[iainctduncan]

So we work for private equity mostly, and they are in the business of buying and selling steady growth, profitable businesses, as opposed to VC/bubble stuff, so our expectations are a lot leaner. But at a guess, I think we'd expect that to be a 40-50 person company. 118 seems high.

The app is tiny, it has changed very little in who knows how long. Infrastructure is obviously the big thing, so there would be a solid size infra team. Then standard business, product, marketing stuff. I just can't see that warranting more than 50 people unless it's raking it in. Sounds like they could be wasting money on marketing initiatives that may or may not be worth anything at all. Six full time writers seems pretty out there given the questionable ROI of those articles.

Obviously, take this with a huge a grain of salt as this is a guess based on being a frequent user of the app, and having done about 60 diligences and been a part of another 30 or 40 in review capacity. But it seems significantly oversized on what I normally see looking at business that have to be run sustainably. For whatever that's worth!

EDIT: someone had a good point that bandcamp takes international payments, which is complex. So I would revise my first WAG up based on that for sure. Thinking further I would probably guess 50-60 people - which is about what I guess it is after the layoffs. Still a total WAG, but slightly better informed...

[nluken]

Your view of bandcamp seems like a cartoonishly perfect representation of a consultant’s perspective with very little understanding of what the company actually does beyond the balance sheet. It’s the kind of no-skin-in-the-game perspective that ruined Boeing, and it’s why most folks absolutely abhor private equity.

Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community. It’s not a very complicated product, but people buy music there because the whole thing feels like it’s a part of the music scene, not the tech or business scene. Given that the Daily is well regarded in that community, I highly doubt those six writers, who were likely paid significantly less than the median staff member, were the problem here. Even if they didn’t have the purely trackable ROI, they were a huge part of the platform’s only moat: its goodwill with the artists and listeners who used it.

I would also add that Bandcamp was pretty publicly profitable prior to their sale to Epic. Given that they didn’t significantly grow the staff after the acquisition, they would have had to make huge blunders in a very short period of time they owned it. So at this point we’re talking about laying folks off purely for better looking numbers, not really for sustainability.

[iainctduncan]

You are making some wildy off base assumptions. I'm not a finance guy, I'm a hacker. We do technical diligence. I was a developer for 20 years and am doing a music and CS phd right now. I've slung code in over a dozen languages, I'm the open source developer of Scheme for Max and the csound6~ port to Max, an electronic composer, and a gigging musician. I am currently bootstrapping a music education product in Python, Javascript, C++, and Scheme. You would be very hard pressed to find someone as embedded in the problem domain of bandcamp who also does acquisitions related work.

So I use bandcamp all the time, I have purchased tons of music on it, and the articles have not made any difference to me as a user at all. The only thing I care about is the band I'm purchasing from! I use bandcamp for three reasons: lossless audio, no DRM, fair payments to the band. None of those are at all relevant to their article efforts.

As for most people abhoring PE, believe me, I am under no illusions about our clients. But most software company exits are now PE deals (something like over 75%), so while people might like to make public noises about hating PE, they sure like to sell their companies to them.

[nluken]

Apologies on misunderstanding your role here, most of the speculation on this thread has been related to finances and staffing so I made an assumption there when I shouldn’t have.

> I have purchased tons of music on it, and the articles have not made any difference to me as a user at all

n=1, but that’s true of my perspective as well so perhaps it’s a wash. I do think the editorial staff were more important to some genres than others.

> they sure like to sell their companies to them

I might suggest that this is a case where upper management’s desires directly conflict with the people making the noise (staff and users)

[thedaly]

I have used the platform for years and have purchased quite a bit of music on it. I didn't even know there were articles.

[PhasmaFelis]

> while people might like to make public noises about hating PE, they sure like to sell their companies to them.

I suspect that there's not a lot of overlap between people who publicly fume about good companies being ruined by profit-hungry buyers, and people who start companies explicitly so they can flip them to profit-hungry buyers and ditch.

