Shazam music app co-founder warns budding entrepreneurs to ‘not do ridiculous things like we did’
- The music-identification app was born out of a trip to a London pub. Apple bought the app for US$400 million
- Co-founder Dhiraj Mukherjee says friendship and foresight made their crazy idea become a reality
It might come as a surprise to hear that Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of the hugely successful song-identification app Shazam, is not technical nor does he have a background in music. He simply got caught up in the internet wave of the late 1990s with an idea that came during a brainstorming session in a London pub.
Mukherjee had just graduated from Stanford University with a business degree in 1997, the early days of the internet. “It was boom time back then, full of dreamers and new ideas … anything was possible,” recalls the US-born Mukherjee, who was recently in Hong Kong for the Born To Be Boss conference for start-ups.
“I sort of got caught up in that wave, not just the internet wave, but the desire to be an entrepreneur – a ‘want-trepreneur’ was the term we used.”
“There were no tears shed,” says Mukherjee about the deal. “The analogy I use is Shazam is a grown-up daughter and it was time to go. After 18 years, it was time to leave the house.”
