Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers is an American entrepreneur best known for being the founder and former president of CD Baby, an online CD store for independent musicians. A professional musiciansince 1987, Sivers started CD Baby by accident in 1997 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby went on to become the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth22 September 1969
CountryUnited States of America
When you make a business you're making a little world.
It's only a little difficult to say no. You've got to believe that the work you're doing is ultimately more useful to the world.
When you make a company, you make a utopia. It's where you design your perfect world.
I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn't even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.
Making a company is a great way to improve the world while improving yourself.
You're free to do anything you want with your company. It's more like art. You don't have to follow any norms. It's an expression of how you feel the world should be. When you make a company, that's your little place to make your own little utopia.
Everything I ever wanted to know I just ask a search engine and there's the answer. So the least I can do for my clients is share what I've learned.
Distributing the music is so easy it's moot. So now the delicate art of calling attention to your music means everything. Marketing is distribution.
I'm so into music that I just stop and listen, whenever there's music on. That's the problem with being a musician for so long. I can get lost in the bassline, fascinated with the arrangement, curious about the production. I can't shut it out.
There are plenty of millionaires who would pay millions to hang a Van Gogh painting on the wall, but hardly one that would have ever had the crazy nut over for dinner. I feel like the big companies are like that with musicians. They'll say, 'We love music! It's all about the music!' - but if a musician shows up at the door, they call security.
Never forget why you're really doing what you're doing.
If you want to be useful, you can always start now. It will be a humble prototype of your grand vision, but you’ll be in the game. Start by teaching someone this week. Starting small puts 100% of your energy into solving real problems for real people.
I'm not interested until I see their execution.
Programming languages are like girlfriends: The new one is better because *you* are better.