Does anyone still start businesses with the intention of building and maintaining a really excellent product/service in the long term? Do any of them hold on to that ideal after a few years?

[shiroiuma]

>Does anyone still start businesses with the intention of building and maintaining a really excellent product/service in the long term? Do any of them hold on to that ideal after a few years?

Define "a few". You can't expect most company owners to want to continue running that company for decades on end; eventually, they want to do something else or retire. So at some point, they have to sell. Who's going to buy an existing company that's profitable? Someone who's "profit-hungry" usually. If the company is just a passion project, no one buys it and it just goes under when the owner gets tired of it.

[PhasmaFelis]

> You can't expect most company owners to want to continue running that company for decades on end

That's not actually weird, though. The idea that everyone should be expected to change jobs every few years is very recent.

> Who's going to buy an existing company that's profitable? Someone who's "profit-hungry" usually.

I didn't think this needed specifying, but there's a large difference between the goals "Create a great, enduring service and make a profit doing it" and "generate as much short-term profit as possible regardless of long-term consequences."

[watwut]

I know companies that exist for years and years and even get inherited. I even work in one.

It exists, just not in SV

[shiroiuma]

Inheritance assumes that the founder's kids actually want to run their parent's company. Many times, they don't, so they sell. Running a company is a pain in the ass, so it's understandable many people don't want to be bothered.

[tacocataco]

Depending on the size, the city/state could purchase the company and loan it to the employees.

If the the loan gets paid off, boom... co-op equally owned by the workers.

[WJW]

And if the loan doesn't get paid off? That city/state is now in a huge hole, having spent money that could've been used to build schools and maintain roads on buying companies off their retiring owners.

In any case I don't see why you would need the detour via local government? A bank could lend the money to the group of employees just fine.

[lotsofpulp]

Sounds like the perfect recipe for corruption.

[stana]

As cheap money era seems to be ending, long term quality product/service might be the only viable strategy going forward.

[NoGravitas]

Inshallah.

[dewey]

It doesn't have to be the choice between "sell to profit-hungry buyer's and ditch" and keeping a company forever.

Sometimes people just want to do something different with their time after running their business for a long time and a PE deal is the easiest and most structured way of doing that.

[PhasmaFelis]

Sure. But (assuming you'd reached sustainable profitability, as BandCamp reportedly had) you can choose whether you sell to someone who intends to maintain what you've built, or someone who you know will suck it dry for short-term profits.

[disposition2]

> So I use bandcamp all the time, I have purchased tons of music on it, and the articles have not made any difference to me as a user at all. The only thing I care about is the band I'm purchasing from! I use bandcamp for three reasons: lossless audio, no DRM, fair payments to the band. None of those are at all relevant to their article efforts.

Just to add a conflicting opinion, I love the articles and often use them for music discovery and purchases. Of course, the primary function is to purchase music from known entities but the discovery part keeps me coming back. In terms of ROI, to me the articles seem like a pretty smart marketing move…without them I would not have discovered all kinds of artists and made numerous purchases.

[iainctduncan]

I'm sure you're right and some do find bandcamp through them. The really hard part is quantifying that though. Does it generate enough business for six writers? If it does, awesome, and I'm totally wrong.

My guess is the big content initiative was someone's brain child, and once companies get past a certain size, it's very hard to pull the plug on a leader's baby. Until the company changes hand and the next set of leaders want to eat the previous young and put their own babies in there.

[fairity]

> But most software company exits are now PE deals (something like over 75%)

Can you provide a source for this? I don't doubt it, but I'm wondering if this is accurate for startups that have raised seed+ funding.

[efitz]

> Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community.

Hahaha I don’t think that they have as glowing reputation as you think. I’ve heard creators complaining about lack of transparency, lack of communication, poor customer service, arbitrary decision making with no reason given, etc.

[mst]

Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

They could be trusted by a bunch of people to probably screw things up less than alternatives and to at least be -trying- to care about the community, while still having made more than enough mistakes to generate a bunch of justifiably unhappy people.

