Derek Sivers of CDBaby and MuckWork on Startup Success
Even in this age of fear based news, war and famine, contentious politics and avian flu, it is difficult to be a pessimist with people like Derek Sivers in this world.
Derek Sivers is the man behind CDBaby and now MuckWork who parlayed the simple need to publish his own CDs into a company to sell his friends albums as well into a scalable web business into a massive payday, which he parlayed into a tremendous charitable organization designed to aid independent musicians in a much more comprehensive way.
In this interview Derek speaks candidly about his journey from a musician into the big business of music showing that tremendous success can come from following natural, compassionate intentions and be fed back into scaling those intentions to a tremendous degree.
http://startuppodcast.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/show-40-derek-sivers-cdbaby-and-muckwork/
If you're into the business site of the web, I highly recommend subscribing to this podcast. It's worth going back and listening to the entire season.
Who over what
Ever since I began strapping myself in for the 10-18 hour days in front of the glowing screens I've traveled widely over the internets. What a strange and wonderous place it is indeed. I've found a lot of things that run the gambit from vauable professionally through personally interesting and deep into blissfully escapist. Recently, however, it hasn't been so much the things I've been finding but the people I've been finding that have peaked my interest and inspired me to push through the more difficult professional situations and even provided some uni-directional compatriatism in a very interesting kind of way.*
As with all internet trends, I don't think I'm alone. I'm feeling this shift due to a mass of interview style podcasts and video shorts that are cropping up everywhere. So if you've seen the fringes of the podcasting and video interview segment world out there and like it, pull the thread. All these people are tight with each other; spend any time with one and you'll find connections to a dozen others. Many are extremely talented, honest and open people who genuinely put themselves through these mediums.
Here's a very short list of personality centered pod/video casts that I've been moving through.
- http://www.myextralife.com/appslappy/ - very light and entertaining podcast "for iphone, ipod touch and Apple app store addicts" founded by Scott Johnson who has a built quite a domain of cartoons and nerdy movie/game/culture podcasts at http://www.myextralife.com.
- http://www.havocinspired.co.uk/category/please-start-from-the-beginning/ - a series of interviews in which freelance-ish web/design people are encouraged to start from the beginning and talk about their careers.
- http://twit.tv/ - I don't know where to begin with this one. Leo Laporte has produced a staggering amount of content and built a whole network around himself. I have mixed feelings; while I have enjoyed some of the shows, I find Leo himself to be a little too much of a personality and not enough of a person. This judgment is probably due to some kind of mishandled envy of his success on my part... (EDIT: I have since listened to a few more of his podcasts with and determined that, yes, it is just my own insecurities. Leo Laport is an excellent host, striking the balance of candid and professional). but there is a lot there to explore and subscribe to.
- aaand then there's http://davidpogue.com/. What a screwball. I enjoy catching up with his videos every three months or so.
I'd love to hear who you listen to in the comments.
* - An example of the real engagement: just this last weekend one of the commentators that I listen to was hired by his dream company, a move that will require him to go off the air. This moved me to write a contratulations email that was as heart-felt as any that I've sent to people who I know and, well, know who I am.