From Start-Up to Grown-Up: Jake Schwartz — Why Starting a Business is Like Forming a Band

You should never start a business like this, really. Like, no textbook would say just form a partnership. We didn't really have clear roles and responsibilities, or we didn't even have a vision for what this business was going to be other than what was right in front of our face. Right? So I'm sure we all had different pictures in our heads. And the sort of analogy that I've sort of taken with it is, is that really what we did was form a band and we started doing gigs, but before we knew it, we had like a record contract, right? And that was when we like took our first VC money. All of those dynamics that you see play out even in like the best bands in the world basically played out with us. I think about like the Beatles story, you know, I don't know if you saw that documentary Get Back on Disney+. Yeah. It's like 9 hours. I was wrapped. Reason I was wrapped is 'cause I was seeing these dynamics play out with like literally some of the most famous people in the world that reminded me of my most like intense formative experience because I think it just, it had this magic to it. And to this day, I couldn't quite tell you why it worked. Timing was right, right? We all had different things to it. We invested in certain ways, we focused on it. But like, I think at the end of the day, it's like everybody got there, was passionate about it, brought 110% for that. Not fully knowing what we were going to get out of it. But I think we also, we all in our delusions all thought we were going to get 110% out of it. Right. And that's sort of what then engenders weird issues later on.