Tech

Turntable.fm: How A Failed Startup Became An Overnight, Multi-Million-Dollar Success

By Alyson Shontell
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Seth Goldstein Billy Chasen TurnTable
Seth Goldstein and Billy Chasen cofounded TurnTable.  Realtime Report and ebayink via Flickr

This morning we grabbed coffee with Polaris Ventures partner, Peter Flint.

The Boston-based firm has a $3 billion+ fund and a strong New York presence. It is the force behind startup coworking space, DogPatch Labs.

Polaris Ventures' investment thesis is broad, and it makes investments of all sizes, for as little as $20,000 and as much as $20 million. Its portfolio includes ShoeDazzle, LegalZoom, JibJab, and Turntable.fm.

Turntable.fm was formerly Stickybits, a QR code company founded by Billy Chasen and Seth Goldstein. Brands could stick QR codes on their products, and users could scan them for rewards. 

While brands loved StickyBits, users didn't adopt the product.

By January 2011, it became clear StickyBits wouldn't work.  The founders turned to investors and presented a few other ideas, just in case StickyBits failed.

"Billy is a great product guy.  He came to us and said he had a few other ideas he had always wanted to try.  We gave StickyBits a deadline, and asked him to flesh out another idea in the meantime.  One of the ideas was Turntable.fm," recalls Flint.

Within weeks, Turntable.fm went viral.  Before long, celebrities like Sir Mix-A-Lot were using it too.  The board pulled the plug on Stickybits and went full steam ahead with Turntable.fm, encouraging the founders to raise a bigger round of financing.

"The board and I trusted the founders," says Flint. "But we also got lucky."

Now, the group music listening site has raised $7 million at a rumored valuation of $37.5 million. It has big-name music professionals on board, including The Roots and Madonna's manager.

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Alyson Shontell Business Insider
Alyson Shontell
Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.
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