What it Really Takes to Scale: Candid Insights from Beatdapp’s Co-Founder, Pouria Assadipour
Earlier this year, Smythe had the pleasure of hosting Pouria Assadipour, CTO and Co-Founder of Beatdapp, as one of our panelists for our fireside chat on “Navigating Growth: Lessons in Scaling from Tech Founders.”
We recently sat down with Pouria again to dive deeper into how Beatdapp approached scaling its technology, team, and operations to support rapid growth in the fast-paced music tech industry. From tackling infrastructure challenges to making key hires and navigating funding milestones, Pouria walked us though the strategic decisions and lessons that helped shape Beatdapp’s scaling journey.
Key Highlights from Our Conversation with Beatdapp Co-Founder Pouria Assadipour:
- Scaling in action: How Beatdapp grew its team 3x post-Series A, and what “maximum chaos” really looked like
- Team building lessons: Why early hires who “get stuff done” made all the difference
- From scrappy to structured: transitioning from startup hustle to scalable systems and processes
- Evolving leadership: Pouria’s personal shift from coding founder to strategic force multiplier
- Product strategy: Why they embraced manual, one-off solutions before building scalable infrastructure
- Culture as a non-negotiable: How Beatdapp built a culture of courage, ownership, and healthy disagreement
- Go-to-Market in a skeptical industry: Breaking into the music industry by educating the market and earning trust
Whether you’re scaling a company or thinking about the road ahead, these real-world insights offer a look into what it takes to grow.
Scaling Through Chaos: How Beatdapp Built a High-Performing Team
A standout moment in our conversation was Pouria’s reflection on Beatdapp’s rapid team growth – scaling from 15 to 45 employees within a year following their Series A raise. “This was a period of maximum chaos,” he said. One of the key challenges during this phase was managing client service while onboarding new employees. The same individuals who were experts at delivering the product were also the ones needed to train new hires. With finite time, it meant balancing critical client work with essential onboarding.
“Everyone had to work more,” Pouria said bluntly. It was a period where productivity might have seemed to dip, but he emphasized, “within a few months, it paid off heavily,” leading to a hockey stick growth in output.
What got them through? The early hires were crucial, with people who “get stuff done” and were comfortable with ambiguity and unknown challenges. These “scrappy” individuals and Beatdapp’s early culture of efficiency were pivotal to pushing through a period of maximum chaos.
Reflecting on this period of intense growth, Pouria pointed to a key evolution at Beatdapp that companies in a similar stage might consider: assigning a dedicated “onboarding person” for each job function. This transition helped protect delivery teams from constant context switching. Still, he acknowledged that not everyone received the onboarding they deserved. “The client comes first,” he said, “which means onboarding comes second.”
From Scrappy to Scalable: How Beatdapp Built Teams, Processes, and Departments
As Beatdapp grew, the informal, all-hands-on-deck approach naturally had to evolve.
“Going from informal structures to building formal structures and processes” was a significant step. With the organization tripling in headcount, it wasn’t feasible for everyone to be in the loop —leading to the creation of dedicated teams and departments to support Beatdapp’s scaling efforts.
In Beatdapp’s early days, responsibilities were often shared across disciplines, but as the company scaled, efficiency came through increased specialization where “there was a clear shift from generalists to specialists that was timed with creating teams and departments to support scaling,” Pouria explained.
Pouria noted how employees knew their skillsets as well as their members, and it naturally led to individuals who had in-depth knowledge of a certain discipline to become the team leads of their respective discipline. For Beatdapp, all team leads were promoted from within the company. “What worked was there was a culture and mindset of no ego, and that created a smooth transition into team creation – democracy, but not democracy,” he said.
With teams and departments being built, it marked a key stage in Beatdapp’s scaling journey, but required more formal processes. Having recurring team lead meetings became essential to sync up, manage pipelines, and address any pains that are identified. Interestingly, these processes weren’t about becoming “corporate” for its own sake. “We’re still a startup,” Pouria reiterated. “Communication between departments had to be a habit rather than ad hoc reactive responses.”
