Revolutionizing the music creation industry, one artist at a time

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[00:00] SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_00: The Hi everyone.
[00:06] SPEAKER_00: Today I'm with Alex Turbide, the co-founder and CEO of Beat Connect.
[00:10] SPEAKER_00: So Alex, thanks for being with us today.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: Pleasure to be here.
[00:13] SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
[00:15] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like usually on Canada's podcast, we love to hear about your story as an entrepreneur.
[00:20] SPEAKER_00: So tell us how you got to start your business.
[00:25] SPEAKER_01: It's been a journey.
[00:26] SPEAKER_01: I usually talk about this from the beginning where basically I got out of university.
[00:31] SPEAKER_01: I was a mechanical engineer and very early on, I realized that this wasn't going to be it for me.
[00:37] SPEAKER_01: No offense to engineers out there, but that's the tough world.
[00:42] SPEAKER_01: And I knew from the get-go that I wanted to start a business.
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: So I kind of like had this five year plan in mind of where I wanted to be,
[00:51] SPEAKER_01: what I wanted to do and how it would get there.
[00:53] SPEAKER_01: So for me, the next step was really kind of like building this kill sets necessary to kind of get to my dream of building a business.
[01:03] SPEAKER_01: And one way to get there was getting my MBA.
[01:06] SPEAKER_01: So I just did everything I had to do.
[01:08] SPEAKER_01: I worked a couple of years in the industry so that I had something viable to provide in my MBA with the classes.
[01:16] SPEAKER_01: And when I got there, I just I leveraged basically everything the MBA had to give.
[01:20] SPEAKER_01: Shout out to Asha Seymontriall, awesome, awesome program if you're out there and you want to get an MBA in Quebec.
[01:29] SPEAKER_01: And one of the cool things that I did actually when I was doing this program is I was the director for the entrepreneurship club.
[01:38] SPEAKER_01: And I used this position to basically get high profile kind of CEOs or like start up people to come and talk about the experience so that I could kind of know how you get there.
[01:50] SPEAKER_01: And how you you go through the process of building your startup from scratch and moving forward.
[01:55] SPEAKER_01: So awesome, awesome experience.
[01:57] SPEAKER_00: And from what I understand, you had your five year plan of starting your business.
[02:02] SPEAKER_00: And I think that is actually very, very entrepreneurial like right like very driven.
[02:08] SPEAKER_00: This is where I want to go. This is where I'm going.
[02:10] SPEAKER_00: And but what got you interested in creating that five year plan?
[02:15] SPEAKER_00: Like why entrepreneurship was the calling for you?
[02:19] SPEAKER_01: It's it's actually something it's very personal like you kind of have to define you know what makes you think.
[02:26] SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm having I was having a very hard time in kind of like a corporate environment because you work on projects and like you do all these awesome things and you have budget and a lot of people that are willing and it's really cool.
[02:40] SPEAKER_01: But at some point you're going to hit that that ceiling where people are going to say, no, no, that's that's that's where we're going to stop it.
[02:47] SPEAKER_01: You know, you don't need to go further like you have some awesome ideas for things that could be put into place, but they're going to say, no, this is not what in budget.
[02:54] SPEAKER_01: We're not going to do it.
[02:55] SPEAKER_01: And this always always killed kind of like my mojo, you know, I was like, why am I doing this thing?
[03:01] SPEAKER_01: Like this whole this whole environment doesn't really necessarily foster, you know, pure creativity or like just let's push it to the max and see where we can take it.
[03:10] SPEAKER_01: It was always a limit.
[03:12] SPEAKER_01: So I knew in my mind that if ever I was going to be happy, it would be in an environment where we could kind of control everything right.
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: It's our business.
[03:20] SPEAKER_01: We do whatever we want with it.
[03:21] SPEAKER_01: If we want to go in a direction, we go a hundred miles an hour.
[03:24] SPEAKER_01: So it was inevitable for me.
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: We went in two years.
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: I was always hitting that ceiling.
