What Founders Get Wrong About Exits

Most founders think about building. Fewer think carefully about selling.

In this episode, Dmitri talks with Phil Barry, the founder of music rights and licensing platform Blokur, about what he learned from nearly a decade of building and ultimately selling his company to Music Reports in 2024.

Phil opens up about the early challenges of finding product-market fit, the long relationship-building that made the acquisition possible, and the operational details that can make or break a deal. He also reflects on what he’d do differently, why he’d push back harder on pressure to grow too fast, and what it felt like to finally step away after years of startup intensity. 

Whether you’re an early-stage founder or mapping out your exit strategy, this episode is full of honest, practical perspective from a founder on the other side of the exit

The news

• Why YouTube Is the Sleeping Giant of Music Catalog (Guest Column)

• Did Taylor Swift and Lyor Cohen Just Give the Music Streamers a Video Strategy?

• Apple Music’s iOS 26.4 beta introduces AI-powered playlist tool

• Deezer debuts ‘Flow Tuner’ to help listeners tune its algorithm

• TikTok tests letting users stream full songs through Apple Music without leaving the app

• Apple Music Strongly Hints That It Won’t Be Lowering Prices Following Spotify and Amazon Music Increases — How Much Will This Matter In 2026?

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Episode Transcript

Machine transcribed

[00:00:00] Dmitri: Phil Barry is a musician turned music and technology entrepreneur who sold his most recent venture Blokur, a music rights platform to music reports in 2024. After a decade as a recording artist and indie label founder, Phil began experimenting with innovative uses of technology for music in 2014, consulting on the release of Tom Yorke's second solo album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes through BitTorrent

And collaborating with Imogen Heap on Ujo, an early blockchain based music platform Blokur, founded in 2016, helps digital platforms to use music with confidence supporting licensing, rights clearance, and royalty accounting Blokur was announced as a partner of the MLC in 2023 and its data matching technology now aids the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of royalties every year.

Phil left the company last year posting on LinkedIn that he'd be taking a well-deserved break. But he's resurfaced this week to share some reflections and insights with us from his entrepreneurial journey. Hey, Phil, welcome to Music Tectonics.

[00:00:57] Phil: Hello. Good to be here.

[00:00:59] Dmitri: Good to have you coming back onto the scene with us.

Let's dive in. What is Blokur and why did you start it?

[00:01:05] Phil: Yeah, so Blokur is a platform that makes it easier for all kinds of digital. Experiences that use music to use music, and it helps in, in three main ways. The first is at the beginning of the journey, when you're looking for music to license and you to license music makes that easier.

Then once you're using music, make sure you're only using music that is cleared, that you've gotta license to use. You're not infringing, and at the end does the royalty accounting. the reports, the royalty statements and the payments. and why did I start it? You know, I. When I was younger, I, my dream was to be a rock star, so I spent all my time making music.

I had a little four track tape recorder and I'd go in a spare room and, and write songs and, you know, program drum machines and, and do all of that. I did that all my teenage years and I, after a diversion to, to university to study languages. I then was a professional recording artist for 10 years, and when I started off, I had some idea of what I thought success might be and I knew I wasn't gonna be.

Taylor Swift or whatever Taylor Swift was back then. But I, I thought, well, you know, there's gonna be a niche. I'm to do something. I'm gonna, you know, be able to make some money. It turned out I did quite a lot of those things. you know, you played a bunch of big festivals. My records were on the radio, went on tour, and I just didn't make any, didn't make any money.

 and I got to see all these kind of weird things that were stopping me making money. And often it was things to do with, Like, I'd have a song used somewhere, but it would take years for the statement to get back to me and things like this.

[00:02:30] Dmitri: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:31] Phil: Um, and so later when retired from, you know, music at the appropriate age for an artist with no hits, which was about 30, I just started to dig into that a bit more, and I found this as a big pattern, that there was a lack of information about who to pay that stopped.

Money getting through. And so the first iteration of Blokur was basically to bring together all of the data we possibly could match it all together and try and complete the complete picture of who should get paid when a song is played. and that's what it was. But we found that, although that was a very interesting solution, it wasn't a business on its own.

And what it came later is we would be selling to the digital platforms that needed. That information in order for their business to work for them to use proper music with the PRO license or to pay people correctly.

[00:03:19] Dmitri: Hmm. Gotcha. I mean that's quite leap from recording musician to startup founder. Had you already done some entrepreneurial things as well or was this the first?

