FoxyTunes At TIIC Event
Two days ago I attended the TIIC – IsraelNetSphere event hosted by the the. co.Ils. Amongst the speakers were my good friends Alex and Vitaly Sirota, founders of FoxyTunes. The two spoke about how the Company came about, what led to their success, and what the future holds for FoxyTunes.
Alex said that the idea came to him in 2004 when he realized that much of his time was spent browsing on FireFox and listening to music. Suddenly the concept hit him: Why not create a music dashboard on the browser?
In 2005 due to some extensive blog coverage and a growing number of users, the two founded FoxyTunes. Alex said that the basic concept behind FoxyTunes was to create connections between the music on the desktop and the browser. The two recognized that there’s much demand for Web players and not only desktop players where in one click you can control the player.
The brothers said that VC’s weren’t willing to invest in them. Vitaly mentioned that the usual answer they received was: “Not for VC’s”. Finally the two received their seed money from Yossi Vardi (Founding investor of ICQ) who believed in the idea.
When asked about the Yahoo acquisition and how the story started, Alex said that Yahoo was the one who approached them: “FoxyTunes wasn’t making a lot of money, but what yahoo gained was 1) Technology 2) Traffic and 3) A skilled staff to become a part of Yahoo Music.”
When asked about the marketing initiatives of the Company, Alex mentioned that they had a blog, lots of connections in the blogosphere, and word of mouth definitely also played an integral part in the growth process. The brothers also mentioned that they had a great connection with Mozilla due to Mozilla’s recognition of the added value that FoxyTunes was providing its users. Therefore Mozilla happily promoted them. In general, the two said that their basic approach to business was: “Work with everyone and everyone will work with you.”
When asked about what they had that made them successful, Vitaly answered that 1) They had a great staff which is extremely important and 2) They had great investors 3) They were very careful regarding QA.
What about mistakes they made along the way? Vitaly said that one mistake was to try to create a bigger and more complicated product: “Users who come to a complicated place, don’t have the patience and leave.” Simplicity is key.
When asked about the advantages or disadvantages of leading a company with your brother the two said that they argued like any other two partners but the advantage was that they always found a way to work things out.
And what about the future of FoxyTunes? The two said that the Company became a part of Yahoo Music now. Alex is continuing with Yahoo and Vitaly will continue to seek out other interesting initiatives.
All in all, a great session with FoxyTunes which only emphasized their skill, talent, and humbleness even further. I wish them both much luck in their upcoming endeavors.
Some pictures from the event:
Life after exit….Vitaly from FoxyTunes (Thanks for letting me take these pics Vitaly! 
)
Alex from FoxyTunes and Ron from Typemock
Yaniv Golan from Yedda and Niv Calderon from WiserCodes
