E1004: Yousician CEO & Co-founder Chris Thür created an interactive platform to master musical instruments, shares insights on acquiring 1M+ users, increasing retention through gamification, using profitability as leverage while attracting investors as an international startup

This Week in Startups

Jason Calacanis

Technology

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

1:06 Jason intros the Pegasus concept & Yousician's Chris Thür
3:52 Chris explains Yousician
5:22 How did Yousician start and what did Guitar Hero have to do with it?
11:02 Capitalizing on Apple's inclusion of subscriptions
16:00 What were the early days of Yousician like, and was it hard to raise $?
20:32 Is being based in Finland an asset?
27:00 Chris gives his best advice for founders
29:34 Does Chris feel pressure to take $ off the table through secondary shares?
30:45 What does Chris look for in investors and what motivates Finnish employees?
34:55 Jason & Chris talk speeding tickets in Finland
42:19 Chris demos Yousician and Jason sings along
45:25 Jason tries to get on the Yousician Cap Table
47:21 Why Jason believes Yousician will get to 10 million subscribers in the next few years

Transcript

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0:00.0	This Week in Start-Up's is brought to you by Airtable, the all-in-one collaboration
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0:54.7	Upcoming launch events.
0:56.4	Apply for the next launch accelerator cohort.
0:59.3	Applications are due December 23rd.
1:02.0	Learn more and apply at launch accelerator.co.
1:06.7	We've been talking over and over again on this podcast about the concept of the Pegasus.
1:12.0	You've heard of the unicorn, That's a startup that becomes worth
1:14.0	the billion dollars. I coin the term Pegasus. These are more powerful and more glorious than even
1:21.7	the mighty unicorn.
1:23.2	Why are Pegasus so coveted now in Silicon Valley?
1:26.8	Because they are so profitable, they fly on the wings of profitability and skip rounds of funding which preserves the cap table.
1:35.2	And we've had a number of companies that we've invested in from Com to Fitb and others who are
1:41.0	so profitable, they pour that profitability back into the product and the virtuous flywheel begins.
	...

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