Think about how e.g. your favourite hosting provider nonetheless has a bunch of unhappy ex-customers.

(I'm not asserting what -is- the case here, mind, just trying to flag up a part of the possibility space that I've seen quite a few times over the years)

[mbesto]

I work with the parent commenter above and have overseen 500+ tech diligence projects. We get to see a whole company's tech operations, so our views aren't necessarily just "consultant in a suit".

> Your view of bandcamp seems like a cartoonishly perfect representation of a consultant’s perspective with very little understanding of what the company actually does beyond the balance sheet.

And your comment reads like a typical HN armchair technologist.

> It’s not a very complicated product,

Yup, here we go. Classic "I could build this in a week".

>and it’s why most folks absolutely abhor private equity.

Actually it's not. Much of PE is what is driving people to start companies, because it provides a reliable exit path. I know many tech founders who are grateful PE exists, otherwise they would not have the capital available to them to grow their companies. People typically abhor large cap PE which focus on financial engineering. Many growth PE firms (the ones the parent and I usually work with) are value focused, which means focusing on profits (EBITDA) and growth.

[shit_game]

> Bandcamp has been successful because of the trust they have within the internet music community. It’s not a very complicated product, but people buy music there because the whole thing feels like it’s a part of the music scene, not the tech or business scene. Given that the Daily is well regarded in that community, I highly doubt those six writers, who were likely paid significantly less than the median staff member, were the problem here. Even if they didn’t have the purely trackable ROI, they were a huge part of the platform’s only moat: its goodwill with the artists and listeners who used it.

To provide an opinion from a user of the platform with "no skin in the game" regarding non-technical aspects of the platform, the social presence of Bandcamp was a significant portion of its appeal to me. I did not (and generally do not on other platforms) regularly seek out new media, and instead tend to rely on on various social media feeds and suggestion algorithms to help expose me to new music. I used to follow Bandcamp on multiple platforms until their acquisition by Epic, when I stopped following them for ideological reasons. The headlines/titles/posts that Bandcamp produced up until that point were far more alluring and generally attractive than any other music platform that I also followed, and their articles were generally of a significantly higher quality than others as well, with a large focus on the artistry present.

I discovered several artists through this form of interaction that I otherwise wouldn't have, and haven't since I began avoiding Bandcamp after their acquisition. I can't imagine that layoffs are targeting purely technical staff (as technical staff are the backbone of the observable functionality of the business), and I fear that the strategy taken by Songtradr will result in a tremendous detriment to the marketability and external usability of the platform. This cost-cutting measure seems to signify either a terribly-fated problem regarding changes to the company, or yet another act of private capital tearing down its competition. Given that Songtradr is in the market of licensing music, I am strongly influenced to believe the latter; using a buyout to cripple _the_ commercially-successful indie music platform (which serves as a competitive and independent means of releasing and licensing and distributing music) seems like a logical way to further capture a part of a market that has historically been dominated by media giants that use legal precedence to dominate.

[iainctduncan]

Interesting little aside for those reacting to the fact that it's PE who pay our bills. While the world of vampire PE certainly exists, most of the time the clients I interact with are genuinely concerned with how to make the business better. And we are far more frequently telling acquirers to spend top dollar on new hires than advising on who to cut! The expectation is that the company needs investment, and that they will get 20% year over year growth for about five years. While the bad rep of PE certainly came from somewhere, in my expereince over the last five years of working in the field, I would way rather be at a profitable, sensible, PE owned company than a VC funded "disruptor" gunning for the big IPO or google acquisition. Our world is positively normal compared to the FAANG scene. We see people who have been at at the companies for 10 to 15 years all the time.

Seriously, I feel like a broken record when I say "Hire a top drawer test automation engineer to lead the company in how to run QA properly - this should be a senior developer" etc.

[js2]

> we are far more frequently telling acquirers to spend top dollar on new hires than advising on who to cut

Please tell that to Apollo Global Management as loudly as you can. I mean, if they're one of your customers.

