Is there something that’s irritating you right now? In your personal life or professional? In this episode of Speaking of Startups, we sit down with Rafe Offer. 15 years ago, he was just a man who hated when people talked during gigs. In 2024, he’s the successful cofounder of Sofar Sounds, the business creating sacred spaces for new musicians to thrive.
“I just always wanted to do my own thing, and had loads of ideas,” he tells us. “But then I had one idea that I could actually go with, from trying to solve something that bothered me.”
In 2009, Offer launched Sofar Sounds with cofounders Dave Alexander and the brilliantly-named Rocky Start (yes, really). In music terms, it was a slow burner.
“I did it for a couple of years as a hobby, not thinking of it as a startup,” Offer admits, “We were just spending 10 hours a week and then 20 hours a week. We knew there was something going on when we did the fourth one and there was a line out the door.”
Today, Sofar Sounds is a global, venture-backed hit present in more than 400 cities and counting. It hosts nearly 1,000 live music gigs every month, providing an intimate setting for new artists (it was an early platform for Billie Eilish and Wolf Alice) to reach genuine music lovers who can put their phones down.
In this episode, Offer lets us into the green room to explain what it’s really like to scale a side hustle (dedicating 100% of your time, seven days a week is, he says, “a fantasy”) and to uncover an alternative path to profitability than the one sold on many business courses.
I went through business school and it was more of a formal ‘here’s how to build a startup’ training. They always used to say ‘you can’t do this’, ‘it won’t be scalable’. We broke a lot of rules in the early days.
Thanks to the founders’ determination, Sofar Sounds has grown organically; an antidote to the music industry’s Ticketmaster-tyranny. And Offer tells us how, in a business world where Gen Z reigns supreme, Sofar Sounds’ mission statement has chimed with young people.
But what happens when your dream of ‘making it big’ becomes reality? Expanding onto the world stage can water down that values-led approach to business. Offer also gives us lessons on the balancing act between raising money and living your company values.
I focus a lot on existential topics like meaning and purpose. When you’re hiring quickly, if you’ve been funded, you’re racing ahead. You can gloss over that. Make sure the people that you hire are just as excited about it as you are.
We hope you enjoy this episode of Speaking of Startups, and be sure to subscribe to ensure you always get the next available episode first.
This episode is hosted by Eloise Skinner, founder of two businesses herself, as well as a published author and contributor to multiple sites, including our own Startups.co.uk, as well as Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and Management Today. You can learn more about Eloise and her own journey at eloiseskinner.com.
