TuneIn Launches

Adam Hertz and his team launched TuneIn today, a highly visual media dashboard for Twitter. True seed funded Adam and his experienced team just a few short months ago, and we’ve been impressed with his energy and agility. Congrats Adam on such a great launch. The product looks fantastic and is incredibly innovative.

One of the best indicators of entrepreneurial success is the ability to launch. Getting a product out the door is hard. It takes an entire team of people to push product quality and experience to new heights and (as always) leave a few precious things on the table. These decisions are painful, and they pit a team’s experiences and agendas against one another. Good teams get through this and become stronger. Weaker teams sometimes don’t get through this process at all. Many teams fail to ever get that product out the door. Launch is usually full of risk and pain, but it is one of the first crucibles that a team goes through on a path to building a company.

In addition to the team, there is the customer, and great entrepreneurs realize the importance of customer data. Before launch you’re an idea, maybe even a good one. After launch, you’re live, in market. You’ve jumped into the raging river (or quiet tributary) of a market. No excuses, you’re out there. Thousands are hammering away at the product, using it in unforeseen ways and never stopping.

When you’re live, the customer controls the product, and this is a good thing. Once launch occurs, you get feedback, usage data, and opinions. Things break, fail, and fail to impress. You react. Re-build. Re-group. Sometimes even accelerate. Post-launch, the best teams are in a conversation with their customers. They listen, think, respond.

Launch is cathartic because you go from being an idea to being a business. The conversation is alive and you’re engaged. It’s transformational because it means you don’t have time to do what you think is important, you need to do what the customers tell you is important. Good teams coalesce around this mission and build great businesses.

We’re incredibly impressed with Adam Hertz and his team for very quickly launching TuneIn. In the time that many companies take to find office space, Adam and his talented group built and released a product to the world. Kudos to you Adam, for you clearly recognize that how your customers use your product is what counts. Congrats on transitioning today from an idea to an actual company.

Another sign of a great entrepreneur is building value from day one. Adam quickly amassed superb talent through an incredibly valuable syndicate.

We’re excited to be part of the TuneIn team, and thank you Adam for your faith and confidence in True.