Jan 5, 2016
Imagine this situation. You’ve been scratching and clawing at an idea for 2 years. You’re already deep in debt and having cash flow problems. By this time, your co-founder has left the company and you’re left with a handful of employees and twice as many part-time workers. You’re paying rent from your own checkbook and you’ve now resulted to asking your employees to defer their salaries. Consider the belief that these people had not only in the concept of Pandora being significantly successful despite the odds and having been in a 3rd iteration of a business model, but Tim Westergren was the guy to do it.
By most accounts, Tim Westergren is considered to be a pioneer for the music industry. Chances are that if you’ve never heard of him before, you’ve probably used the app that he created. Having built one of the most successful digital radio companies in the world, it’s easy to look at him and consider him another millionaire entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who was bright enough and ambitious enough to create a revolutionary service that has affected millions. While sure, all of that is true. But as you probably know, the devil is in the details.