[00:03:29] Phil: Well, I think if you're an artist, you're an entrepreneur anyway, 'cause you don't have a boss and you don't have anyone telling you to get up and write a song that day. You know, maybe your manager might do that. I've always been like that. I've never had, the only time I've had a normal, what most people think is a normal job and, you know, been employed by somebody was the, the year after the acquisition of Blokur.

I've just always been interested in trying out my own ideas and I think there's just some, if you come up with a good idea and you're just out there as an entrepreneur. You know, you get to try it out on the whole world. If you are, uh, in a normal job, you gets to try it out on your boss and if they don't like it, that's kind of it.

So there's a lot of freedom for creativity and I've also just always enjoyed learning new things. Like it doesn't, whether it was learning to make music in the beginning to, you know, learning finance or product management or about music copyrights, um, learning's just always been one of the things I'm interested in.

[00:04:21] Dmitri: When you describe what Blokur does, it sounded so simple. It was like, oh yeah, that, that totally makes sense. And we all know that it, it's a really complicated mess. behind the, the data, the licensing, the royalties. What was the most challenging thing about launching the company and what were some of your biggest successes?

[00:04:37] Phil: Yeah,

I think the, in the very beginning, we, you know, when you're building something like that, you have a, a chicken and egg problem. We talk about this a lot with music and startups, but you need, the more data you have, the more valuable it is to other people. And so if one person, you know, puts their hand up and says they'll participate, that gets you so far.

 but you then need someone else. Then you need someone else and need someone else. So the difficult bit was to get started with that. Get the first person, you know, Warner Chapel guy at Warner Chapel gave us, gave us their catalog at the beginning, and that was a big, big win. And then it was all about building.

You know, we've got songs where you've got an interest that we've got registered and so you know, what do you want to register your share? And we, you know, built it like that. The biggest challenge was finding out that that was not something we could charge money for. It wasn't really about a technical music industry issue, it was just we had built a solution to a problem that wasn't a business.

And so that was really the biggest, the biggest work and the biggest success was in the end to tweak that. To start targeting the users of music who were willing to pay for a service that would help 'em to use music safely. And probably then in the end, that was the, that was the success. But the thing I'm the proudest of really is the team because you.

Started with just me, ended up with a team of amazing people, some of whom had, most of whom had never worked in music, all of whom had never worked in anything before. which, you know, and they became people now regarded as sort of experts around the world in, in music rights. So that's kinda my proudest thing.

[00:06:08] Dmitri: Yeah, that's cool. Bring everybody along for your entrepreneurial journey. You're all learning together using curiosity and passion to, to solve a, a difficult problem. And then before you know it, you guys are the experts. so you mentioned this first, this first customer, you were solving a problem for them, but not one that they were kind of willing to pay for, but even just getting that first customer, especially a larger company, a major to engage with something like this, that's where a lot of startups struggle to even get that first major partner to say, yes, we'll engage with you.

 how did you get that first one that actually led to everything else?

[00:06:42] Phil: Yeah, it's a good question 'cause it's the question that I think always gets the worst answers at music conferences because they're like, oh well you know, it's 'cause it's not on the big music companies to kind of entertain you that like why should they care?

[00:06:57] Dmitri: Right?

[00:06:57] Phil: So it's really like you have to make them care, by showing them something of value that you're gonna do for them. I would spend a huge amount of time asking questions. learning about them, showing that I care because, you know, I care about music and I care about them, and I care about what it's gonna do for them.

And linking that then to what I was building and, and, and why we could work together. and it was kind of that curiosity and the element of partnership and not asking for something for free. I wouldn't, you know, I'm not, I'm not asking for them to just give their time to help me. I want to, to help them and show some value for them.

 And often maybe we'll talk about this topic. They sort of just imagine that companies just have a duty to just speak to all the startups, but you know, not really.

[00:07:40] Dmitri: Yeah.

[00:07:41] Phil: Not if you're doing, not doing something that they care about.

[00:07:44] Dmitri: Yeah, it's interesting as you talk about it, it makes me think about the whole conversation that we've had a lot on our, uh, how to start up miniseries that part of the Music Tectonics podcast about product market fit.

