There's less clutter in the beverage category than in the music category. A lot less clutter.
I thought I was going to be a rapper as a kid and used to hop the train down to Jazzy Jeff's studio for, like, six months straight waiting outside of the studio for the big break, and one day we got in the studio and played our demo for Will and Jeff and quickly learned that we weren't that good.
What I like about Bre.ad is the simplicity of it. When you can explain it to people, like 'five-second billboards in front of a link shortener,' it makes a lot of sense.
GaGa is a digital baby - that's how they communicate. There cant be any layers between the artists and their fans.
I'm a very commonsense guy - I just look at the viability of the idea, if I feel the team has the ability to execute the idea. I also look at the investment syndicate, the size of the market, and then a lot of gut married on top of it.
It's more important to have the one million diehard fans than to have 54 million people who aren't necessarily fans, or they might have liked one thing you said or one video.
When I first got pitched on Uber, I thought it was the dumbest idea ever.
The problem with when you look at eBay is that you can put a pair of Jordans next to a frying pan. It's an altogether different experience compared to having some editorial around it and well-curated experience.
With the 'Born This Way' album, generally we said, how do we find strategic partners that can help us with our vision? Part of that is about putting the music in places people wouldn't normally put music, like with Google and with Gilt.
When we're looking at strategic partners, it may be that they're larger partners or big corporations or start-ups. But, when you look at Gilt and places like Amazon and Starbucks, they're all places where it's a lot of foot traffic or digital traffic.
I was Jazzy Jeff's assistant.
I came up with Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Those guys, they took me under their wing at an early age.
I had this little rap group, and we were called '2 Too Many'... We used to hang out in front of Jazzy Jeff's record studio every day.
I think, as an industry, we should be supportive of a broad subscription model and not do anything to jeopardize the potential health of the music business - because we're not out of the woods yet.
Music is one of those businesses in which, if you're talented and hustle hard enough, you can make it - specifically as an entrepreneur. If you look as far back as Berry Gordy, Russell Simmons, Andre Harrell, L.A. Reid, and Sean 'Diddy' Combs, there's a whole lineage of successful black entrepreneurs who have built their own companies from scratch.
Being born in the adolescent years of hip hop helped us learn about flux. And when you're in an industry that is constantly growing, changing, maturing... you get a chance to try different things out and a chance to fail.
I was brought onboard to strengthen the bridge between Spotify and the music community.
People are experimenting with streaming, with subscription services, whether it's a Spotify or a Pandora or a Rdio.
You're basically competing with the same exact product. Coke and Pepsi are at least in different cans. Lyft and Uber drivers are just swapping out the mustache for the U on the dashboard, depending on which one they're getting the call on.
I believe in outgrowing a mentor and getting a new one, and I think that you can never be too old to be schooled by your mentor.
