Meet Brittney Bean, the founder of Songdrop; the music streaming website and app that collects all the songs you're listening to on SoundCloud and YouTube together in one playlist. Despite being less than a year old, companies like Urban Outfitters and The 405 are already using the service to make playlists for their customers. We spoke to her about being a women in the tech world, who she looks up to and how the hell to launch your own start-up....** **
The Debrief: Can you tell me how Songdrop came about in the first place?
BB: We started working on Songdrop basically out of a genuine need. We were trying to make playlists out of music from YouTube and SoundCloud and couldn’t do it. And then I kept losing the music that I was listening to, so we wanted to come up with a way to help you collect the music that you found online.
DB: So I'm guessing you did tech subjects at uni then?
BB: I’ve got a bachelor's degree in art history.
DB: That's a no then...
BB: I worked for a start-up on my very first job out of uni. This was about a billion internet years ago and I kind of found myself surrounded by a lot of people who could make things on the internet. Once you kind of get involved with technical people, it just sort of begins to rub off on you.
DB: So you picked up coding somewhere along the way?
BB: Yeah. Not very well, but I did learn. But it’s actually not quite as painful as some people might make it out. I was really lucky as I was already working with a lot of technical people and designers, so if I had questions I could just ask and someone was always more than happy to answer and help me out, which definitely makes things a lot easier. But now, if people want to go and learn to code, they’ve got loads of places to go and do that, like Decoded and General Assembly and that kind of stuff.
DB: I just about learned what Google was in my IT lessons waaaay back at GCSE-stage – is being younger a bonus in this industry?
BB: Yeah. I’ve run into a fair amount of younger people who seem to be far more capable than I certainly was at the age of 20, who seem to be hungrier. There’s definitely more opportunity available, too, because the tools to learn are all out there and they’re all on the internet for free. I run into a lot of younger people who seem to be far more ambitious and ready to go than I was at that time.
DB: How the hell do you go about starting up your own tech company?
BB: Because I had worked for someone else’s start-up, I saw everything they had to do first hand. So when I was like, 'I’m ready to go this by myself now.' I already had a rounded education about what needed to be done. So I was there during the fundraising, I was there for multiple product releases, I was there for mistakes made, but it wasn't my responsibility quite yet. Then you have to build a team, you’ve got to get the right people around you early on. So I know what I’m relatively good at and I know what I’m pretty shit at, so I got people who are really good at the things that I was shit at to kind of come on board as co-founders. Then you try and build a product.
**DB: ***
BB: We joined an accelerator.
**DB: **
**DB: O,h so like a graduate scheme for start-ups? **
BB: Yeah, so the ones in this country are Techstars, which is the one we did, Telefonica and Seedcamp.
DB: Any mistakes you're still kicking yourself about today?
BB: We probably didn’t move to mobile fast enough. It turned out building our IOS app took a lot longer than we thought it would, so we probably should have just done that like from day one, rather than waiting at all.
DB: We're constantly reading about how sexist the tech industry is. Have you ever experienced it yourself?
BB: I think for the most part tech itself is probably one of the least sexist things that I’ve ever been involved in London. I can’t say they same thing about the situation in somewhere like San Francisco. I mean, some of the stories I’ve heard from people in San Fran, I’m like, 'Are you fucking joking? That’s ridiculous.'
DB: Like what?
BB: So there’s this whole culture called Brogramming…
DB: Oh no...
BB: This is not a joke, someone actually made that word up, someone thought it was acceptable to create that word, which is almost as bad as 'recessionista'. It's basically just like all these dudes being stupid dudes, but they're programmers and they're exactly as bad you would imagine they are. But I don't think that really exists in the kind of London environment. I think the only time it can come into play is that investors tend to invest in people like them, if that makes sense? So if there’s not many female investors, then women in start-ups might be at a disadvantage.
DB: And I'm guessing young girls like you heading up start-ups are still in the minority, too?
BB: There’s a big push to get more women to start businesses, but the problem is you get a lot of people who are like, 'Oh she's just going to start some chick business and it's going to be another online fashion merch place thing.' So there's a push to see that not every time a woman starts a tech start-up that it’s like some kind of 'I sell pink electronics thing'.
DB: So who, I’m sure you’ve met some incredible people, are the most inspiring people you have met?
BB: Robin Exton from Dattch was in the same accelerator as me. She started out doing it totally by herself and just ended up just completely killing it. And just watching that happen from kind of like day one that’s pretty cool, and that’s a really nice thing to see, and I’m like super-happy that it's working well for her.
**DB: Have you got any advice for anyone who's considering starting up their own thing? **
BB: I would say, if you want to do a tech start-up, go work in one, even if it's for six months and you’re basically just doing a glorified internship. You’ll learn an unbelievable amount just from watching other people fuck up all the time, which is basically what a start-up is. It's like going to business school, but you don’t have to pay for it. In terms of general advice, I would say just give it a go. I mean, the worst thing that’s going to happen is it's not going to work. The worst thing is you fail, but the best thing is you don’t.
Follow Brittney on Twitter @BrittneyBean. Check out Brittney's favourite apps here.
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.