Because you went in with this idea of how you could fix something or how you could try to solve for something, but then. The people that you were solving it for it didn't really make sense for them to pay for it. At least they didn't see that as a proper business model. But you still need to engage with them before you had something to sell to, say the streaming services, for example.

 so it's a real, it's a real like micro case study of like flipping that, of being like, oh, I think they're gonna pay for this. And they're like, no, we're not gonna pay for it. But if you solve it. You can charge somebody else for it.

[00:08:22] Phil: Yeah. And one of the things that I think if you're starting a company now, and even if I was starting now, the question is, was that all a big mistake?

Were we doing the wrong thing by trying to create this, this database and solve this issue around rights, data and conflicts and all of that in the first place? Or was that a necessary step to establish the platform that then became the business later? 'cause when you're doing it, it's quite difficult To have a sense of that really you're just trying to learn something new every day and change a little bit and get a little better every day. and if you're raising money, it's not that appealing to say, I'm gonna build this thing that'll make no money for three years, and then eventually I'll do something.

So, it's one of those things I think about a lot, whether that was the necessary journey or whether there was something different we could have done. And I think we probably could have done something if we probably could have just iterated a little bit more quickly. In smaller chunks because it's very tempting to build the whole solution if you think you've got the solution.

But if you built the wrong thing, you've wasted a lot of time. So the smaller the chunks, the more you can learn,

[00:09:20] Dmitri: fail fast, MV, P, all that stuff. It's the things you always hear about with startups, right, is don't build it so chunky so that then you, you gotta find out sooner is what you're saying.

You gotta find out sooner if you're on the right path.

[00:09:31] Phil: Yeah, you gotta find out sooner. I think you shouldn't though mistake that for. I'm gonna try it. If it doesn't work, I'm gonna give up. 'cause the other side of startups is not giving up. And there can be an element of thinking if you read all the press, that startups are things that happen quickly, but most of 'em are not really even the big ones that you know about, like.

Open ai, like, you know, they're 10 years old and then suddenly, oh, this is an overnight success. so although you are iterating and learning small things over time, it's not about, I've got an idea, I'll test it. Oh, it didn't work, so I'll go and get a job. Now. It's like, what's the next idea? What's the next idea?

What's, what did I learn from this? What's the next thing I can do?

[00:10:05] Dmitri: This is great. So let's get to the meat of the topic that I'm curious about. 'cause we don't get to talk to a lot of founders who have their companies acquired. How did the acquisition of Blokur come about? Hmm.

[00:10:16] Phil: Well, I think first thing to understand if you're an entrepreneur is that when you take money from an investor, you're making a deal with them about what's gonna happen in the future. And if you have a certain type of investor, part of that deal is the company's gonna be sold one day. So Blokur had, you know, a venture capital fund as an investor, and I knew.

One day this company is gonna be sold. So it starts as soon as you, as you take the money. That's one thing. Then there was just, there was a period of a lot of volatility in, in startup funding and you're always asking yourself, should I be raising more money and grow the companies, be bigger or should I now?

Take the chips off the table and sell the company. And it's always about decision between, between those two things. And as we got closer to the, the sort of expected deadline of how many years the, you know, the investors have been in the, at the same time, the kind of the, the pros for selling now started to increase more than the try and the try and raise money now based on, you know, the expected future of the company then.

There's the actual selling of the company. People often say companies are bought not sold. Meaning you can't just decide one day I'm gonna sell it and expect to ring up a few people and sell it. I think that's only partly true because that is kind of what I did. But the reason it's partly true is that everyone I spoke to is somebody I already knew.

So for years, you know, you speak to the companies that are bigger than yours. The people who are investors in the companies are bigger than yours. You build all these relationships and in the end. Of the sort of five or so companies that made a bid to buy Blokur. I knew all of these people personally.

So it was a, it was a very sort of long game from starting with the investment, meeting all these people, and then the timing and the moment comes, but you have to be ready for the timing for it to happen. and then, is that the end of the answer or not?

[00:12:06] Dmitri: Yeah, it was, it was really How did it come about? I guess, the second part of the question would be, so why then?

[00:12:11] Phil: For the timing.

[00:12:12] Dmitri: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[00:12:13] Phil: Why then? I just think that we reached a point in the life of the company where we would never, we weren't gonna become the next Google or Facebook, and so you are not going to have somebody invest tens of millions of dollars and you're trying to become the next Facebook or Google that business case just.

Actually, that's one of the things you can discuss, but that doesn't happen very often in music. And we reached the point where, you know, the company's doing well, but it's not going to do that. So then you're looking for alternatives. There was a crash in the, you know, as much before there was a crash in the funding market for startups at the same time.

