You wake up as the CEO of Propellerhead. What would you do?

[bxbrkrz]

As soon as I wake up.
I would look up toward the sky, down on my knees, spread my arms wide open, close my eyes... and be thankful that all the people I love are healthy and supporting.

Then I would go to reasontalk.com. Close my eyes, spread my arms wide open, and be down on my knees... and be thankful to all the Reason users using my baby.

I am glad I am not the CEO of a company selling a toxic product pushing for slow or rapid deaths across the world.

I would be smiling reading this post.

[fieldframe]

It's fun to imagine setting a roadmap for all my pet feature ideas, but honestly, I don't think I'd actually change anything. Ever since Reason 9.5, Propellerhead has been on what I'd consider the right path. While they're struggling a bit right now with the challenges of modernizing a legacy codebase, my top priority as hypothetical CEO would be to, well, modernize the legacy codebase.

[sleep1979]

sell the company

Sell the company

"Hold him for Kevin!"

Have no idea bout this kevin geezer but course i sell it would i have no idea how to run a software company lol , and i need some cash , someone else can run it and ill write into the contract i get free updates for life

[Lov2sing]

I would focus on 3 versions of Reason
1. Legacy Reason; which has only Propellerhead devices.
2. Reason deluxe; which is what we have in Reason 10.
3. Reason Studio; which has 3 mixers the SSL for the British model, an American mixer, and a Japan model.
A mastering mixer and have Softube to have their console controller to work in Reason.
Lastly I would have virtuality glasses created to work with Console and have the total virtual studio experience.

Other than that I would expand any device at the point of virtual touch so it would be as if you were touching a real device.

[groggy1]

Wow, are we talking full-on body-switching like Freaky Friday and "Big"?


If so, I guess a few thoughts:
1) I'd go on a bus-tour of Sweden. I've never visited, and heard it's quite lovely
2) I guess I'd transfer a few million dollars to my other self, knowing this will only last 24 hours
3) I'd go to the Props office, and let Mattias know that his beard is rockin! I don't care how awkward that conversation may be


This thread has gotten my wife and I into a fight - basically, should we be evil or good if this were to happen to us.

[plaamook]

Wow, are we talking full-on body-switching like Freaky Friday and "Big"?


If so, I guess a few thoughts:
1) I'd go on a bus-tour of Sweden. I've never visited, and heard it's quite lovely
2) I guess I'd transfer a few million dollars to my other self, knowing this will only last 24 hours
3) I'd go to the Props office, and let Mattias know that his beard is rockin! I don't care how awkward that conversation may be


This thread has gotten my wife and I into a fight - basically, should we be evil or good if this were to happen to us.

You win fars I'm concerned. If you only have 24hrs it's the only answer that makes sense.
Well, that and getting loads of data on release schedules n chit. Why not.
Trying to implement changes in Reason would be pointless, the original him would just delete your changes the next day.

[EnochLight]

This thread has gotten my wife and I into a fight

And that is when you know it's time to walk away from the Internet for a while.

[Noplan]

What would you do?

[hurricane]

I'm surprised there aren't more serious answers.

1. First thing I would do is move the whole operation to the US. It's time for a company-wide culture change. I would want things to be more aggressive. The Swedes seem too laid back to me. And no more long summer vacations till we get Reason right.

2. Enough with half-assing things all the time. Either we do it right or we don't do it at all. I'm looking at you, Reason Compact.

3. I'd let you sell or trade your Rack Extensions. And I'd give you the ability to delete them from your account if you so wish.

4. Regarding Rack Extensions - it just isn't working anymore. The future was bright for Rack Extensions, but then VST support came, and that was it. Either we figure out how to reinvigorate development, or I would slowly let the format die. If we choose to continue supporting REs, then there HAS to be some sort of stricter quality control.

5. Although I have enough trouble juggling 3 windows, I think Reason needs a 4th window. And that window should focus on some sort of environment facilitating live performance. And we'd create a brand new hardware controller that would integrate perfectly with this window. Kind of like the Live/APC relationship.

[KarmaFunkarma]

I think this would be an evolving few minutes...

1. Realize I'm CEO of PH ----- "Oh wow! This is awesome"

2. Remember that our core product has significant performance problems ----- "Damn! We've got to get that fixed"

3. Remember we missed our commitment for a fix date and did a fairly poor job of managing customer expectations ----- "Crap! We've got one more chance to get this right"

4. Remember we're primarily owned by a Private Equity firm ----- "Ah, sh*t..."

5. Realize our core product has major performance problems, we've mismanaged expectations and our fix date, we're own by private equity, and I'm CEO ------ "F*ck me..."

