Slashdot Mirror


SoundCloud Has Enough Money To Survive Only 80 Days, Report Claims (techcrunch.com)

Last week, SoundCloud announced it is cutting about 40 percent of its staff and closing two offices. Now, a report from TechCrunch claims "the layoffs only saved the company enough money to have runway 'until Q4' -- which begins in just 80 days." From the report: That seems to conflict with the statement Ljung released alongside the layoffs, which noted that, "With more focus and a need to think about the long term, comes tough decisions." The company never mentioned how short its cash would still last. We reached out to Ljung and SoundCloud for this story and PR responded to the request reiterating Ljung blog post. After being presented with the leaked information from the all-hands, SoundCloud PR admitted that, "We are fully funded into Q4," though it says it's in talks with potential investors. But further funding would require faith in SoundCloud that its own staff lacks. When asked about morale of the remaining team, one employee who asked to remain anonymous told TechCrunch "it's pretty shitty. Pretty somber. I know people who didn't get the axe are actually quitting. The people saved from this are jumping ship. The morale is really low."

8 of 57 comments (clear)

  1. Fake accounts and SPAM by war4peace · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I posted a couple "tracks" there, some audio captures of PC fan noises for fans that were misbehaving.
    Soon after, I started receiving "likes" from various "accounts".
    Then I started receiving SPAM PMs in soundcloud.

    When a company starts padding their data, you know they're going down.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re:Fake accounts and SPAM by war4peace · · Score: 4, Informative

      Maybe...
      But when a different person likes your track every 10 days like clockwork... too much of a coincidence.
      Just look at the dates.

      http://imgur.com/Q9cvnAC

      And look at the "people" who liked my track:

      https://soundcloud.com/daphneg...
      https://soundcloud.com/nicolem...

      Same person in profile photos, just different image.

      All those users have a very similar amount of "following" (a bit over 1000) and no other activity except for following and likes.

      They're bots, all right.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  2. An MBA can be expensive by Paul+Carver · · Score: 4, Informative

    Before enrolling in an MBA program (or attempting to run a business without any training) try taking the following short quiz:

    Question 1) Revenue should be
    A) Greater than total expenses
    B) Equal to total expenses
    C) Less than total expenses

    If you answered B or C you should probably reconsider your career choice of running a business.

    If you answered A your business may still fail, but at least you've got a chance of success.

    1. Re:An MBA can be expensive by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Funny

      You don't understand. This is on the Internet! Yeah, we lose money on each transaction, but you fail to realize we'll make it up with volume! Just like we did back in the 2000 dot-bomb era!

      Oh wait...

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    2. Re:An MBA can be expensive by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How exactly am I going to generate enough hype to keep the VC funding coming in?
      - FTFY

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:An MBA can be expensive by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Informative

      See you do not understand business at all. When it comes to creating the illusion of a business that you can sell, revenue is measured against invested capital and invested capital does not include loans because the loan balances out credit and debit (in fanciful accounting). The whole idea is to get investment bankers on side, who will help you to create the illusion of immense profitability in the future, for which they take a huge chunk of profit from selling your on paper super fantastic business. Now you can not sell it all because that looks really bad but you can sell more than enough to make yourself rich. The company then goes bellyup, you then claim your golden parachute, greed knows no bounds and you leave with the proceeds from the IPO and a lot of pension funds for some strange reason make a bad investment and screwed over their pensioners.

      Now that how you make money under modern capitalism. Of course sometimes those illusory companies last long enough to turn their shares basically into junk bonds to buy companies that actually generate an income and buy enough and your company now actually makes money, not the original company of course, just the companies you bought. Under capitalism the one thing to make more money than anything else is bullshit, not always though, sometimes that shit just hits the fan and covers everyone in losses.

      Mostly the investment market is lies, if you are an establishment insider you will make money, if you are not, than you will be ripped off in one way or another.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  3. Ob by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    So from a financial POV it's more of an unSoundCloud?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Re:what is a soundcloud? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is like listening to music on youtube, except the sound is of good quality, there is no video (so it's lighter on CPU and bandwith as well) and there is an automatic endless playlist (this used to be an uncommon or new feature).

    Like youtube, the customers don't pay to listen to the content, and like youtube you don't need to have a user account either.
    So you don't need an app or a phone or money to use it and it's not a music store or a "spotify".
    Makes it all the more mysterious where do they get the money to pay for the bandwith and gigabytes.

    But if this goes under, this will suck as this site is pretty well used and has a ton of stuff. E.g. if you know someone who plays in a local band, or does electronic music (creative or not), and so on, then they likely published stuff in there.