BRETTON PUTTER

Don’t fuck up the culture... wasn’t what we were expecting to hear from someone who just gave us $150M!

June 26, 2023

An interview with Headliner CEO and founder Stan Mcleod

Highlights

  • How getting married helped the founders realise the scope of the opportunity for Headliner
  • Having a first client like Facebook can get you into Abbey Road studios
  • Why the founders chose TechStars over YCombinator
  • How  the company uses a "highs and lows" meeting on Friday to get to know one another better 

What type of culture is your companydeveloping? Is it an asset or a potential liability? Is it a strong, clearlydefined culture that’s embedded into every corner of your company, or is it aweak subconscious and invisible culture that’s everywhere, and yet nowhere? Isyour culture one where your team will be able to develop, thrive, fulfil theirpotential, achieve excellence and self-actualise? Or could it become a toxic sludgethat will slow everybody down? Is it the type of culture where an investor, whohas just invested $150m in your business, would respond“Don’t fuck up the culture” when you ask him for advice?

 In 2013, Airbnbco-founder Brian Chesky wrote a letter to everyone in the company titled “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” .  This succinct piece of advice came from AirbnbInvestor Peter Thiel and Brian then asked him to elaborate on this. It turnsout that one of the reasons Thiel invested in AirBnB was their culture, but hebelieved that it was practically inevitable, once a company gets to a certainsize to “fuck it up.”

Brian’s letter explains why investingin a company’s culture is so important:

“Why is culture so importantto a business? Here is a simple way to frame it. The stronger the culture, theless corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you cantrust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous.They can be entrepreneurial. And if we have a company that is entrepreneurialin spirit, we will be able to take our next “(wo)man on the moon” leap.

Ever notice how families ortribes don’t require much process? That is because there is such a strong trustand culture that it supersedes any process. In organizations (or even in asociety) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rulesand processes.”

 I was surprised during the interviewwith Stan Mcleod the co-founder and CEO of Headliner, when he said that one ofthe two things that keep him awake at night is how to develop a sustainable culture.The majority of the startup CEOs I speak to, consider culture to be something thatthey will get to when they have the time, missing the point that their companyculture, the glue that keeps the team together and the company moving forward, alreadyexists and has the potential to be a serious liability if left to developwithout any input from them.

BP

How did you getinvolved in the music industry?

SM

My family wasinvolved in music and they didn’t want me to follow in their footsteps. Theywanted me to get a proper job so I started studying a Medical Degree, I wasstudying foot and ankle biomechanics in London. I was a big music fan and had apassion for music. I live in South London and became frustrated with having totravel to north or east London to see live music. I decided to start to promoteevents in my local area. I met Maria who was a band manager and booking agentand we teamed up. We had quite a few successes, we set up the first gig of 60people for an act called Elena Tonra, who went on to become Daughter. She isnow internationally acclaimed and doing really well. It was great experienceworking with bands and generally being in the music scene.

BP

What brought youinto the tech scene?

SM

In 2010 we cameacross and were really inspired by CastingCall Pro, which is a marketplace thatconnects actors with casting directors. At the time MySpace had died and wefelt like that we could offer a better technology based service to the musicindustry. So we set up Bandwagon, which is a platform and marketplace forunsigned talent and music festivals. This was the beginning of our fantastic4-year journey.

We ran thebusiness from home and built a great community of 16000 artists with 11,000gigs across the UK, US and Europe. Although we built a solid business the economicswere not great and when the opportunity presented itself we sold the businessto a social music platform called CrowdMix. Fortunately we had a clause in thecontract, which meant we retained the business if CrowdMix failed, which it didonce it had burnt through the investment it received. Instead of closing thebusiness down we decided to scale things down but keep Bandwagon running forthe community. It’s live and a nice asset, who knows what might happen in thefuture?

 

BP

Where did theidea for Headliner come from?

SM

We realized thatthere was a really big opportunity in the private events space. We had one partof the marketplace sorted as we knew how to find and book the talent andcorporate clients had the budget to spend. Also Maria and I got married and ourown experience with access to great talent combined with a decent budget forthe music gave us the added impetus to start Headliner.

 

BP

How did youapproach building the team in the early stages of the business?

SM

We knew from ourexperience with Bandwagon that we needed to bring in a tech co-founder. We haddecided, just before the acquisition happened, to hire a CTO for Bandwagon andput an ad out. Post-acquisition, we didn’t need a CTO, however, one of thecandidates Rosario had applied for the position and really stood out. Her CVlooked amazing as she had built out the API team for Mendeley. When we caughtup with her she had become disenfranchised by the startup scene and wanted togo and play music instead. We met for a coffee and had an initial conversation wherewe really hit it off. She loved the idea of what Headliner could be and weconvinced her to join us as the third co-founder.