[Shokstar]

I would sell the Company.

[Aquila]

I would be utterly confused as to how and why I am suddenly the CEO. I wouldn't do anything work-wise. I'd probably panic.

[boingy]

4. Remember we're primarily owned by a Private Equity firm -

I didn't know that. It's not a good thing because PE firms have a "short term, make money" focus. They usually look to realise their investment within 3 to 5 years, usually by growing the sales but sometimes by cutting costs. Both methods work from a profitability viewpoint but not necessarily from a product improvement viewpoint.

My previous comment that as CEO I would sell the company and get back to basics was mostly facetious but I've seen it a few times in person where a company's founder and "guru" gets to a point where they realise their company has become too big and that their main product has grown into a quite muddled and unfocussed offering. One solution to that is to jump ship and start again with a simple idea.

Imagine if one day you come up with a revolutionary internet search engine that is an order of magnitude better than the competition. It's a lot of fun fiddling with it and making it even better every day. Then suddenly you are the boss of Google, and you're getting hassled by the haters and you don't have time to fiddle with stuff any more....

[Loque]

4. Remember we're primarily owned by a Private Equity firm -

I didn't know that. It's not a good thing because PE firms have a "short term, make money" focus. They usually look to realise their investment within 3 to 5 years, usually by growing the sales but sometimes by cutting costs. Both methods work from a profitability viewpoint but not necessarily from a product improvement viewpoint.

My previous comment that as CEO I would sell the company and get back to basics was mostly facetious but I've seen it a few times in person where a company's founder and "guru" gets to a point where they realise their company has become too big and that their main product has grown into a quite muddled and unfocussed offering. One solution to that is to jump ship and start again with a simple idea.

Imagine if one day you come up with a revolutionary internet search engine that is an order of magnitude better than the competition. It's a lot of fun fiddling with it and making it even better every day. Then suddenly you are the boss of Google, and you're getting hassled by the haters and you don't have time to fiddle with stuff any more....

I probably would swim in my money, sh!t on everyone, everything and the whole world... Or I would use the power I now have to make the world a better place and cool products I wouldn't be ashamed of... Choices... What do you guys think, my little evil and angel?

[Lov2sing]

On second thought I would merge with Softube, Logic, Ik multimedia, Focusrite, and Mixbus. Problem solved. Then I would take a nap.

[EnochLight]

Fun fact: even before there was a private equity investor wirh majority ownership, I hope you guys do realize that a CEO alone cannot just “sell the company”.

[MrFigg]

On second thought I would merge with Softube, Logic, Ik multimedia, Focusrite, and Mixbus. Problem solved. Then I would take a nap.

Great idea...then after your nap you could sack Softubes support team for being crap and give Props support team a rise for being great.

[Arrant]

1. Improve the shop with "Complete your bundle" deals and wishlists (for starters)
Because, come on.

2. Acquire Cockos, kill off Reaper and incorporate its fantastic DSP-code into Reason.
This combines the best of two worlds as Reason has terrible performance and Reaper has a terrible interface.

3. Focus all funding on improving the core product and the RE SDK, cutting off useless stuff like Allihoopa (ok they're gone already but you get the point) and probably Reason Compact as well.

4. Use the MindMusic tech to build a hardware RE accellerator Box (perhaps it could support VSTs as well, through a wrapper)

5. Strengthen relations with VST Developers, and make it really easy for them to port their Products to RE.

6. Make Reason look super good on hi-quality displays (graphic overhaul and scalable GUI)

[bitley]

OT. Reason might have terrible performance on your computer, but remember that Pheads try to make it work well on every computer. On my Mac from mid 2011 it works like a charm.

[EnochLight]

OT. Reason might have terrible performance on your computer, but remember that Pheads try to make it work well on every computer. On my Mac from mid 2011 it works like a charm.

[two shoes]

Flat is the new skeumorphism

BAN THIS SICK FILTH

Jokes aside, Reason's aesthetic is fine. Updating it for higher resolutions, along with QoL improvements and sequencer polish would be my priorities.

agreed, i find Reason's aesthetic more engaging than the pure software flat look of live/bitwig. just make it continuously scalable like live, ensure it looks great on hi-res screens, and make sure i can zoom in and out in the rack and make individual devices or combinators "fit width" (all of which should have been done and polished at least five years ago)

[two shoes]

Flat is the new skeumorphism

BAN THIS SICK FILTH

Jokes aside, Reason's aesthetic is fine. Updating it for higher resolutions, along with QoL improvements and sequencer polish would be my priorities.

agreed, i find Reason's aesthetic more engaging than the pure software flat look of live/bitwig. just make it continuously scalable like live, ensure it looks great on hi-res screens, and make sure i can zoom in and out in the rack and make individual devices or combinators "fit width" (all of which should have been done and polished at least five years ago)

[ernstnathorst]

Well, if I interpret this as you guys guessing what my work days actually look like, at least some of it was right on the money.

