Founder@ Interview
Interview with David Tshulak
“Build low-cost experiments In the early days, no doubt you want to preserve cash – especially before you’ve even validated your business.” – David Tshulak
Today we feature David Tshulak, the founder at WeJam. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
After graduating first time round with a music degree, I spent the next 9 years in the TV industry – mostly inventing and creating new show ideas. This was followed by an MBA at London Business School and a short stint in Strategy Consulting.
Now I’m the founder of WeJam – the world’s first and only immersive rockstar experience. It’s a tech-enabled group activity that takes place in a music studio, letting you start your own band, even if you’ve never picked up an instrument before.
Often described as a cross between Guitar Hero and Karaoke, each session is led by a professional musician and by the end of it, players will have learned to perform one of their favourite songs. Our doors are open to everyone and we attract a whole range of groups – from families with young children to corporates who come for team building and social outings.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
A few years back I started to notice more and more ‘competitive socialising’ ventures springing up all over the capital. From crazy golf bars to escape rooms and even axe throwing venues – something exciting was happening and I wanted to be a part of it. As a lifelong musician I started to wonder how you might combine music with this new form of interactive entertainment.
After a three-month research trip to Tokyo, and much experimenting, the concept of WeJam was born!
Although it’s a cliché, I was that kid in the school playground that always had a scheme on the go! I started off selling sweets, then progressed to more expensive items such as mobile phones. Through university, I ran my own music agency, representing bands to play at private functions. Although I then spent most of my career working for big companies, I always knew one day I’d start my own thing – I was just waiting for that big idea.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
WeJam is the world’s first and only immersive rockstar experience. It’s a tech-enabled group activity that takes place in a music studio, letting you start your own band, even if you’ve never picked up an instrument before. Often described as a cross between Guitar Hero and Karaoke, each session is led by a professional musician, and by the end of it, players will have learned to perform one of their favourite songs.
Our doors are open to everyone and we attract a whole range of groups – from families with young children to corporates who come for team building and social outings.
We are based in London, UK
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
I think seeing my dad and father-in-law play the drums and keytar respectively was a great moment. It was then we realised that not only could we get anybody to play the right notes at the right time, they were also having a lot of fun in the process.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
Without wanting to sound like a broken record, I’ll refrain from mentioning Covid. Asides from that, we’ve definitely had some interesting technical challenges along the way. Just when we thought we’d cracked it, we’d start work on a new song and discover a new musical quirk that we hadn’t built our system to handle.
For example, a song that changes time signature halfway through. These things are incredibly rare in popular music and the easy thing would have been to simply not bother with that song – after all there are thousands of other great tunes out there!
But these problems excite us and luckily I have a great team, with some technical people far smarter than I am who have helped to solve such issues.
It’s not enough to have a cool idea!
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t do it alone.
For many reasons, it can be extremely hard to launch a business alone. Firstly there are the sheer amount of tasks that need doing. Secondly, you can usually make better decisions if there’s somebody to discuss them with first. Thirdly, you’ll want somebody to share both your successes and struggles with.
This isn’t to say you need a co-founder or equity partner, although there are sometimes good reasons to do so. You can also deal with the above issues by building a team and finding advisors
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
Trello, Cliq, G-Suite
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
It’s not enough to have a cool idea!
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
Featuring on BBC was pretty cool!
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
Right now, we are focusing on three main areas of growth. Firstly, we are rolling out the original concept both nationally and internationally. Our aim is to be in 100 locations worldwide by 2025. Secondly, we are launching a B2B arm – partnering with major companies across the leisure, cultural, and entertainment industries to co-create permanent installations, pop-ups, brand activations and much more.
Thirdly, we have started work on an educational version of our product that can be used in schools. Based on early feedback from teachers and pupils we are excited by the huge potential to disrupt classroom music learning.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
Build low-cost experiments
In the early days, no doubt you want to preserve cash – especially before you’ve even validated your business. I’m a big believer in carrying out low or no-cost experiments to test your ideas with potential customers and gain actionable feedback. There are many good books and resources on building your MVP, ‘The Lean Start-up’ being a classic.
In terms of practical advice, I’d say don’t rush into building a fancy high-tech prototype when a lo-fi version might give you the same insights. At WeJam for example, we knew we wanted to build an app that would show musicians where they are in the song as they play. Instead of diving right into a custom build we used PowerPoint to display the music as separate slides, then simply had one of the team move from one page to the next in time to the music.
This solution was much faster (and cheaper) than coding something from scratch and also showed us that we needed to rethink our approach. Imagine finding out your approach is wrong after spending months and lots of money on something?
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and WeJam”
To learn more about WeJam Visit http://wejam.studio
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