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A pair of keynote speakers shared their journeys and provided perspective and advice on how to survive and thrive during the last day of Nexus Louisiana’s Baton Rouge Entrepreneurship Week on Thursday.
Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of Shazam, spoke about his approach to entrepreneurship and the lessons he has learned throughout his career. It was Mukherjee’s first time speaking in the U.S.
Apple acquired Shazam for $400 million in 2018. Since then, Mukherjee has invested in over 250 startups in areas such as AI and climate technology.
Mukherjee and two friends founded Shazam in 2000. Mukherjee also spoke about the downside of his journey with Shazam.
“If you have a business, you need a business model, and you need to make money,” he said. “We were scrambling to figure out what to do and how to make money [in the beginning]. We had been through our first venture out, which was $8.5 million. We spent it on building the database, building the technology and building the team to keep up with every song.”
The group worked to perfect the software before selling the technology to a rights monitoring company and kept the license to run a consumer business.
“We literally sold our crown jewel to a rights monitoring company just so we could keep the lights on,” he says.
Mukherjee says the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and the app store in 2008 helped Shazam reach global status. Shazam was one of the first apps created for the app store.
It took 10 years for Shazam to reach its first billion uses. The next billion came a year later, and the following billion took just two months.
“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” he says. “Transform yourself to transform your organization. It’s a learning journey.”
Felecia Hatcher, CEO of Black Ambition Prize, explored how self-discovery and stepping into one’s “zone of genius,” a reservoir of untapped potential that lies dormant within, can pave the way to success.
As CEO of Black Ambition Prize, Hatcher has invested in over 100 entrepreneurs who have collectively raised over $95 million in funding.
Black Ambition is a nonprofit initiative working to close the opportunity and wealth gap through entrepreneurship. The company invests capital and resources in high-growth startups founded by Black and Hispanic entrepreneurs.
Music mogul Pharrell Williams is the founder of Black Ambition.
“I want you to power up and get to a point where you never question who you are,” Hatcher says.
Hatcher says there are “seven zones,” a framework that revolutionizes your thoughts about success, purpose, and fulfillment.
The zones highlight the hidden patterns behind how people spend their time and energy while revealing the path to align their passions with values.
