felecia Hatcher is the CEO of Black Ambition Prize, a program founded by pop music star Pharrell Williams to support businesses with Black, Hispanic, and HBCU founders. As her CEO, Hatcher has invested in 100 entrepreneurs and awarded prizes ranging from $25,000 to $1 million.
“I’m leading a rocket ship for Black entrepreneurs,” she said. “We would never be able to provide capital that way.”
Building Black Ambition taught Hatcher what it means to be ambitious.
“Tom Ford said whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right,” she said.
