Danielle Newnham Podcast Dhiraj Mukherjee on The Early Days of Shazam
In today’s episode, I speak to Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of Shazam – the music recognition app which was started in London in 1999, and acquired by Apple in 2018 for a reported $400 million.
The story of Shazam is one of pure innovation, foresight, and a twenty plus year friendship. In 1999, Chris Barton dreamed of a seemingly impossible solution to ambient music recognition and created the team — including friend Dhiraj Mukherjee, classmate Philip Inghelbrecht, and engineer Avery Wang — to make it a reality. Shazam has now been downloaded over 1 billion times and sees more than twenty million Shazams a day.
I first met Dhiraj and Chris eight years ago when I interviewed the founders for my first book. Their story is so compelling that I wanted to bring them on to the podcast, as individuals, and learn more about each element of the business. So today, I am talking to Dhiraj about his background in India and traveling around the world as a child, meeting and starting a business with Chris Barton, the operational side of building Shazam in the early days from funding to how they physically got the music library together at a time when there were no smartphones, and also his role now as an investor and what he looks for in a founder.
Shazam is the ultimate startup story - one of grit, foresight, perseverance and friendship – and I think you’re going to really enjoy it.
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Let us know what you think of this episode and please rate, review and share - it means the world to me and helps others to find it too.
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Danielle on Twitter @daniellenewnham and Instagram: @daniellenewnham
Dhiraj on Twitter / website / Shazam
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This episode was hosted by me - Danielle Newnham, a recovering founder, author and writer who has been interviewing tech founders and innovators for ten years - and produced by Jolin Cheng.
Series 1 of this podcast is sponsored by Sensate – the device which can help to reduce stress and anxiety in less than ten minutes a day. To get an exclusive $25 off your first purchase, simply head to Sensate and insert my discount code POD.