And then there was a period of consolidation, which we took as an opportunity where suddenly all the companies that were involved in rights and things connected to rights were looking at. If these two companies were together, that would make something really good. And then either if you're one of those two people, that's good for you, or it's scary if you are the competitor.

And it started to drive all of this kind of FOMO of like, well, who's buying who and what's going on? And so I think that was the, that's probably in the end the trigger why the company was bought was that dynamic of the competitive dynamic and lots of people. Trying to buy a solution for rights and Blokur was the only one that you could buy.

That's probably it. But from the investor's perspective, it was also about the decision. Like is it better to, to carry on and try and become a, you know, a massive company or is it better to sell now?

[00:13:34] Dmitri: Was that like the moment when companies like Fuga and Audio Salad were getting acquired? Is that what you're talking about where you see all this consolidation or am I thinking of the wrong set of companies?

[00:13:42] Phil: It could be. It's probably lots of things that are not. Public. There were discussions of things that were gonna happen and didn't happen, but every time I spoke to a CEO of a company in our world, they would say, oh yeah, you know, we will try to make an offer for this. And, uh, we didn't see it. Or did you hear they made an offer for that?

Did they make, you know, it just like everyone was talking about it

[00:14:03] Dmitri: What was the process like of having your company acquired?

 what happens when somebody expresses interest and Yeah. How does that go for you as the founder and for the company?

[00:14:13] Phil: In terms of the pure process, you going through basically different stages of interest and diligence in your company. So in the start, you speak to somebody. And they say, I might be interested at this kind of price, and you know, already then you're going, well, that's much too low a price, obviously, but, you know, let's carry on talking.

And then they'll say, well, okay, maybe you can prove me wrong. Can I meet, can I see a presentation or something? So then you'll present the business at a high level and that may lead to then a formal offer. After that though, you know, you're gonna then have really intense diligence of all of your contracts of, you know.

All of your data, of all of your customers, of all, of that kind of thing. And at the same time, you're negotiating a, you're negotiating a complex set of legal agreements. What I found was that it was really just a problem solving. It was just a stream of problems to be solved, which were things you often didn't know much about.

Things like, you know, American tax law. Or, you know, we had a, a shareholder that, uh, had a heart problem and couldn't be reached in the, because he was in the hospital, we had to change the company's constitution to get vote through you just like constantly solving. All kinds of weird, weird problems. and it's a combination of that technical aspect of the people aspect of working with the management team and maybe the investors and the board of the company and the, the personal aspect behind you.

You've got all of your shareholders and you've got your team and you have to think very carefully about what to communicate to them. So it's really a kind of a, a complicated problem solving and, and communications challenge.

[00:15:53] Dmitri: If we need to take a quick break, and when we come back. I'll be curious to find out what happened after that and then also get into a little bit more about how you're seeing how everything went. We'll take a quick break and we'll be right back. Alright, we're back. And Phil, that was really helpful how you explained, kind of some of the challenges of launching the company and then talking a little bit about like what led to the acquisition, what that process was like.

 I'm curious, what would you do differently if you could do it over again in terms of your exit, the time of your exit, how that all went out, whether that was the right move and yeah, if there's anything you do differently, even with how you set up the company to prepare for your, your exit.

[00:16:31] Phil: I think that,

as I mentioned, the type of investor that you have determines, you know, the, the path to exit. What I, not that I regret, but what I would do differently is the time it took to get, like, what do we achieve in the years that we had that we knew we were on the clock? And that's about the kind of, I would start with a smaller team.

I would stay smaller, longer until I'd really proven that I had something really good. I think then I would have got to a bigger company by the time it was sold, and I think that would've been better for everybody at the time. I felt under a lot of pressure to grow quickly at the beginning because that's what, you know, that's what investors ask you to do.

But I would feel more confident in resisting that today. I think when it comes to the very end. I don't think as much. I think we, you know, we did everything we could in the last year of the company to get the best possible outcome for everybody. And that was always on my mind for the employees, for the shareholders, for the, you know, the new buyer, for everything else.

And I'm quite proud of what we achieved and I don't think I would change anything there. It's a little bit like, you're constantly making decisions in a, in a decision tree about. Oh, this person, if they make this offer, then this next person might be interested to talk to me 'cause they'll have fomo.

