How my bootstrapped pet music startup struck a chord with a US buyer – Music For Pets founder Amman Ahmed

UKTN | The Podcast

UKTN

Technology, Entrepreneur, Tech, Business, Hr, Sales, Uktech, Investing, Funding, Entrepreneurship, Marketing

5 • 6 Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amman Ahmed, founder of Music For Pets, discusses building a successful brand from nothing, how music can become an integral part of an animal's life, and the importance of being genuinely human in business. Ahmed explains how trusting yourself, your team and your product is essential and urges founders to consider their priorities when seeking lofty valuations.

Ahmed launched Music For Pets as a side project with business partner Ricardo Henriquez in 2017. The pair researched how music can have a therapeutic effect on anxious and overly excited animals. After Music For Pets' online content grew rapidly in popularity, Ahmed scaled the company to serve more than 20 million pets around the world, who listen to over 12 million hours of music each month. That growth – all without raising external funding and minimal marketing spend – saw Music For Pets acquired by Create Music Group for a life-changing sum earlier this year.

Transcript

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0:00.0	People have used this music for so long and it's the only thing that's helped for their dog.
0:14.9	I think that's what's key from our approach is just to genuinely be human and not corporate and I think it works.
0:27.1	There's a lot of ego attached to building a unicorn if it wants to build a unicorn. But why?
0:40.0	From the first time founders to the funds that back them, innovation needs different.
0:45.7	Our episode partner, HSBC Innovation Banking, is proud to accelerate growth for tech and
0:51.6	life science businesses, creating meaningful connections and opening
0:55.3	up a world of opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Discover more at www.
1:01.5	hsbc innovation banking.com slash EN dashGB. Hello and welcome to the UKTN podcast, a weekly chat with the movers and shakers of the UK
1:16.3	tech industry and the destination for all things UK tech related.
1:21.1	And this week I'm joined by Arman Ahmed.
1:24.1	Welcome, Arman.
1:25.5	Thank you for having me.
1:26.6	Now, you are from a startup called Music for Pets,
1:30.7	which I'm assuming does what it says on the tin, and we'll hear more about your story. But first
1:35.5	of all, I'm going to try and do a little bit of experiment, and I'm joined by a guest star today,
1:41.0	who is Smudge, my black and white white cat they say never work with animals or cats
1:46.0	but we're going to attempt to do that and i'm going to play smudge some relaxing music for music
1:51.3	and see what he makes of it so i'm just going to go and collect him from the door where he's
1:55.1	angrily waiting to go out and is completely confused as to what he's doing uh he did actually
2:00.1	appear in some radio on on the BBC so he's a veteran, so we should know better.
2:04.2	But let's get the music playing.
2:21.3	What do you think, Smudge? What do you think smudge?
	...

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