[03:28] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[03:29] SPEAKER_00: So and you wanted to break that feeling by starting your business.
[03:32] SPEAKER_00: So tell us tell us more about, you know, where you are now and what does your business do.
[03:38] SPEAKER_01: So beat connect is actually a collaborative platform for musicians and producers and he kind of creators out there that want to create music remotely and in real time.
[03:48] SPEAKER_01: The beauty of of this problem and everything that we're solving is that if you look at the music industry, they're like, and I'm not even getting like 10 years behind in terms of tech.
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: We can see gaming that has been like booming in the last couple of years and the music industry could have easily followed suit, but they didn't for multiple reason having like multiple big players kind of competing in this environment and putting barriers.
[04:12] Speaker UNKNOWN: So we're going to have a lot of great years.
[04:14] SPEAKER_01: However, it's not happening.
[04:16] SPEAKER_01: So we saw this opportunity and we're like, well, we're just going to go in and we're going to create this product that is really open source.
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: You know, with the same mentality that gaming has today, we wanted to do kind of like the same thing.
[04:26] SPEAKER_01: So it was an opportunity definitely.
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm definitely not the musician of the group, Nick, my partner and co founder is the one that's been making music for 20 years.
[04:36] SPEAKER_01: He's the guy that was like walking down, walking up the stairs, you know, in Batoma, via during winter, when everything was icy to kind of sell the CDs and he's really kind of a self made man.
[04:46] SPEAKER_01: He he's learned to program on his own. He build video games, all that awesome, awesome guy that I got to meet when I was working at CBC.
[04:55] SPEAKER_01: And together, we kind of like shared this passion of building something together and what it was a perfect fit.
[05:00] SPEAKER_01: It really was like when we met, we knew that we have we had complimentary skill set.
[05:04] SPEAKER_01: We knew there was this business opportunity. We kind of surveyed the market and then we didn't know we didn't a month of actually meeting together.
[05:10] SPEAKER_01: We're like, let's start a business.
[05:13] SPEAKER_00: That's really cool. So talking about this, you know, like build like you had a vision, you took the steps, but finding someone was maybe not part of the plan, right? It just happened.
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: What do you see? What were the signs that you saw that you're like, this is the right person for to to make my vision a reality?
[05:33] SPEAKER_01: Hard working guy. It's it's also, you know, a personality fit. There's a there's a couple of questions. You always need to be very careful and open about when when you want to partner with somebody and one of the big ones is like, where, where do you actually want to want to stop?
[05:51] SPEAKER_01: You know, if somebody comes tomorrow and say that, you know, we're going to buy this business for $5 million and you don't want to sell, but your partner wants to sell, then you got a problem.
[06:00] SPEAKER_01: So you kind of have, it's funny to think about that, but like one of the very first thing you need to lay down and be in agree upon is your exit strategy.
[06:09] SPEAKER_01: Because if one of you guys is not willing to push it as far as the other, then you're you're basically sending it up for failure. You know, at some point there's going to be resentment and somebody's not going to working as much and then everything's in a crumble.
[06:21] SPEAKER_01: So from the very beginning, we knew that this was a passion project for both of us, like, whatever we build, I wanted to build this awesome product that was solving a real problem for people, not just, you know, kind of like a B2B thing where, oh, we're going to make it.
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: A 5% more efficient to work in this process line of water. No, I wanted to build something people were going to use and really like enjoy and facilitate whatever they were building.
[06:48] SPEAKER_01: And Nick, he's super, super passionate about what he does and about music. He's been in this in this world of like, it's basically we call it bedroom producers.
[06:59] SPEAKER_01: Like the people that make music from from home, you know, from their own setup, they have like their their drum machines, they have like their pads and their guitar, whatever, and they do it for for the fun of it, you know.
[07:10] SPEAKER_01: And he's been there for so long he's done it for so long that he understands all of the little problems that we can fix today because we kind of wedge yourself in between all of the big players.
