 The story was so that me and my co-founder we met at the university here in Finland And we both had the same experience with music education. He wanted to play guitar I wanted to play piano and neither of us was successful in learning Because the means for me private lessons didn't work out the way I wanted it So I quit after about a year or two and it turns out that happens to most people actually who start to play an instrument They use lose the motivation early and and then they quit playing and we thought well somebody should do something about it And so the first thing that we built was a product for children to motivate them to practice on their instruments It was a very cute game that had animals and so on and we launched at slash in 2011 And we were on the big pitching stage and we did win that competition, which was awesome And so that's how it all got started And now that's not at all kind of what it is the children's game So can you talk a little bit about the process of yeah So what was interesting is that everyone seemed to love the product the media liked it the parents liked it But it didn't really make any money. It was an iPad app only and that is back in the days I think the idea that the parents would pay money for their Kids, I don't know services was not that big So we realized that we probably have to go after a different audience and it actually went back to the original idea Which is me and Mikko back then was like there is quite a lot of people who are actually not children who want to learn to Play an instrument or who had started at some point and given up or who still have a dusty guitar Somewhere in a in a garage and so the next product we built was really much more for an older audience It was still a very much a game. It had a character and so on and there was then the next product that we launched and Over time what we realized is that we had half of our idea wrong and half was right So the idea to use game-like features to motivate people to practice was a really good idea The idea to make a game and tell people hey look there is a game And if you play it you learn to play guitar was actually not a good idea People are genuinely looking to learn to play an instrument And so we at some point with a lot of a B testing and changing the layout and and the messaging We we came to the conclusion. We should actually not have a game that teaches to play an instrument We should have an instrument learning service and use the game like features within that and that's when we rebranded The company name we launched musician As the brand and the product and the company now have the same name and you will not find really the game name Oh, they the word game anywhere in the description. So it really is an online service that teaches people how to play an instrument so you use your real instrument and it listens to what you what you play and We still have game-like features. I mean there is still things in it That you can unlock and next level and which is educationally very important So that we don't allow users to try to play too hard songs too early because that's really frustrating So you have to unlock your way into the harder levels and you can also for example compete with other players on high Scores and see who is the best guitarist out there? And how did you like figure out that you are on to something when you when you change? I'm assuming you didn't just rebrand the company on a whim with no testing Yeah, I mean obviously we did some testing with the previous product and we realized the more we go in this direction The better it is but then of course it was a bit of a leap of faith and what was Interesting is we didn't tell anyone about this like typically would think the first thing a company does What we would try to do and we had a bit of traction and there was a bit of awareness in the market already of us That we would say hey, we are doing a new product But we didn't and the reason for that is we wanted to understand how our marketing actually works With the untracked marketing so when we for example run YouTube ads some of them people click on the ad and they download the app But you never know exactly how many of them because many people see the YouTube ad Then they open a new tab and they search for the word and they find you like this So you cannot attribute to the ad click so we never know how many people Actually find you position through our ads and this was a once-in-a-company history opportunity where nobody knew the brand We haven't told anyone no media. No nobody not even our existing users We just started running ads and so we knew everyone who comes to use issue must have heard about it through our ads So we could finally have a really nice baseline actually where to get started and funny enough the the users We then had on our previous product which was still life at the time We're all complaining to our new products by saying you guys are just copying what this other product is doing Which except that you don't have the game game look and so on Which is of course to some extent also correct and Yeah, it turned out to work really well I think people as I said and they react really positively to it I mean we would never go back. So that's the way to go and you know speaking of marketing you are Obviously in Finland where there are not a ton of consumer-facing startups You've hired about a hundred people right now including like a lot of people were in charge of marketing and promoting You know spreading the word to obviously consumers So what are the challenges? I guess being of a place where there there isn't a lot of other companies doing that Yeah, I think so in that sense I mean and as it was said in the introduction different countries have different challenges and I think in Finland we have an amazing engineering talent There is a lot of experience in B2B And hardware products as well when it comes to consumer software like direct to consumer software Services like musician one is there is very little actually and That also means there is quite little talent. I compare it a bit like if you want to The exception