Yes, I do feel lots of gratitude for being able to do what I’m doing. I mean come on, this is the best job ever and I get to work with the most amazing people.

Still, there’s certainly some head banging going on now and then as you suggested, not for the reasons mentioned though. Mostly the thing that gets me is the fact that we can’t always live up to everybody’s expectations. There’s a super-dedicated team of amazing people here, doing everything they can to come up with the best experience possible for you guys. But the day only has twenty-four hours and building as complex products as we do Is hard. We make most decisions in teams. However, at the end of the day its my ass on the line for final prioritization’s. If you don’t like how we’re doing things, it’s me the hate mail should go to, not the team.

So what do I do? Being a CEO is like a combination of a guru and a janitor. You’re expected to have answers to questions no one else can answer (not that many, and I often fail) and you need to clean up the shit that it’s no-one else’s job to take care of, simply because their time and talent is better spent serving you guys, the customers. It’s not very glorious actually, at least it doesn’t feel that way to me. Also, it’s not like you can make decisions for new features in the product every day (not even my job, but still). Since it takes a looooot longer for the dev team to execute on those decisions than for the product people to make them, they are pretty far apart (and need to be well founded). Having said that, being CEO is a position of power, I do have a lot of influence on the company's direction. But I too have my restrictions as established by the owners and the board of directors.

But over all, pretty much the day job is to make sure everyone else has everything they need to do their job as well as they can, the information, the direction, the competence, the tools, the money and other resources.

So a typical day could go something like this:

Get up and have breakfast. Tea, not coffee. Check email and Slack to see if there’s any panic or progress.

Get off to work, the subway being over-crowded as always. Listening to a podcast to escape. Maybe go to the gym.

Get into the office and send off replies to the most urgent emails, if I didn't already to that during breakfast.

Check on yesterday's stats, sales, usage etc, to see if we’re on track or if there’s anything alarming.

More emails. Love email. And more Slack. Love Slack.

Meetings about a million different things. Most of which I can’t talk about here, sorry. But it’s from anything from recruiting to strategy, marketing initiatives, product progress, offices, negotiations etc, etc. Again making sure it’s all coordinated.

Lunch, which usually is pretty short.

Checking in on various sources, social media, youtube, competitors, ReasonTalk, what’s going on in the world that I should know about.

More meetings and email, and hopefully some time to work on my long list of projects I’d like to get off the ground. Problem is, everybody else is already busy with what they’ve been tasked to do, so I can’t just go and grab them and tell them to work on what I’m excited about today. I should really learn how to code. And do graphics. And...

Back home to have dinner with the family. Then usually crack the computer open again for something that needs to be prepared for next day. And more email. Love email.

Go into my small study and glancing at the keyboards and guitars asking myself why I don’t spend more time making music.

Brushing my teeth and turing out the light.

That’s about it.

We’re thinking about starting an AMA on Instagram (don’t know when!), so if you want to help us kick that off, send in some questions on this topic or anything else you'd like to find out and I will try my best to answer.

And last, I think you guys are overestimating my music abilities. My beats are many things, but certainly not “sick”.

Keep it up! I certainly will. And as always, deep gratitude for your support of the company and our products.

/Ernst

My "office" (actually a desk in the landscape like everybody else's). That thing sticking up from the backpack is just a baguette, OK?

[aeox]

BAN THIS SICK FILTH

Jokes aside, Reason's aesthetic is fine. Updating it for higher resolutions, along with QoL improvements and sequencer polish would be my priorities.

agreed, i find Reason's aesthetic more engaging than the pure software flat look of live/bitwig. just make it continuously scalable like live, ensure it looks great on hi-res screens, and make sure i can zoom in and out in the rack and make individual devices or combinators "fit width" (all of which should have been done and polished at least five years ago)

agreed, not a huge fan of flat graphics.

[AS7RO]

This ^ was priceless. Highly appreciated response. Sometimes people overlook the challenges and responsibilities a CEO has when making decisions. Half the comments just mention things without having a clue about what it entails to make a single decision. Nonetheless I know we are also having fun here and most of us probably never had a job working for the Man/corporations.