[07:20] SPEAKER_00: So passion, hard working and asking what's your ceiling, right? It's kind of funny that you're talking I want to quit the corporate world because I can't break the ceiling, but in business, you also have to know what's your angle. It's not a ceiling. It's kind of like, where are we going to do something next?
[07:37] SPEAKER_01: Yes, because inevitably, like you might not get there like 99% of us will never get there. And I don't think that you know we're in that position right now, but let's say that Google's come Google comes tomorrow and say I'm buying you out for $100 million.
[07:53] SPEAKER_01: Do you do it? I mean, we're all going to say yes because $100 million is ludicrous, but that the point is still stands that if you build something successful enough and not enough people see value in it, you're going to get some big player that's going to come in and is going to try to swoop it from you.
[08:09] SPEAKER_01: This is just the reality of the markets. The way it is today most startups, you know, they never go to that kind of like crazy phase where their worldwide or whatever because you need a lot of financial back in a lot of gut to say that you're going to compete with those players because they just say no to them. You got to be ready to turn around and be nimble and be faster and be more aggressive to go to market.
[08:30] SPEAKER_00: And you've been working on on beat connect for the last year. So what did the first year look like and what made it that you're successful now with the business and that you're you're excited to keep going because the first year is always really tough right.
[08:48] SPEAKER_01: It's pure pain to tell you it's it's fun though. I got to say like the there's a lot of work that goes into just having having this this kind of early product that is not your vision by any means, but anybody that does tech knows that you can't actually wait to have that polish product.
[09:08] SPEAKER_01: You need to do something and iterate on it and iterate and get feedback and get people on board. And it's very hard in today's ecosystem to get people excited about something that you know is not you know a polished finished product that has all the features that you want.
[09:24] SPEAKER_01: So with the last year and a half almost like now that we've been working on this thing. I can say that we are with with our next release now lined up in in two weeks, no, no October 15.
[09:35] SPEAKER_01: We are finally going to be releasing that super polished and finished product that's going to be the foundation of everything that we're going to build on top because be connect for us is just the be connect platform is really just the first step into what collaboration can become.
[09:51] SPEAKER_01: It's an experience. It's not just a product. It's not just that one thing that allows people to connect and do things. There's there's a whole world of stuff that can be built on top.
[09:59] SPEAKER_01: But for that, you need to have like that that shiny product that's that's well made. So the last year has been a mix of us getting you know rejected by people.
[10:09] SPEAKER_01: Co calling making sure that we have demos and presenting and getting feedback and kind of that grassroots approach of getting people into you know a discord or or any form of like group chat so that you can get their feedback when they try it.
[10:23] SPEAKER_01: It's it's a lot a lot of work, especially when you're working with with consumers.
[10:28] SPEAKER_00: So you've been growing your product a lot in the last year and a half, but how did you grow as a as a person in that journey?
[10:41] SPEAKER_01: It's it's humbling I would say in a sense because you think I you know you're you're ready for this and like mentally it's going to work and and
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: And you discover you know what what kind of like you truly made of when when you get rejected for like the hundred time or whatever, but it's
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: personally, I think the the thing that changed the most with with with with with me with my personality and all that is my ability to kind of like fail fast.
[11:10] SPEAKER_01: Before when we first started, I would take like every little kind of rejection very very hard because it's like what if we're wrong about everything and because this one guy didn't like it.
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: What if like everything you know is is is going to fall apart when we actually know you just got to understand that you know maybe at that time it wasn't working for that guy with like you look at the numbers you talk with people you keep pushing a new version you improve and then.
[11:34] SPEAKER_01: The more you go more people are on board and they're seeing the value and they're seeing the potential and it's all because you got to learn to fail fast you got to learn to get to push something that's not finish and polish but take the good from from that test and just improve upon it so.
[11:50] SPEAKER_01: You don't you can't take it at heart every time otherwise you're just going to you're going to go crazy.
[11:54] SPEAKER_00: And how is there anything in your personal life or in your routine or things around you that really help you to build that resilience.
[12:03] SPEAKER_01: I have to say my wife.
