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The Irish start-up that went on a 3,000km road trip to success*

Meet the Soundwave guys whose photo travelogue shows how sometimes you have to take the road less travelled – literally – to get stuff done. *(fingers crossed)

GETTING A START-UP on the road is a tough task at the best of times and – as we know – this is not the best of times.

That’s why we were interested to hear of the recent promotional trip a new Irish venture called Soundwave carried out to go down the road less travelled.

Rather than booking US domestic flights and a hotel to attend the music and tech conference South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, they decided to do it a little differently. Soundwave founders Brendan O’Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and Craig Watson rented an RV and drove from SXSW to San Francisco in a three-week road trip making important business connections along the way.

They put together a little photo travelogue to illustrate how it worked out:

This is Brendan on top of the 28-foot camper van which the business partners would share for three weeks – sounds like a disastrous plan, right?

Soundwave is a mobile app launching soon on Android and iOS. The aim is to make the task of finding new music simple and fun. The app tracks what music you listen to on your phone, making it easy for you share your music discoveries with friends and tune into the songs your friends are currently listening to. You can also draw a circle over any location to see what songs are playing in that area. They are giving people the chance to check out the beta version by signing up at the website getsoundwave.com.

Brendan originally got the idea when he saw a Swedish girl walk into a tree because she was so engrossed in the song she was listening to. He wondered how he could find out what song had her so entranced that she literally lost track of where she was walking.

In preparation for the trip to SXSW, all Irish film, music and tech attendees were invited to a pre-SXSW meet-up (see pic below) in the Soundwave offices, hosted by Enterprise Ireland and Music From Ireland.

When attending such a large conference in a foreign country, there is safety in numbers and it was impressive to see the array of talent showcasing Ireland at SXSW. The Delorentos (now featured on the Soundwave app) attended the event and went on to win Best Album at the Meteor Choice Music Awards before going to SXSW.

On 5 March, Soundwave flew to Austin with the Enterprise Ireland SXSW delegation. SXSW is the dream for a music start-up – it is the place where you literally run into the key movers and shakers in the tech scene, from Robert Scoble of RackSpace to the founders of FourSquare and SoundCloud.

It is the equivalent of putting the top tech influencers, founders, reporters and investors into Temple Bar, adding inspirational tech talks, tacos, live music and simply letting the conversations happen.

Thanks to Enterprise Ireland, Soundwave’s Brendan O’Driscoll met with Jobs Minister Richard Bruton to discuss Irish tech enterprise. Afterwards, Soundwave pitched to a panel of judges including SVP of NASDAQ Bob McCooey and Jeff Ragovin, co-founder of Buddy Media during the Ireland@SXSW Demo Day.

Overall, the connections made at SXSW were immeasurable with many follow-up meetings scheduled in San Francisco once Soundwave road-tripped across the US. Here they are making their pitch:

To make things even more exiting in Austin, Texas, the Soundwave team asked a local dance crew to perform a dance off with no audible music, just with headphones on.

Curious spectators could only find out what songs they were dancing to by checking out the #SXDancingGuy Twitter feed or by downloading the app.

An Austin city street-cleaner even joined in on the fun and challenged the Soundwave dancers to a dance-off!

via GetSoundwave/Youtube

After a successful week at SXSW, Soundwave hit the road – and the road hit back. Cici, the beloved RV, broke down near El Paso en route to Las Vegas. After a few delays, she was back up and running – onward to Las Vegas!

Vegas was all work and lots of fun – the Soundwave Team met with Zappos.com, an innovative online shoe and apparel shop setting up a permanent headquarters in Vegas. Zappos are leading the charge with an ambitious project to build one of the leading technology hubs in the middle of the desert in conjunction with the VegasTechFund. They happily hosted Soundwave in their offices for the day and pointed them in the direction of a fun night out on the town…

In total, Soundwave drove over 1,862 miles, or 3,000 kilometers to San Francisco. The journey took four days to complete, with Brendan, Aidan and Craig driving through the night, sleeping in shifts. John Walsh from @VideoScamp, also joined Soundwave, recording video and photos along the way.

