Taylor Swift is a startup guru. Here's what founders can learn from her.
Taylor Swift is and has always been a startup. A hyper-growth one in recent years. But sheâs always embodied the scrappiness, boldness, and ambition of a startup. And I think there are things we can learn from her.
I like her music, but I wouldnât say Iâm a die-hard Swiftie (Iâll let you know if the Eras Tour this summer will convert me). Iâve listened to her since I was probably 12, but admittedly, Iâve learned a lot I had no idea about while researching this story. This isnât an analysis of Taylor as a person but of Taylor as a business. If youâre here for the private jet memes, ex-files, or environmental and ethical concerns, this ainât it. The same way product analysis doesnât cover terms and conditions, we wonât worry about her personal life here.
Now, letâs talk money.
Taylor by the Numbers
As of 2024, Taylor Swift's discography includes 10 original studio albums, 4 re-recorded studio albums, 5 EPs (extended plays), and 4 live albums. Swift has set a record as the solo artist with the most cumulative weeksâ69 in totalâat number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, which makes Taylor Swift to music what HubSpot is to B2B SaaS: everyone knows her, she has multiple products, and theyâre making a boatload of money.
As of this year, Tay-Tay has joined the three-comma club, with a net worth of $1.1B, making her one of the world's highest-paid celebrities and one of the richest female singers.
If we see her as a startup, that means sheâs reached unicorn statusâand not just in valuation.
How Taylor Swift operates like a startup
She keeps growing (fast!)
This is one of the most fundamental ways to understand why Taylor is a startup and not a regular company.
Paul Graham states, âa startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, take venture funding, or have some sort of âexit.â The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.â
Imagine you were a VC and saw these growth numbers from a startup:
- 2006-2010: 500%
- 2010-2014, 200%
- 2014-2018: 77.78%
- 2018-2024: 212.5%.
If that was one of your portfolio companies, you'd brag about it on Twitter for days (else you're not a VC).
Sheâs always shipping (and re-shipping)
Except for her brief Disappearance Era, weâve seen her churn out albums like clockwork (products), on top of tours and documentaries (marketing). Sheâs released at least one album every year since 2019 (maybe she should be using ShipLog). Any startup shipping a new (big) product every year would be hyperproductive.
She gets the whole redo-and-relaunch game, too. And it works. Itâs a smart move that pumps up the value and keeps her fans coming back for more. She knows product is only half the work; you also need product marketingâtalking about your product and its story. Her recent documentary, The Eras Tour movie, is a masterclass in distribution and maximizing the value of your content.
Itâs the same playbook Iâve seen every single startup use. Got a bunch of high-quality content? Use all of the opportunities you can to mix and remix it for different audiences and campaigns. This is basically a product demo: Even if you canât go to a concert, you can âget it.â
Sheâs not afraid to pivot
A big part of her success is her willingness to experiment. She started as a country singer, moved into pop, and later started experimenting with indie folk, dance/electronic, and more recently synth-pop.
Just like a startup, she adapted to the macro environment (like releasing mellow, nostalgic albums during the pandemic), and knew damn well she needed to appeal to the masses to build the empire she has. Which brings me to the next point.
She knows her market well
Or rather, knows market size doesnât matter as much when you plan to expand it.
A few months ago I came across this comparison between Taylor and Uber.
2003 was a pivotal year for Taylor. Itâs when RCA Records gave her a development deal (which prevented her from seeking opportunities with other labels and provided modest support). You could think of it as a very small pre-seed check from a very skeptical investor. This is where RCA made the mistake of thinking there wasnât a big enough market for a teenage country singer.
Yet Taylor ditched RCA a year later due to âa lack of careâ on their part and went on to release her first album in October 2006. Thatâs when everything changed for her. The eponymous album peaked at #5 on the US Billboard 200, where it spent 157 weeksâthe longest stay on the chart by any release in the US in the 2000s decade.