[12:07] SPEAKER_01: She's she's been nothing but but you know pure support since since the beginning she believed in this thing this is actually my fifth attempt at a startup so she knew that this was something very important for me and that when she saw the team that we haven't be connected with when she met Nick when she heard about the potential and the idea.
[12:26] SPEAKER_01: She was on board from day one and from that moment on whenever I was having you know those those doubts or those sleepless nights because you know you're always worried about something she would always you know calm me and remind me that you know this is this is going to work this is your you guys are putting everything you have into it you guys have incredible feedback the product is developing well you're just worrying too much so having somebody that's able to reach center you and really kind of support you in those moments of the outs is just pure.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: You need that yeah you need that and and you know what does the conversations look like you know like because you're going to be spending all your time on this you might not be paid you know in the first few years like so how does the dynamic work for you.
[13:14] SPEAKER_01: It's again it's you got to you got to have that conversation before it's when when we first started beat connected was back in February 2020 like at the very beginning of the pandemic and we knew we had something we knew we were on to the right track so I talked with my wife and she told me okay take it to a certain point where you're going to be able to tell me without a shadow of a doubt this is going to work.
[13:42] SPEAKER_01: You know make make that that initial push that the initial journey and when you're ready I'm going to support you and this is the most important part here if you're an entrepreneur and you're you're going to do something that is be to see that that needs you know a tipping point where you're going to scale that that hockey stick curve that everybody talks about.
[14:01] SPEAKER_01: You got to understand that you need to have financial backing you got to be ready to to not get paid for a year like I haven't had a salary in the last year and that's that's because my salary can be put to work for a developer can be put to work for marketing can put so it's a sacrifice that you got to be willing to make but not everybody in an position to to make that sacrifice if you don't have enough money in the bank if you don't have a wife or husband that's willing to support you financially it's going to be very hard and you.
[14:30] SPEAKER_01: You're going to compromise on your vision for the product and the business because you want to make a quick buck or you want to pivot quickly and be sure that within the next six months the business going to be profitable and then you're just going to lose yourself.
[14:44] SPEAKER_01: So it's it's crucial that you have that conversation with with your partner or you just have enough money to sustain yourself.
[14:52] SPEAKER_00: And surrounding you're surrounding yourself with the right people is something that I hear a lot in this conversation and you know even when you were doing your MBA that should say you realize I want to talk with this person so I'm going to invite them because I'm the director of the club you know like people who want to surround themselves with people who will make their business or even their vision their life move forward what would you suggested them because it's not just being easy going and being confident that you'll talk to these people.
[15:21] SPEAKER_00: Like what are the tips and tricks that you learn to approach you know like people that are outside your network but that you really want to get closer to you for it to enhance your vision.
[15:35] SPEAKER_01: The I think one of the thing is to be bold like you can't be afraid that as I said earlier that you're going to be rejected a lot of times you just send let's say you want to meet somebody you want to meet you want to go to to I don't know like an event or something because you're going to be.
[15:51] SPEAKER_01: To meet people you just got to be willing to kind of send that that call call email or whatever and just you know hoping for it is going to work and if it doesn't then so what you know moving on to the next.
[16:02] SPEAKER_01: But also you you got to be very open about what you want to do a lot of people and this is this is true like every entrepreneur I talk to says the same thing ideas unless you know you have that that one crazy billion dollar idea but ideas in general are very cheap.
[16:21] SPEAKER_01: It's the realization of those ideas that is everything so having the right people to kind of push it to product to push that product and go to market and then when you're in the market getting the right people to market it and then you know get that that curve going up so ideas are cheap you got to be willing to put it out there and talk to people and say hey I want to build a business I want to do something I have this idea maybe it's not not good now but it's going to change over time.
[16:46] SPEAKER_01: Are you somebody that has that dream do you want to share that dream with me and build something if you're not open with people you're not going to you're not going to meet the people that are right for you you're not going to be you're not going to set yourself for success if you keep if you keep it a secret that you want to start a business and that you want to live that kind of life.
