Shazam’s cofounder gave his company a 4% chance of working now it’s worth $1 billion

When Shazam cofounder Dhiraj Mukherjee started his music discovering service in the early days he gave it a 4% chance of working.

Speaking at the Startup Grind Europe conference in London, Mukherjee said he calculated the figure in the company’s early days when he realizes Shazam’s complex technology had just a 25% chance of actually working.

Mukherjee also said he estimated that “finding all the music” was around 30%.

“We were writing business plans and financial models and projecting revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars long before we had the technology,” admitted Mukherjee.

Shazam was founded in 2000, one year before the dot.com bust. “There was blood on the streets and we needed to raise $8.5 million (£5.9 million) on the back of a powerpoint and a demo,” said Mukherjee.

“There were 53 VCs in London and 50 of them rejected us,” he said.

As of 2016, Shazam has raised more than $136 million (£96 million) and is valued at over $1 billion (£704 million). It has over 100 million monthly active users and has been used on more than 500 million mobile devices.

Not bad for a company that has an estimated 4% chance of thriving.