obviously are games So the games community here is amazing and there is a lot of good talent is a really a great cluster But for other things there is actually not that much and I compare it a bit like if you want to start an ice Okay team in Finland. It's pretty good You have like a lot of people who are a play ice, okay, and and there is the network and everything is Available if you want to start a consumer brand like musician, it's actually much harder It's like starting a baseball team So you have to find people who are let's say sporty enough If maybe from another sport and you try to train them in the direction of playing baseball And so that's a bit what we find so in the beginning We really couldn't find pretty much anyone here who has had experience Building a consumer brand a consumer software brand and marketing that consumer product From Finland and in the beginning we essentially went after we just hired very young very hungry very talented people Who didn't have any experience in this but we we trained them or we learned together? Because neither did I have any experience in this know my co-founder Mikko So that was the starting point and I think we got really far But at some point when the when the levels of our marketing reached where they are now So we spend several million dollars a month on marketing spend I mean at some point the scaling a team with young and hungry is gonna be really dangerous to put so much money into the Hands of a person who hasn't had that experience and again, nor did we and that's at least one of the things we now did I mean in the beginning you start importing people So we try to actually find people to move over to Finland who have that experience and that work for some roles And it was harder from other for other roles But now we actually in the beginning of this year we opened an office in New York Specifically for that reason so in New York There is a lot of talent who have actually done and have run marketing campaigns and marketing At this level at this scale and so we have a team of about ten people now in New York Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you talk about your challenges finding marketing people because being based in New York a lot of a long time I often hear a lot about how hard it is to find engineers and how it's just marketing people everywhere Perhaps an exchange program An exchange program, I think it's to be fair I think it's also difficult to find engineers here It's definitely not as difficult as it is probably in Silicon Valley or in New York But I think the speakers just before spoke exactly about this That the lack of people who actually do software engineering now We are in that sense extremely fortunate as a company for one strange reason and that reason is that in my generation And so I'm not from Finland. I'm from Switzerland originally and but in my generation and that actually does include me There is a lot of Finnish people who really love heavy metal and wanted to become heavy metal guitarists And and so at some point probably turned out well, that's not the most safe or feasible career choice So let's do something else and many of them then got into coding So as he turns out there is a lot of people in this country who are really good at coding and really good at guitar And for them we are very nice and very attractive Workplace because many of our teammates or our our engineers they actually do work in such a way that they have to test the program So almost all of us have an instrument standing next to their desk a guitar and you can see people play a lot And that makes it actually really nice For us to recruit people or to hire people because a lot of Finnish engineers are really into tech obviously and really into playing an instrument And that makes musician an interesting place to work at so we have an advantage there But it's still hard and did you ever consider so a lot of times the people of trouble and they in New York hiring engineering talent end up opening Or hiring remote workers from all over the country or anything like that Did you ever consider that as a strategy? Yeah, the the remote team is an interesting one And we have actually had a couple of experiences with this But it didn't work so well for us and one of the reasons for us is it? Or what we found is that what we are doing this digital music education field there is Still I mean it's still a long way to go. I think we have invented something that's That's gonna be somewhat of a standard But there is still a long way to go so the product is not it's not clear what we should do and we still experiment a Lot with the with the what the product actually should be what the service should be how to do certain things the interaction with an instrument and the device and For all these reasons we found it's very meaningful that the team is actually together So it helps us when the audio engineers are together with the music educators with the product managers with the designers and When you separate people from each other these let's say random encounters and these crazy ideas do not happen And that's why for us the remote working hasn't worked so well and then there is another point where I I Just want to make this because I actually really like working I like our company and a lot of us do as well So yes, it can be convenient occasionally to work from home yet that you get a delivery or something else But we actually want the team to come together because it's actually nice to come to a really nice office We have a stage there. We have really cool people. We go for lunch together or bring in lunch so it it also creates this kind of social layer and where I mean music is one of the Wonderful forces that bring people together and that's why I understand why companies make the rationale of doing remote Teams because they can't fire the talent But for us that felt always a bit strange because our goal as a company is actually to bring people together And when we opened the New York office the first thing we wanted to do is actually make sure that we have Quite a few employees so they can start building this