[17:05] SPEAKER_00: So we go out there find the people talk to them and see if they share the same dreams and they share your vision for your business.
[17:13] SPEAKER_01: Yep that's the way actually Nick and Nick would be able to test it out but the way actually convinced him he wasn't particularly willing like the first few weeks to actually start a business because you know he was very busy with work and all of that and I kept hammering it like I'm like we should start a business this would be awesome you know we would be able to do our thing like no no no no don't have time for that but as the weeks went on he was always kind of thinking about it was like you know that would be a good idea actually maybe we could look in the world and see if we could do it.
[17:42] SPEAKER_01: So you got to be willing to plan that seed and kind of like work it and hope that that things are going to plan out.
[17:49] SPEAKER_00: Yeah and give people sometimes gives people some time to process and then discover for themselves that this is what they want because I think you were pretty lucky to have like not lucky but you may you will always make your luck but like you know you're like I have my five year vision and some people don't have this vision yet defined.
[18:06] SPEAKER_00: So when someone like you comes in their life and they're like hey I have this vision for us and they've never even thought about it you need to as you said plan the seed and keep building on that so that it grows into them and they're like yeah this is what I do want.
[18:21] SPEAKER_01: Yeah absolutely and and let's be honest luck is a big part of of everything that we do okay it's like the the fact that we started beat connect January 2020 and went in literal weeks of us you know starting cold season.
[18:36] SPEAKER_01: David became what it is today and like people were kind of like secustrated inside and we knew that there was an opportunity for collaboration because people couldn't play music together anymore that's luck.
[18:48] SPEAKER_01: We were already like six months in advance of everybody out there that had the same idea and I wanted to build something so we were first to market we were the first to make a splash and what we we did.
[18:57] SPEAKER_01: And because of that we had the attention of the big players that don't have the nimbleness to build that kind of product so they're looking to the kind of like partner with somebody else right they want to give that product to their users so it's luck is a big big part of the timing timing is everything and you just got to be ready to kind of seize that opportunity when it presents itself.
[19:19] SPEAKER_00: Alex it's it's a really great conversation and I'd love to hear on a final note you know what what else do you want to share what else did you learn what else what advice did you get something that you're like this is precious to me and my journey as an entrepreneur and I'd like to share that with people.
[19:37] SPEAKER_01: There's i'm sure like this obviously is a canada white podcast but in Montreal there is an incredible system to support entrepreneurs and we've been extremely lucky to be part of it whether it's a PME Montreal Montreal link and especially the zoo incubator program that we went through.
[19:57] SPEAKER_01: So one thing I want to I want to say is you have you have to make the effort to leverage those opportunities with the ecosystem in place because you're going to meet incredible people one of the products that we're about to release again in two weeks that's called creators that is.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: A an environment where any musician that wants to interact with their audience that wants to give classes to people that wants to have that collaborative experience and I want to maybe monetize their their their efforts in their time this idea.
[20:29] SPEAKER_01: This whole concept was fostered and developed because we were mentored by the right people in zoo because we had those people to kind of push us into that that new dimension and see what are the different angles where we could create take this product and push it to the next level.
[20:45] SPEAKER_01: So you have to have like the right mentors around you and be willing to kind of open your mind to what they they're willing to bring.
[20:52] SPEAKER_00: Wonderful I agree with you that in Quebec and in Canada in general we have a amazing ecosystem to help entrepreneurs grow and flourish and and you know break the ceiling of their own dreams you know so it's been the pleasure to speak with you Alex and and thanks for sharing your journey with us and and if people want to connect with you or follow you what would be the best way for them to do that.
[21:15] SPEAKER_01: They can go on be connect calm or follow our social media is on when on link to Facebook or Instagram were very active and if you're a musician musician out there that's that's looking to leverage your skillset what is classes whatever we're launching the creators program in just two weeks and we'd be very very happy to chat with you guys and onboard you.
[21:37] SPEAKER_00: Wonderful well thanks Alex.
[21:39] SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.