The Soundwave Team finally arrived in San Francisco on Paddy’s Day to a hero’s welcome – San Francisco even turned the fountains green to celebrate!

In San Francisco, Soundwave divided and conquered – with Aidan forging relationships with big names in music tech, Rdio and Spotify; Craig reaching out to co-working spaces and local startups Gablit, RocketSpace and General Assembly; and Brendan pitching to high-powered US investors on Sand Hill Road.

Then, Soundwave joined forces again to visit the offices of Banjo, one of the hottest social apps in the US. Damien Patton, founder of Banjo, has been a great supporter of the Soundwave app and was happy to host Soundwave in his Redwood City offices.

All in all, it was a very successful trip for Soundwave-although Brendan, Aidan and Craig have vowed to never set foot in an RV again.

Soundwave have set their sights on finding office space in San Francisco as they expand into the US marketplace, but for now they are back home safe and sound in Dublin. For more updates on Soundwave’s progress visit their website or Tumblr blog.

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    Mute Billy Nomates
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    Apr 7th 2013, 12:17 PM

    Sound lads

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    Mute Eimear McCormack
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    Apr 7th 2013, 12:50 PM

    Fantastic work lads! Well done & the best of luck with your start-up. :)

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    Mute Mick Madden
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    Apr 7th 2013, 12:23 PM

    Sounds like a good jolly !!!

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    Mute Patrick Gormley
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    Apr 7th 2013, 12:59 PM

    Exactly , that is what it was, a jolly. Total waste of thier time. Daft idea, who wants to know what someone else is listening to whilst out walking.Back to the drawing board.

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    Mute Phill
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    Apr 7th 2013, 1:07 PM

    Ridiculous attitude Patrick. The guys should be commended for innovation and the gumption to start a new business.
    With a plug-in for Spotify and links to other major music players this could work – lot of competitors in this space at the moment however.

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    Mute Patrick Gormley
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    Apr 7th 2013, 1:19 PM

    Sorry Phill, it’s not an attitude , just an observation, based on the text and photos of the article.

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    Mute Tom McCarthy
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    Apr 7th 2013, 1:40 PM

    Nothing better than a bit of begrudgery – we Irish seem to deal it out at the first opportunity. Delighted to see Aidan, who I worked with briefly an age ago, and the rest of the lads, on the cusp of greatness!

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    Mute Phill
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    Apr 7th 2013, 2:17 PM

    Patrick you were immediately knocking their idea with the “well I wouldn’t want that so who else would” mentality.
    One thing you’ll find about successful entrepreneurs is that they learn not to listen to the naysayers, the begrudgers, and the people who tell them they’re wasting their time. It’s just a shame that people still feel the need to belittle others for innovation.

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    Mute Patrick Gormley
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    Apr 7th 2013, 3:10 PM

    Phill & Tom, I never said it was a bad idea, just daft . I’ ve just asked my children ( 18, 16 ,12) what they thought of the ” app ” and in unison agreeded with my observation. I do not expect everybody or even the majority of people to agree with me ,but let me have my opinion without prejudice . I have no personal connection with these guys unlike some.

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    Mute Shane King
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    Apr 7th 2013, 6:43 PM

    Last week a English teenager sold a app that he designed when was 15 and worked on for two years to yahoo for 30million dollars,it was a simple app that collected bits of news im sure a few people told him it was a waste if time.

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    Mute Iam D Best
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    Apr 7th 2013, 8:27 PM

    yea well done and all that of course, but i personally dont see whats innovative with it. the net and the machines connected to it are becoming swamped and clogged with tonnes of these apps all trying to offer one little different feature over the other. that difference is not a big step either. do i really want to know how many are listening to the same song as me within a circle??? what next? an app that tells you who used the public toilet before you? well that might be helpful to know actually. some of these apps are a WASTE OF TIME! well done for trying but yes back to the drawing board.