Itâs easy to dismiss startups when they operate in niches (i.e. the Nashville country music open mic nights), but Uber started as a black cab service for SF tech execs. Great products expand markets.
She keeps her team lean
Itâs hard to know exactly how many people are on Taylorâs permanent payroll, but the estimates are much lower than youâd think. Instead, she contracts a lot through agencies on a per-project basis.
The small tight knitted crew that manages her career is called 13 Management and has somewhere between 10-20 employees. Her mom and brother are full-time employees, while her dad is a contractor (which probably doesnât make Christmas dinner any easier). She also employs a full-time general counsel, tour manager, PA, PR manager, and a few security people. Backup singers are salaried, but dancers are contracted. Other than that, everyone else is a contractor (graphic artists, photographers, drivers, stylists, etc).
This might not be completely on par with how startups have been operating in recent years, but itâs how they shouldâve been. While Taylor makes billions with <50 people, some 2020s startups had 100+ FTEs before product-market-fit. Keeping her team small(ish) lets her move fast and scale up for projects without the overhead that bogs down many large organizations. Whether it's for a world tour or a single photo shoot, she brings in specialized talent only when necessary. It's a lean, mean, music-making approach. Weâre big fans of it at Command AI.
Sheâs the queen of unhinged marketing
No one does Easter Eggs like she does. Blondie recently announced the release of her new album WHILE accepting her 13th Grammy. 13th is an important detail. On top of being her birthday, sheâs used 13 as a leitmotif in so much of her work, including things like "The Lucky One" the 13th track on her album Red, which has a 13-second intro and the word "lucky" is said 13 times in the song.
I could probably spend hours going through all the hints sheâs dropped over time (many of them being carefully planned years in advance). Itâs insanely impressive to watch the fanbase sheâs built and how involved they are in solving the puzzles she creates for them.
I laid the groundwork and then, just like clockwork.
The dominoes cascaded in a line.
Sheâs been pretty open about her passion for it, too. "When I was 15 and putting together my first album, [...] I decided to encode the lyrics with hidden messages using capital letters. That's how it started, and my fans and I have since descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs. I think the best messages are cryptic ones. Easter eggs can be left on clothing or jewelry. This is one of my favorite ways to do this because you wear something that foreshadows something else, and people don't usually find out this one immediately, but they know you're probably sending a message. They'll figure it out in time. Lots of examples of this exist through the history of my career."
This is such an underrated tactic more startups should use. Remember Slackâs cheeky release notes?
Sheâs hyper-focused
Instead of spreading herself too thin, Taylor's sticking to what she knows best. Sure, she's got the kind of dough that could let her dive into everything from launching beauty brands (*cough* like every other celebrity out there *cough*) to selling booze. But sheâs not about that at all. Taylorâs all in on growing her brand the organic way, right where she shines brightest. Why? Because doubling down on what youâre awesome at is how you build something that lasts.
Exactly like a successful startup founder, sheâs learned to say no to things that arenât core to her business or that donât add value. No one succeeds by being everything for everyone.
She doesnât give a f*ck (and keeps pushing forward)
This is maybe what I admire most about Taylor. Sheâs resilient; a quality that most successful startup founders seem to have. Sure, sheâs been extremely privileged to have all the support sheâs had throughout the years. But chances are that with an audience of this size, you also face a constant stream of critique, pushback, and hate. Most artists who start as early as she did end up fading away. In contrast, Taylorâs success seems to only compound year after year. Just when you think sheâs peaked, she comes back with more. Heck, most startups that grow as rapidly become sclerotic instead of continuing to evolve.
Channeling her inner âThe Manâ with the kind of âBad Bloodâ bounce-back power we all wish we had, Taylor shows us that hitting the reset button, âBegin Againâ style, isnât just an option, but a manifesto.
As is the case with startups, I truly think that if you stick it out long enough, continue trying things, and learn from it, youâll eventually find success (whatever that means for you).