thing there as well a sort of community I mean we are not a family We are still a company, but it's actually nice to hang out and as I said before it's not just with the engineers like almost everyone in our team Excluding the founders weirdly enough play very well instruments or not I mean many it are really good and are really into music and that creates something that at least after work a lot of People actually do things together in the Helsinki office. We actually play quite a lot the New York team They more go to concerts or they have DJs there and and that is something that is actually nice to bring people together We do have one person working remotely in Australia so technically we have three offices one in Europe one in the US And one in Australia But that was a weird story because James was one of our most active users and he was super engaged and At some point we asked him to do a song for us then he came over we really love the guy and today He's in charge of the music education program for the guitar and he's doing a phenomenal job and we see him every once in a while But that's the exception I we are not hiring remote people other than in our offices anymore And is that more of a solitary project like shaping the program for guitar? Or is there a reason that that particular position works well? I Think it works well for two reasons one is it is fairly clear what has to be done the feedback mechanisms I mean we we obviously we get all the data based on the learning Experience of the user so you can look at the data and see where are the problems in our syllabus are some songs too hard or some Videos not good to explain what you're supposed to do next so you actually have the data and it's quite clear where the holes are I think that's one of the reasons and then making the music making the exercises coming up with the syllabus ideas and so on It's still a lot of individual work actually so that's the one reason the other reason is James is a very social guy as well So he connects very well with the other educators here And and that's why they can make it work And yeah, it's at some point the team actually wanted to build up some kind of a robot that James bought so we could Actually have him at our office. We try to fly him over every once in a while It's hard to bring somebody from the from the beaches of Australia to Finland at least during this part of the season But he's joining us for the YA to Conference that we organize every year about which we are I think gonna talk about as well yeah, and Kind of this idea of working together you actually take one step further than most companies You just got back from the Caribbean where you spent the month working with your entire team of 100 people Who you brought all of them With you and work together. Yeah, it's at the moment easy to spot the musician team members in the audience because we are the ones with the 10 so yes, that's what we do and I think it actually relates also be to the to the To our philosophy and education company and we also believe very strongly in investing in our team and team education now One way that we have found that works really well is actually connecting our team with experts from different companies They may not be competitors, but they are doing similar things and So yes, we take our whole team for one month abroad We have done this now the fifth time so the first time when we did it we were about 10 people and we Rented the villa in Greece and we flew everyone there and for one month We just worked from Greece all we need for our work is a laptop internet connection and Instruments and that are all things that you can bring so we spent a month there And then it worked so well the team really liked it It was great for the team spirit and getting people together and so we did it every year So after Greece we went to Thailand to Tenerife last year We were in Bali and just like on Sunday I returned from from Kura saw in the in the Caribbean where we were now a hundred people and it's it's I mean It's becoming different challenges and so on but it's actually quite amazing to take the team there and to I mean Obviously we do work there, but the first for three weeks But the first week is a very different week that one we fully Dedicated to professional development of the team. So what we have done is we have invited guest speakers Who join us for a week. So last year we had I mean one of the speakers here at slush This year Casey Winters He was the head of growth at Pinterest and grab up was there somebody from uber was there We invited an active user from our user community to join us this year We had head of growth from Duolingo the language learning service. We had a UX lead UX designer from Netflix and Google and then again one very active user And so the idea is on the first day of that week my whole team essentially sits in a conference room and these people present From their perspective like what they have done at Duolingo or at Netflix Or then what is their experience with users so that our team understands who they are what's their background what they know What they're interested what they're talking about so that's day one and the other four days of the first week We organize workshops where the team can work on different concepts and they can invite these speakers So for example our growth team was off obviously really excited to actually sit down with Gina From Duolingo and talk like okay. What are the commonalities between language learning and music learning? What could we learn from you of course the other way as well? And it's actually really nice that for once you don't have you know a one-hour meeting slot Allocated but you can actually say let's sit down in the morning and go through our marketing and what we do and what you Do at Duolingo. Let's go for lunch. And so that's week number one that is fully dedicated to professional development The developers they are also hacking and they have some hackday projects and things like this And then the remaining three weeks are we do just normal work We just do them from a from a beautiful setting But they are