Startups are hard

Last week, we held an 'ideation session' for Flashband with some other young local startup veterans. I shared Flashband's history, what we've done so far and where we stand today, finishing with our top three challenges. What followed was a torrent of incredibly helpful ideas, advice, questions and more, but also required me to face some tough truths.

The biggest of these truths was that for Flashband to succeed, we need to move and grow a lot faster than we have thus far. In two weeks, Flashband will be two years old. While the first year could easily be classified as 'interesting side hobby,' it's already been ten months since I first announced leaving my full time job to pursue Flashband. We've thrown some fun, successful events and I've learned a lot about everything from accounting to hip hop music, but I'm still a long way from being able to pay the rent (much less my team). And while almost every musician I tell about Flashband thinks it is an awesome idea and needed, I'm just not telling enough musicians.

I believe Flashband can be the starting place for where musicians go to make music, all across the country. Need a band? Go to Flashband to meet them. Bored of your playing? Go to Flashband to get inspired. I want Flashband to be the band incubator, making it easier for people to find other musicians and giving the world better music as a result. I want more people playing more music.

But none of that happens unless we can come up with ways to get more musicians involved, and host effective events that are useful to them. We're up to about 800 musicians on our mailing list and about 300 have played in our 12+ Showcases. But for Flashband to have a real impact on how people make music, we need that to be thousands just in DC - and then replicate it in cities across the country.

Coming into the spring and summer, I'm planning to ramp up our events a lot. We're aiming for a Showcase at least every two weeks with some classes and social events mixed in, and I'll be working hard to figure out how to reach the musicians that want to play.

Flashband Hackathon

To help jumpstart this process, we're organizing a Flashband Hackathon. Throughout the process of starting Flashband, lots of people have offered up their help - and indeed, Flashband has been possible because of this help. That help can be magnified many times over, though, if we bring all those skills, expertise and ideas into one place and point them at our biggest problems. 

Part focus group, part work session, part inspiration, we'll have projects of all types. If you can do web coding, we need your help making the Flashband website awesome. If you know graphic design, we need flyers and new tools for recruiting musicians. If you're talkative, we need you to hit the streets and tell people about Flashband. If you're a musician, we need your input on what descriptions are most effective at communicating why Flashband is valuable to you. 

We'd love to have you join, and we need your help. We have two possible days for the event - Sunday April 20 or Sunday May 4 - and we'll pick the day based on when the most people can attend. Check it out - you can find all the info on the event page on our website: 

http://flashband.org/event/Flashband-Hackathon

Startups are hard

I titled this post this way because it's true, and especially true of Flashband. Flashband is useful because there's no real go-to place for finding musicians - which of course means there's no real go-to place for me to go to tell them about it. Lots of musicians like the Flashband concept, but most didn't think of it until they heard of it, so we're both creating the market and serving it at the same time. Whatever Flashband Year Three brings, I'm determined that it will include the word 'success.' I hope you'll join me. 

-Neal

Announcing Flashband Backstage

Today, we announced two big changes to the way Flashband does business: a new, annual subscription for Flashband Backstage Membership, and the introduction of charging for participation in our Flashband Showcases. This is obviously a big change, and it's not one we make lightly, so I wanted to take this chance to explain a bit about the thought process, and our plans for what we'll do with these changes.

First off - charging for Showcases. As anyone who's played in a band knows, it's pretty hard to make a living off live shows. Maybe I should have thought of that when I tried turning Flashband into a business - why didn't any of you remind me? Although with good turnouts we can get a decent amount of money from cover charges at events, between hiring photographer and sound guys and getting squeezed by venues, its hard to make enough to cover the 30-40 hours it takes to administer each event, much less pay for things like printing and server fees.

When you play in a Flashband show, you get a show where you don't need to worry about booking or logistics, you get to meet and collaborate with lots of other cool musicians through the meet-and-greet jam, and you just focus on the music for a fun show in front of 250-350 people. A little bit of money from the participants makes it easier for us to run because we get more committed musicians, and brings in enough extra that we can cover our costs.

That said, Flashband is really about musician community, and an annual membership emphasizes this distinction. For now, with a Backstage Membership you get to play free in Flashband showcases and get reduced price tickets for other things we charge for (like classes and social events), as well as some cool perks like a Flashband T-shirt and deals and credit at partner businesses (the Chuck Levins store credit is almost half the membership cost back in your pocket).

This membership also gives us a vehicle to add useful new ways to build on the website. Stepping back to look at the big, grand vision for Flashband, I want it to become the starting point for musicians to meet and work with other musicians, both through a broad variety of local events (in all cities) but also through an awesome website with useful ways to find other musicians in your area. Like all those other freemium web startups out there, we'll have some features available at no cost and some only for paid members - establishing paid membership now gives us a place to put all those features as we build them.

Whoever said building a startup was easy? Thanks to all the musicians that have made Flashband a great experience so far. Thanks especially to my co-founders, Caleb and Amanda, who were up till 3am this morning getting everything in line for this launch. As always I'm building this for you guys so if you have thoughts/ideas/criticisms/suggestions I'm just an email away.

Neal