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    Mute Graham Mace
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    Apr 7th 2013, 9:20 PM

    At least the guys had a vision and gave it their best shot, sorry you weren’t inspired to see anything positive in that, Patrick. By the way, what’s your brilliant idea for a bit of success?? A new start up begrudgery app??? LOL

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    Mute Patrick Gormley
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    Apr 7th 2013, 11:48 PM

    My idea for a new app would be something that would stop every budding would be fantasist thinking that everything they dream up is going to explode upon the market place and make them multi millionaires overnight. I think I’ ll call it the ” dream app” ….
    Come on , read the article and ask yourself, would you pay money for this app ? I don’t think so.
    Ask some of your friends the same question.. As the chap above states, there are thousands of apps coming on the market each and every week with basically similar ideas.They can’t all succeed . That was just my point.The market for these type of apps is saturated . Nothing new at all. That is why I said they were wasting thier time. My uncle Michael invented an ash tray for motorbikes, never took off. Great idea. But daft…

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    Mute liam byrne
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    Apr 7th 2013, 4:10 PM

    Well done lads. Great innovation from ye and lots of bottle. Ye have the shtuff to do it..

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    Mute Marc Anthony Power
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    Apr 7th 2013, 8:03 PM

    It’s always lovely to see people from our lovely Island putting their imagination to use and striking out on their own. …. if we had more people like these guys we could see some big changes in our Country over time. …. you make us proud guys. . Best of luck

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    Mute Brendan O'Driscoll
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    Apr 8th 2013, 10:23 AM

    Hey guys, Brendan here, one of the Soundwave founders. Thought it would be worthwhile sharing a little more info on the actual product features. Theres a quick product walkthrough here too: http://bit.ly/YMboCy.

    So the primary purpose of the app is to allow you and your friends see what each other are listening to. We wanted to be able to see what our friends were listening to and share new music that we discovered with them so we built Soundwave (a free app). Once you discover a new song you can instantly look at the youtube video, stream it or purchase it from the app. We found it tough to figure out what new music to listen to – so checking whats out there helped us!

    We have some really cool Irish bands and athletes using the app too – so their fans can download the app and see what these musicians and players listen to and are inspired by. We’re also working on a really cool groups function. Imagine you go to Electric Picnic – you could join an Electric Picnic group with 50,000 other people and see what music those “likeminded” people listen to – six months down the line after the festival – what new music are these people finding and listening to now.

    The location feature came about as a result of us seeing huge demand (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvHRUY0tBcs) for people wanting to know what songs might be trending in different areas. We thought it would be cool if you were into hip-hop to see what the latest trending songs were coming from Brooklyn NY or if you were a student going to the library – what everyone else in the library is listening to.

    If anyone has any more questions or would like early access to the beta to test it out – feel free to drop me a mail at brendan@soundwave.me.

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    Mute Eric Moylan
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    Apr 8th 2013, 2:23 PM

    Nice work Dricco, glad to hear everything is going well!

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    Mute Ciarán Byrne
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    Apr 8th 2013, 9:53 PM

    Sounds like a great idea to me. Best of luck with it.

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    Mute Celly O'Brien
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    Apr 9th 2013, 5:52 AM

    I have met and known at least two internet millionaires whos ideas were thought ‘daft’ at the time they started out. one sold his business for 22million sterling the other is still in running his internet business. you need to have foresight, determination and a drive to never ever give up on your idea. They may have modified and developed their businesses greatly from the time they initially started BUT they never gave up..
    best of luck to you guys keep listening to all the feedback ok some of them think you will suck…… thats their opinion Hurlers on the Ditch will always be there but the positive feedback will bring you new ideas, its helping me develop my own business….

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    Mute Sutt Steve
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    Apr 8th 2013, 7:49 AM

    I too hope they fail.

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