BP

What was yourapproach to building out the tech platform?

SM

We initially ranthe business off a spreadsheet because we wanted to first get a completeunderstanding of how the agency model worked. We did it all manually bookingacts for private and corporate events and through that process learnt whatworked and what didn’t.

Our firstcorporate client was Facebook where we bookedtheir summer party. We had 15 acts playing at Abbey Road across all threestudios, which was a great once in a lifetime experience to work in thatincredible venue. We spent a lot of time speaking to musicians about howagencies work and unsurprisingly musicians are ripped off hugely by the incumbentsin the market. This research gave us the insight to build the Headlinerplatform and to push the boundaries with the technology we are building.

 

BP

How did you approach fundraisingfor the company?

SM

Although we had no product, notraction and only one customer we decided to apply for Y Combinator. We got aninterview but didn’t get in. We were too early in our development and at thetime we were trying to do too many things. One of the suggestions from the YCteam, which we took on board, was to focus on music and do it well. We launchedHeadliner focused purely on music - DJs, musicians and bands and decided to puton hold any other opportunities beyond music.

We launched our MVP in March2015 where an artist could create a profile and search for gigs and thenreapplied for YC’s 2015 winter batch. We also applied for TechStars and wereoffered the 2015 batch. We had to choose between TechStars and YC. At the endof the day we weren’t sure that the YC environment was right for us. We askedourselves whether it made sense to build a music startup in Palo Alto.Culturally we weren’t sure that they would understand our space as most of thedomain expertise is in NY, LA and London. The other concern is YC takes 200companies into the program, which we thought would mean less hands-oninteraction with the mentors and YC executives. We decided to join TechStars,which had 10 other companies in that program. TechStars was the right decisionfor us as we could stay in London and ended up meeting lots of importantmentors and worked closely with the program directors

 

BP

What progress has the companymade over the past 2 years?

SM

We have built a strong enginefor generating the supply side of the marketplace by essentially replacing thetalent agent. We are now pushing to grow the demand side further and drive morecustomers to our artists. We understand the unit economics of our business, weare generating revenue. Now it’s a case of growing market share here in the UK.We have also been approached to white label our platform and have a number ofoptions available, we are excited by where we are and where we can take thebusiness.

BP

When did you start to thinkabout and invest in the company culture?

SM

The bottom line and developinga sustainable culture, are the two things that keep me awake at night. We spenda lot of time as founders talking and reading about culture. The three of usgot together on day one and spoke about our vision for the business to see howaligned we were. This is something we still do regularly to ensure that we arestill aligned. A lot can change in a business and in life, so it’s important tomake sure that we are still all on the same page.

 

BP

What are Headliner’s mission,vision & values?

SM

Mission:

We believe that artists havethe right to a sustainable career through live performance and provide aplatform that helps them to do this.

We believe that every event inlife can be enhanced through live entertainment and performance.

We believe that artists shouldhave more control over their career and decide which opportunities are best forthem.

 

Vision:

We want to make the booking ofentertainment simpler and more accessible, making the world a happier placethrough the performance of live music and entertainment.

We have written down ourvalues. But it’s not important to us that you can repeat what’s written down ona piece of paper. Rather you need to really understand and resonate with thevalues and be able to live the culture. It’s important to us that as a teammember you understand that there is a reason for your contribution and there isvalue in your contribution.

 

Our values are:

Experience: We want livemusic to be an incredible experience for each and every customer.

Trusted: We want the customerto trust the artist and the process.

Sustainable: We want toprovide a platform that is sustainable for artists careers.

Fun: We want to be thefacilitators of fun and deliver a culture that fosters and encourages it.

Transparent: Headliner caresabout transparency. We will be transparent, open and honest in all situations.

 

BP

What do you find challengingabout embedding your culture into the team and the company?