normal work as in the teams get back together and they continue on their roadmap and so taking 100 people to the Caribbean for a month is obviously pretty expensive Yes And so when like your investors say hey Chris like why is this why is this worth it? What are we getting from it? What do you say? Well, I have two answers to them one is I actually do not have to justify this to our investors because we made it from The beginning very clear that we have a clear hierarchy of priorities number one is the user and our company mission Number two is our company culture and our team and only number three is the shareholders value Which is if we find something that we that we want to do and we believe it beneficial for the team and the users We do it anyway, so our investors have never questioned this, but yes, it is true It is quite expensive to do this thing And it is it would be difficult to really put a dollar sign on okay So what though so we invest somewhere between one and a half and two thousand euros it costs per employee to do this including flights and the accommodation and It would be quite hard to actually measure the bottom line But how you can see it is just in the team spirit as we get back how much you know the connections And as a company grows to a hundred people what typically happens and I'm pretty sure that happens in most companies at some point You still cluster the back-end engineers spend time with the back-end engineers and the marketers with the marketers in our case The New York team obviously with the New York team and so on and what is very beautiful obviously when you're in the Caribbean I mean the work days are the work days, but then there is still the evenings and the weekends and some people are really active they go hiking and kiting and diving and All these active activities and they are not correlated to the profession So now suddenly you have completely different groups of people Spending time together getting to know each other and what is really nice and what I can see now being back this week Is that the groups have in a way changed so people go with different people for lunch and hang out with different people and that is something I think as the company grows and the Communication between different departments it becomes very expensive when the one side of the company doesn't know what the other one is isn't Is doing or not doing so I believe there is a lot of value in this one and Then there is still the part where also you have to you have to leave what you preach So we our company's mission is to make musicality as common as literacy and we believe we can bring a lot of Value and joy to people who learn to play an instrument. It's a wonderful thing And when you sometimes see these cheesy images of you know a group of friends hanging out at the beach and playing an instrument That's what we do and that's what we do almost every evening in this month And we had the most epic jam session that I wasn't there for the whole time It started at five in the evening. It was on Friday the last of the first week It started at five and apparently people were still jamming at four in the morning So that was just amazing. So this thing actually happened and I think every once in a while It's actually really nice to recognize of the value that we try to provide to our users. We can experience it ourselves So there is also this part to be fair I think for myself personally and I know for many of my teammates this trip That we take every year is among the highlights of the professional year You get to know your colleagues better. You get out of the weather from Finland You get to spend some good time at the beach and you get to jam a lot and do you think that? And I like that you said that everybody's musically talented except for the co-founders So you got I mean, which is good because you have to test the product Otherwise they wouldn't know because you're supposed to be learning when you use it And I think the irony is this applies to almost everything So I have a funny story about this when we started the company and in the first year We we we tried to raise money because neither of us also couldn't code So we couldn't do that we couldn't do music. We couldn't do that We couldn't teach we didn't have any really relevant experience And so we were trying to find investors and we really couldn't but there was one One meeting with an investor. I still remember very well And it was so we just started it says like also you do music education So you guys are music teachers and we're like no it's like I saw your musicians and we're like Actually, no, I saw your audio engineers and we know and you know It's like in a job interview when all the questions they ask and you're like actually no And it just went on so you have talent business before no no no and then in the end We were really like we felt quite bad like none of the answers we gave to that investor was satisfactory or we felt it was and Then his answer was like that's brilliant This is where innovation comes from when completely new and fresh minds think about an old problem So this is really great and it was actually quite nice to hear that and we asked him like so Are you gonna invest and he said oh no, no, no, that's that's a different topic But I love that you guys are doing it and so the whole company is actually built around the idea that Since we know that we do not know our job is not to try to invent the future Our job is to find the very best people that we can in each area games education software engineering Music and let them do their job get out of their way and for me Actually, it's quite nice to still remain the naive person who is coming and sees this product and says listen guys I know you have studied music for many many years. I haven't I don't understand what you're talking about here If I don't understand it our users won't most likely won't either So let's make this simpler and I think it's actually a nice position to be in Unfortunately, we're out of time, but thank you so much for for talking thank you much for the interview And thanks for having me and have a nice day