[hhsectech]

"Hire a top drawer test automation engineer to lead the company in how to run QA properly - this should be a senior developer"

Trouble is, they are few and far between and PE doesnt know how to find them...they only understand money they dont understand talent. Furthermore, when they do stumble upon talent they dont know how to leave it alone and won't trust it.

PE mistakenly tends to think that they are there for more than just what they are...money.

They need to understand that they are just people with money. The same way I understand that I am just a techie that produces things.

I bought a loaf of bread today, but that doesnt make me a baker or an expert in baking or running a bakery.

Same applies to PE. Just because they buy businesses and invest in them, doesnt make them experts in whatever they buy.

[iainctduncan]

You are misunderstanding the dynamic. I mean, sure, that sometimes happens, but usually if they pay us for a report, the recommendations are shared. Either with the target company or the portco buying the target. So what we say is going to the CTO or VP Eng.

Very frequently what we are doing is providing an outside voice with a direct line to the top to recommend things the CTO or VP Eng already knows and wants to do. I have had many technical leaders personally thanks us and say how relieved they were to have diligence done by real hackers, and how much this was going to help.

[MichaelZuo]

Why can't a PE firm hire an actual super-genius, who can understand things with a fraction of the usual effort?

Sizable firms can easily afford a seven or eight figure compensation package for someone really really competent.

[iainctduncan]

Some do, that is becoming more common. There is, understandably, a huge variety of approaches from funds. Some are very hands on and have on staff technical folks who were previously CTOs or VP Eng, others are hands off and just take care of finance.

[smcg]

Any "profitably" run PE company is being sold for parts and its wiring is being stripped. Good job being better than a charlatan startup. Your employer provides nothing of value to society.

[iainctduncan]

This is just completely and laughably wrong. You have no idea how many companies are now owned by PE, and the vast majority of them are run as solid, sensible businesses for five years and then sold again. You have bought into some caricature of what the PE world means.

[satvikpendem]

I wonder if it's also simply selection bias, they only see the failures, because the successes are invisible. I know some tradespeople who set up their own practices and sold it to PE, and the practices are running similarly as before.

[iainctduncan]

Of course if they are doing really well, than their infrastructure/scaling problem could be the big issue (and thus the big expense), and it could be at the point where improving those margins is worth throwing developers at it.

I have also seen some eye watering monthly AWS bills where it makes total sense to hire a bunch of devs to bring those down by even a few percent.

[mst]

This is the point where I wonder if partnering with quinnypig's crew might not make sense in terms of effectively serving those clients.

[ipaddr]

Accounting, human resources, sales (different than marketing), managers, security, operations, analysts, C-Suit, customer service, etc not including technical teams developers, sprint masters, qa, analysts, data warehousing, networking, support, devops, thought leaders.

[iainctduncan]

Yeah, we know all that, I mean that's literally what we do. But I can tell you that I have seen companies with the same feature scope range over an order of magnitude in seats. There's a lot of overhiring in this business.

We often look at private companies going from initial bootstrap to their first exit, and I'm telling you, those are a whole different ball of wax. They manage to do a shit ton with not very many people.

[flatline]

You really don’t need a ton of staff dedicated to those things in a 100 person company. This is still a small business by most measures. A C Suite? It could be a sole owner still at that size, though it is stretching the margins. Roles tend to be less differentiated in small companies, and many of those functions are filled informally.

That being said, 118 still sounds pretty lean for the scale they are operating at.

[ekianjo]

You dont have all this in most small sized companies. Silos exist only when you grow big.

[cmckn]

I’ve never seen these kind of roles even in huge companies. “Sprint master” as a job description? Can’t be serious.

[eru]

Well, I've heard of 'scum masters' (sorry, scrum masters) as a job description. So 'sprint master' doesn't sound too ridiculous by comparison.

[pharmakom]

They run something equivalent to Spotify at a much smaller scale.

[smcg]

You work for private equity. Private equity is the problem. You work for vampires.