Before I get into it…yesterday Spotify ($SPOT) filed for an IPO. I love Spotify. The product was kind of overnight success but for the founders and the Company, the road to this IPO was long and brutal. It was fun to see the founders and employees celebrating the company and the IPO on Twitter.
It was especially nice to see founding team member Magnus Hult use $SPOT for Spotify because at Stocktwits, Soren and I created/invented the $ (Cashtag) for stock talk back in 2007. The $SPOT stream was created years ago on Stocktwits knowing the IPO would happen one day (now over 4,300 subscribers and likely 20,000 by IPO day).
So @spotify is filing for an IPO with the $SPOT ticker symbol. In the very first Spotify office, the tech department had two unofficial mascots, Spot and Iffy, posted on the door. Both were pencil drawings, crudely drawn by yours truly.
— Magnus Hult (@hult) February 28, 2018
Congratulations team $SPOT.
Now to the ‘overnight success’ story of this blog post – RING and Jamie Siminoff.
A couple of days ago Amazon bought Ring. I had many friends that had invested early and along the way including Joanne Wilson, to Adam at True Ventures, Latif at Virgin and Greg at Upfront. I just saw each of them in Los Angeles last month at Upfront and we were talking about how fast the company was growing. One of Social Leverage’s portfolio companies Kustomer helps them manage the customer experience.
The backstory to RING is incredible. Fred Wilson has a must read blog post that gives it the gory details and context it needs.
Here is Jamie with an ‘Open Letter to Shark Tank‘ back in 2015 that thanks them even though the sharks did not invest.
Now Amazon, the poster child Company of the internet era for ‘there is no such thing as an overnight success’ has acquired them. This is a great acquisition for Amazon and to break it down I thought Semil did a great job with this post…so read it.
As always…long Amazon.