And then if this person and I was working through those decisions all the time, I feel like in the end we mainly made the, um, the right decision. So the sale itself I think was what it was, but we could have got to be further ahead by the time it happened.

[00:18:01] Dmitri: Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So you've founded and sold a company.

 you know, we talked to a lot of startups who haven't done that. I'm curious, what advice do you have for other founders that you haven't already shared?

[00:18:13] Phil: I think first of all, decide whether you even want to sell your company one day or whether you think you want to spend the rest of your life working on it.

Because if you, if your answer is the second one you wanna spend the rest of your life working on it, don't go taking. Money from venture capital investors really think that people misunderstand that or, or underemphasize it or think that something will come up. That means they'll, they'll have a different choice later.

So really bake that into your whole plan of the type of investor you're going after. Um, or whether you even want an investor, whether you can start on your own or let's say that then let's assume that you do decide one day you want your company to be, to be bought. I think then you've got to start thinking about.

Who are the people that might buy you and what are the reasons? Are they gonna buy you because of a financial profile? Are they going to buy you? 'cause you have something of strategic value, whether that's technology or data or expertise or whatever it is. You gotta think about that and then try and get to know the people who might make the decision one day.

 Because it's very difficult if you suddenly say, oh, I've got six weeks to get people interested. You're not gonna suddenly be able to make personal relationships that that count in that final, phase. So you have to start to, to build it, build it later, and then just don't be for sale. I think that, it's.

Really a strange and complicated balance. but when you are trying to sell your company, they're not working on your timeline. It's not that when you raise money from an investor, they do lots of investments every year, and maybe it's a six week process or an eight week process, or a three month process.

They might, if you're selling in a company, they may never even thought they want to buy a company. So, you can't really knock on their door on a particular day and hope for it to work. You have to try and, Navigate something where you're open to the idea but you're not committed to the idea. It's kind of a complicated, um, balancing act.

yeah. And then just think about what you imagine your rest of your life is gonna look like after you sell. And who are you going, you know, what's it gonna be like working for company A or company B or company C? And, and that's, I, that's important too. There is a technical thing, which is more, a bit more boring, but, you know, startups are not always that organized.

 but you need to be organized because every contract, you know, every contractor that worked for you 10 years ago, if you didn't have an IP assignment in their agreement, that's gonna come up. If you have anything that is, Not complying with data laws. If you, are using an open source software and it's got the wrong license, all of this comes, can come back to bite you.

So one thing we were really good at is being extremely organized. We had all of that ready to go and anytime anyone asked us for it, it was, it was ready. And you need that to, to show that you are capable, you know that you're ready to be bought, that you're a mature company, that you know you've got what it, what it takes.

And that side is quite painful as opposed to strategic. But, I do recommend digging into it.

[00:21:02] Dmitri: Those sound like legitimate tips from somebody who's lived through it. They probably weren't easy to solve all along the way, but, definitely something that helps people keep the end in mind when they're, getting into those conversations and also preparing internally with services, licenses, processes inside the company so that.

You don't hit any hiccups there. So you're coming back out onto the scene now, Phil, I wanna find out what's next for you personally, but first I'm curious, and this is something we ask guests frequently, what music tech trends are you keeping an eye on now given the experience you've gone through?

And now that you have this maybe some levity from being finished with the, that past chapter you're coming back out. what's interesting and exciting for you?

[00:21:43] Phil: I find this quite a difficult question because. I, you know, you see a lot of startups. I think the whole point of a startup is that it's not right yet.

You see what I mean? Otherwise, it wouldn't be a startup. You know, I, I came to your, you know, to your event in November and I spoke to, I dunno, there were how many startups there were, but I probably spoke to 30 or 40 of them. And, um, you're like, I'm not sure that would work, is it? Or, we've seen that before, or, no one's gonna pay for this.

It's like, it's very difficult to get. To get over that. I think like with, um, startups and new ideas, you kind of just have to let them find their way and prove themselves, and it's not necessarily a, a good talent spotter. I in general, it's not a very original thing, but obviously everyone's thinking about ai.

But the thing that I think about AI is I really care about humans and human creativity, and I think that. That is something different to what can be produced by ai. This may be nowadays a niche point of view, but I just think about, you know, what do we do to make sure that human creativity is still an important part of people's lives in the coming years.

That's the thing that I think about. I recently had a, a conference where, I just like to think, does anyone ever think about, The people making the music and the people listening to the music. The music industry is fine, but it's not the point of music. People make music for expression or for community or you know, all these things.

