From Bootstrapping to Partnering With Sony — Seth Miller, Rapchat

Our guest today is Seth Miller, Founder and CEO at Rapchat. Seth is on a mission to democratize music creation with Rapchat’s mobile app. Rapchat takes the friction out of making music, and has helped millions of artists unleash their creativity.

Seth earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis on management information systems, from Ohio University. Before founding Rapchat, Seth worked as a consultant for Adidas, and an IT Systems Engineer.

On the podcast we talk with Seth about bootstrapping his way to signs of product market fit, raising money from strategic partners like Sony Music, and what it’s like to have Facebook completely rip off your app.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Finding the right niche for your app
• Bootstrapping and early funding
• Using the right marketing channels for your app
• Filtering out the wrong users for your app's paid features
• How to transition your app from free to paid

Links & Resources

• Sony
• Nico Wittenborn
• Twitter
• Adjacent
• Complex

Seth Miller’s Links

• Follow Seth on Twitter
• Rapchat

Follow us on Twitter:

• David Barnard
• Jacob Eiting
• RevenueCat
• Sub Club

Episode Transcript

00:00:00 Seth:

We would be dead for sure if I didn’t learn how to code. It’s an invaluable skill that I’ll have in this organization and future organizations. It also just helps me think about things. It’s a really great way to look at the world sometimes.

00:00:31 David:

Hello, I’m your host, David Bernard. And with me as always, RevenueCat CEO, Jacob Eiting. 

Our guest today is Seth Miller, founder and CEO at Rapchat. Seth is on a mission to democratize music creation with Rapchat’s mobile app. It takes the friction out of making music, and has helped millions of artists unleash their creativity on the podcast.

We talk with Seth about bootstrapping his way to signs of product market fit. Raising money from strategic partners like Sony, and what it’s like to have Facebook completely rip off your app.

Hey Seth, welcome to the podcast!

00:01:06 Seth:

How’s it going? Thanks for having me.

00:01:07 David:

It’s been a long time coming. You and I first chatted way back in 2019. You were the first office hour call I ever took at RevenueCat.

00:01:18 Seth:

Oh, wow. 

00:01:19 David:

Yeah, going way back in my RevenueCat days. 

00:01:22 Jacob:

It tells you how bad of a CEO I am that we’ve never actually spoken on the phone in those two years.

00:01:30 Seth:

Or how good David was!

00:01:31 Jacob:

Yeah.

00:01:32 Seth:

I was sold after one call. I’m like, all right, dude, where do I sign up? How do I get this going? 

00:01:37 Jacob:

We have a lot of cross connections, because you’re an Adjacent portfolio. Nico is a co-investor. We’re also both Ohio-based. So, yeah, lots of cover today.

00:01:54 Seth:

We got to hang out. 

00:01:55 Jacob:

We should. It’s beautiful in Ohio today, but I’m not going to make an Ohio podcast.

But, maybe kickoff and tell us, what is Rapchat?

00:02:07 Seth:

Yeah, absolutely. So, Rapchat is the easiest way to make music on your phone. We have an iOS and Android app. You really just like tap in, and open the app. We have hundreds and thousands of free beats on the app. So, you just pick a beat, you can record over it, and then you can share that anywhere.

We have people making full-length studio-quality songs from their phone and sharing it to Instagram and SoundCloud. And then also on the platform, we have a social layer as well. Which is really cool. Pretty much a recording studio in your pocket, with a community, with a social layer.

Similar to Visco, or Instagram for music. Our mission is really to democratize music by providing access and tools to the next billion music creators.

00:03:01 Jacob:

How did you get on this idea?

00:03:05 Seth:

Well, like just scratching my own itch in the early days. Almost eight years ago when I was in college, apps were really starting to become a thing, and same with social networks and you-do-see platforms that let you create content and share it. You know, the golden era of Vine, Snap, all of that. But there was nothing for music.

I also had a hobby of freestyling with my friends. So, we’d get together, throw on beats, and rap, and some people would sing and just create all sorts of stuff. It was something that I noticed that was like, yeah, this should exist on your phone. I should be able to do this with my high school buddies that are on a different campus that I used to do it with.

That was really it, just scratching my own itch. Then over time, I think we’ve really come to realize that there’s just this massive opportunity to do this at scale for those that really want to make music and take it seriously.

So, I’ve kind of outgrown my own use case a little bit, even though we have people that come and have fun, but really we’re focused on providing tools for the everyday artist that historically has been kind of gatekeeped out of participating in music. So, we try and give them everything we can in their pocket, and still feels like we’re only getting started. 

00:04:26 Jacob:

It’s not as easy to pirate logic these days I imagine, like it used to be.

00:04:31 Seth:

Yeah. Right.

00:04:32 David:

What did those early days look like? Did you learn to code? Did you have a coding background? What did those early days look like, and when did you get the app out? 

00:04:43 Seth:

Yeah, I mean, pure chaos and it’s not too much different today, you know, it’s just a little more organized. yeah, the first version of the iOS app was June, 2014. I think it was June 7th and that was really. I wouldn’t even pass as an alpha version think especially with how good some of the test flights are, but, you know, it was very basic.

It was, you could open the app record one track over like 10 predefined beats that had to come with the app store bundle, like would even have server side, like beats, and. Like, we just wanted to test that people would do it. And you know, of course the first couple of months, is just getting friends off Facebook and family to download it.

But then, I started to notice like, you know, a little bit of ...