Culture: The “Irreversible Decision” and the Courage to Disagree
Our conversation turned to hierarchy and culture, two forces that often shape how teams operate under pressure. “Don’t respect the hierarchy,” Pouria noted, emphasizing their commitment to a culture where team members “don’t just do what the boss tells you.” Encouraging respectful disagreement when someone “knows better” has helped Beatdapp avoid wrong decisions and pivot quickly. “Courage” is even a stated company value, reinforced during onboarding, with employees praised for “good disagreements.”
Beatdapp’s emphasis on valuing culture wasn’t initially unanimous. Pouria initially believed culture was secondary to shareholder value. However, Co-CEO Andrew Batey knew from experience that culture can’t be reversed. He stressed that a poor culture leads to a lack of cohesion, fewer social connections, and ultimately, higher churn.
“My co-founder told me culture is important. So, we disagreed but committed to his vision. I was wrong, he was right,” said Pouria. The lesson: “Almost every decision is reversible except for culture.”
How did they maintain it through rapid scaling? Tactically, traditions like Friday afternoon sessions with public shoutouts and social events continued. More deeply, the original cohort led by example, by “doing things loudly.” When it came to crunch time, their dedication signalled Beatdapp’s values to new employees, creating a cultural flywheel.
The Ever-Evolving Founder: From Doing to Enabling
A founder’s role is never static. Pouria shared a personal journey of having “a new role every 18 months.” From solo developer to team lead, then to a non-coding manager, and eventually to focusing on strategy, the role shifted based on what the company needed.
A major challenge was the mindset shift from measuring personal productivity. “I couldn’t measure my personal productivity and at some point, had to shift to becoming a ‘force multiplier’ for the team,” Pouria said.
This evolution is a critical, and often personal, hurdle for many founders.
How Beatdapp Built a Product to Scale
Pouria’s philosophy of “doing things that don’t scale when you’re starting up,” resonates strongly.
“In the early days, Beatdapp focused on building ‘one-time use’ code to secure their first clients, demonstrating value without immediate product complexity,” he said. “Then do that again for the next client. Then look for overlap in features and build out the automated pipeline based on the overlapping features.”
This iterative approach of identifying patterns and building more abstract solutions was key. His advice is clear: “Technical scale and infrastructure aren’t important in the early days. Don’t optimize too early.” Instead, he emphasizes focussing on delivering value to early clients and creating efficiencies over time, rather than prioritizing cost or speed too early.
Forging a New Market: Beatdapp’s Go-To-Market Journey
Building a great team and product is one thing; convincing a market, especially one that doesn’t fully recognize the problem you solve, is another hurdle. Revenue growth, Pouria noted, truly brings all aspects of company-building together.
Beatdapp entered a market where music streaming fraud was largely overlooked or dismissed. The team had a strong hypothesis and data proving the prevalence of fraud, but “the bigger issue at hand was that the industry believed what they believed and needed proof,” Pouria said.
So, how did Beatdapp change an entire industry’s perspective?
“Getting the first client was extremely difficult,” Pouria admitted, describing it as a classic chicken-and-egg problem. The music industry is notoriously relationship-based, and it was about finding someone willing to “take a leap of faith.” This breakthrough only happened through diligent relationship building.
Once that crucial first client validated their hypothesis, Beatdapp’s go-to-market strategy shifted heavily towards education. “A lot of conferences, speaking on panels, going to dinners, having the press write about the problem,” – these were the go-to-market strategies that helped address the issue, Pouria said.
“Only after this concerted educational effort did the conversation begin to evolve. Then it turned into a traditional sales go-to-strategy, where the question became: how much were customers willing to pay to solve it?”
The critical turning point was getting major industry leaders on board. Their adoption and validation created word of mouth and built a strong sales funnel, cementing trust that Beatdapp was the company to tackle this pervasive issue.
Lessons in Scaling: Final Takeaways from Beatdapp’s Journey
Beatdapp’s path to scale has been marked by tough decisions, evolving roles, and the constant tension between speed and structure. While the journey of scaling is dynamic, often chaotic, but ultimately rewarding, the key is to remain adaptable, prioritize your people and culture, and never lose sight of the value you’re delivering.
Thank you to Pouria Assadipour for sitting with us and sharing his honest reflections and offering a behind-the-scenes look at what it truly means to grow a tech company.
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