I got you know, all my family members who are over the age of 60 have all joined choirs and they're all like having a great time and singing choirs. And I find that more exciting at the moment than thinking about the next big technology trend. 'cause it's about, about music and performing music and singing music.

So. that, and how that works in this new world is kind of what I'm thinking about.

[00:23:28] Dmitri: Yeah, that makes sense. you know, it was at NAMM this year in January, and I definitely saw a temperature shift or a barometer shift. I'm not sure what it was around AI and music, and there were a lot of integrations, whether with software or even hardware to show.

How AI is being used for human creativity, not replacing any of the songwriting process really. Maybe it's a brainstorming thing or maybe it's a smoothing or an efficiency, a workflow thing. You know, whether you use a drum machine that has samples that somebody else played in recorded, which has been around for a long time.

[00:24:06] Phil: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:07] Dmitri: Or synthesis that's creating sound right then or. An AI engine that's, you're chatting what sound you want, but then you're literally sequencing things and tweaking the sounds, lengthening, et cetera. It doesn't really change the process of writing the song that much.

[00:24:24] Phil: No, but what I, what I am, you know, you, me, you, you mentioned drum machines and, and synthesizers i's a lot of reading about technology and music.

Going back to. You know, the, the 19th century,

 to try and put that in perspective, and obviously you'll write that, songwriting is involved in all the things, but they've always created new genres of music, you know, without, you know, whether it's hiphop or, you know, techno, whatever it is. Even, you know, I was reading about the microphone, how without microphones you'd never have an artist like Billie Eilish because you had to be, as a singer, you had to fill the back of a concert hall, so you'd never be listening.

If you never have that sound on a, you know, a singer that always created something new, the thing that I am looking for is like, are we gonna get something new in terms of music outta this technological advance? Or are we just getting reproductions of other things? So I just looking, waiting with somebody to create something new and exciting that is surprising, that is novel, that is new in terms of the actual music, uh, in the way that did happen with other, um, technology innovations.

[00:25:28] Dmitri: Yeah, I think we'll see a lot more hybridization. Of genres and sounds and fields and places, you know, where things will be happening that were impossible to do without ai, you know, like language shifting for example. You know? Yeah.

[00:25:43] Phil: Things

like that

[00:25:43] Dmitri: or things like

that.

[00:25:43] Phil: Yeah,

[00:25:44] Dmitri: yeah. Things like that, that will lead, probably, probably will lead to or are, are probably already leading to genres.

We just haven't. Seen it settle out to find out what anybody actually wants to listen to at this point. So, yeah. fun diving into that. And I love the refreshing analog return to analog, return to the choir. Go back to the 19th century to see where creativity really lies is a, is a great response. I love it.

So we gotta wrap up, but first, Phil, what's next for you? We got your, some of your backstory here through the lens of. Being a founder and, and having your company acquired. And, a little bit of pulse checking on the future. But what about you personally? What's next?

[00:26:20] Phil: So, I honestly dunno the answer to that.

I can tell you what I have been doing, as I kind of said I would, you know, when I left, is I've been spending more time, I hope, been making music and I've just been writing a huge number of songs that are not going to change the world, over the last six months. And I found that it took me a long time to actually just recover from the, the drama and the, the hard work of a startup.

So what I do know for sure though is that it has to be something entrepreneurial, either starting a company or maybe even buying a company. And I'd love it to be on that theme of, human creativity. But I don't have a specific idea. Um, I'm waiting for that specific idea. I do know that with ideas, as I said before about startups, they don't have to be good.

You just have to start and make it better as you go. So I think I'm just, uh, not quite yet, got the energy to do that again, but, uh, it's not far off.

[00:27:13] Dmitri: Yeah. And that's why you're on the podcast. 'cause now you're gonna hear from a bunch of people who want to sell their company to you or maybe collaborate in some other way.

Yeah,

[00:27:20] Phil: why not? Why not?

[00:27:23] Dmitri: Amazing. Phil, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for being generous with your experience and your knowledge. I think it's gonna be a great help to our listeners, those who are thinking, should I sell my company someday? How would I sell my company? yeah, a little bit about, you know, how to think about whether investment or,

A lifestyle business is the right way to go, but it was, very, very kind of you to join us and share all that information. Thanks so much, Phil.

[00:27:44] Phil: Thank you.

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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.