SM

Culture broadly is a massivechallenge to get right. We are trying to build an environment of transparency,freedom, self-expression and open communication and the people who havepreviously been in challenging or different cultures don’t necessarily get ourculture, especially in the beginning, because they are used to something else.An example of this is where we needed more help with customer support.Musicians work odd hours and bookings can happen quite late at night so we havesupport requirements in the evenings and weekends. Maria, Rosario and I weredoing it and we decided to introduce the idea that the team needed to get moreinvolved in support. We discussed this with the team, didn’t get any push backand thought that everyone was happy and OK with it because nobody disagreed orraised any questions. Then a couple of days later two of the team mentionedthat they didn’t feel that it was right or fair. What frustrated me is that weare trying to build an environment of transparency, freedom, self-expressionand open communication but those team members didn’t react immediately andbring their concerns up straight away. It turned out, once I explained it inmore detail, they were more than happy to pitch in and help. Looking back onthis there were two issues, 1. I didn’t communicate in detail the context forintroducing shared support  and 2.  They didn’t feel that they could bring theissue or misunderstanding up immediately. I was pleased with the feedback andclarification, but for our business to succeed we need that feedback andmisunderstanding to be dealt with in real time. People will step back into thenegative culture that they are used to, where they were told what to do andcouldn’t question it, if we allow them to. As leaders it is our job to makesure that it doesn’t happen, that we are embedding our culture and our peopleare living the culture every day. Our people should be comfortable challengingme or the other leaders at the point of delivery of the information, especiallyif my communication is not clear. I know what it feels like to be told what todo and how to do it, from my time working in the NHS. We want to foster aculture where everyone is listened to, understood and respected. I care aboutworking as a culture not as a business.

BP

How are your company values integratedinto your interview process?

SM

Ourinterview process happens in 2 stages. We start off with generic questionsabout the candidate’s experiences and the companies they have worked at.  We want to understand if they have worked inan environment that was self-led and if they have the skills and relativeexperiences we require.

We then ask them to do twotask-based interviews. The first task is related specifically to their abilityto think about our business. The artists who sign up to the platform are givena quality score and a behavior score. We ask the candidate to score 10 artists.The score isn’t that important, we are rather looking for the rationale behindtheir thinking, how they came up with each artist’s score. For the secondtask-based interview we ask them to present to the team about why the Headlinersplatform is important and how it will contribute to the development of themusic/entertainment industry. We then they spend 15-20 minutes with the teamhaving a conversation. After the conversation the team will evaluate them onhow they presented, interacted and engaged with the team

It doesn’t matter if they aretech or marketing, everybody goes through the same interview process, whichallows us to assess all aspects of the candidate. We have found fantasticcandidates who have completely excelled beyond our hopes and expectations.

 

BP

Which companies did you getinspiration from when it comes to hiring?

SM

We got some inspiration from theMailchimp and Google hiring processes, who do something similar with theironboarding documentation. We have an onboarding document that we give to a new joiner afterthey have joined. We ask them for their feedback about what worked and whatdidn’t and how we can improve the onboarding document and process. In this waythe person who was hired most recently is responsible for taking the versionthey received and improving on it so that they can pass a better version on tothe next hire.

BP

How many members of your teamare into music?

SM

We are all into music and havea have a bunch of musicians in our team. Rebecca our bookings manager is an exsinger and talent agent for DJs. Louise who is in charge of content is aprofessional jazz musician.

 

BP

How often do you have teammeetings?

SM

We have one to ones with theteam every month and the founders meet quarterly. We have a weekly team meetingon Wednesdays that lasts for less than 30 minutes and we do daily stand upsevery day at 10 o’clock for 10 minutes. We are not blindly doing things atHeadliner and aren’t just looking for a report at the stand ups: we want ourpeople to talk about what they have been working on, what the rationale is, whywe are doing it, how it fits into the bigger picture and how it fits into thevalues. We also have a highs and lows meeting on Friday in order to get to knowone another better and encourage transparency from people. Not everybody in theteam may realize that you had a low so having our people open up about theirexperiences is invaluable. Everybody has lows so we don’t accept it if someonesays they didn’t.

 

BP

What is your biggest businesschallenge at the moment?

SM

We have a positive conundrum tosort out at the moment. With our platform the artist sets the fee and we addour service fee on top. Sometimes this means that our price is a little bitmore expensive than the agencies because the agencies squeeze the prices andthe artists. The agent says to the artist, give me your fee and I willnegotiate with potential customer. The artist will say £1500 but it’s up to theagent to negotiate a deal. The agent may accept £1200 instead of £1500requested by the artist. The problem there is the agent still takes his cut butthat negotiation and agent’s fee really eats into the artist’s earnings.

So the question for our companythat cares very much about the artists and performers is how can we create aneffective balance and how will it affect the community? We have spent a lot oftime discussing this internally.

We need to go through aneducation process because artists are used to working with agents and we needto inform them about how to get the most out of the platform and how to priceeffectively.

 

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