a blog by Hiro Maeda

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

As a part of my new year’s resolutions, I am starting a blog.  I plan to update this blog frequently at least for the year. I’m not sure what I am going to be writing about.  Hopefully I will be able to figure it out eventually.  Anyhow, here are my New Year’s resolutions!

• This blog
• Building a new web app
• Be productive
• Become a better programmer
• Try new things
• Make lots of new friends
• Keep in touch with old friends
• Be nice to everyone
• Work out

What’s your new year resolution?

If you don’t know me too well, here is a bio you can read.  It was written by a student from Bucknell University (a college that I currently attend).  She wrote it for an assignment in class and received a perfect score!

Cheers,
Hiro

***

Michelle Laxer
Features assignment
UNIV 222
Oct. 29, 2008

Open-toed sandals are not usually part of the dress code for a company executive.  Neither are jeans and a T-shirt.

Then again, most executives are not 22 years old.

Hiro Maeda, a senior at Bucknell University, doesn’t wear the stereotypical black power suit when he conducts business.  He prefers the comfort of casual clothes.  Without any previous knowledge, a stranger probably would not be able to guess that Maeda is the CEO a company he started and created from scratch.

He is the mastermind behind Third Floor Productions, a Web production company that aims to create Internet products that will be useful and entertain people at the same time.  Maeda, with his two best friends, Jason Mehr and Brian Chew, launched Third Floor Production’s first project, discovertunes, in August 2008.

Discovertunes, at www.discovertunes.com, is a completely free Internet radio haven specifically for independent and unsigned music artists.  Similar to Web sites such as Pandora or MySpace Music, discovertunes allows visitors to listen to streaming music online, and then rate and rank what they hear. Discovertunes differs from Pandora and MySpace Music because the music library is generated by the site’s registered users.  According to Maeda, Web sites like Pandora hire engineers to add popular music to the library. When independent artists join discovertunes, they are able to upload their music to the Web site’s server and Internet radio. Listeners are not required to register with the Web site, only if they want to rate and rank the music.

Maeda decided to develop discovertunes because it would help independent and unsigned artists receive an audience.

“They can’t get exposure because the radio is overplaying all these corporate made artists and so we decided, why don’t we help them out,” he said.  “And we realized how bad popular music is.”

Since the company is still very young, Maeda and his co-workers are using their own money to pay for its upkeep.  Currently, they have a commission based advertising contract with iTunes, but that is still not enough to pay off the company’s debts.  Maeda, Mehr and Chew hope to someday make some profits from their project.  That dream might be more realistic than they thought since Maeda happened to find a potential investor for discovertunes during a recent trip to Los Angeles for job interviews.

Maeda said he had low expectations for discovertunes when he launched it, but has been pleasantly surprised.

“I think we’re a big success. At the point where we reached 20 artists, I considered it a success,” he said.

Currently, discovertunes boasts 74 registered members and 100 songs.  Discovertunes sees approximately 300 daily visitors and an overall 2,200 people have visited the discovertunes Web site.

****

The success of his project comes as somewhat of a relief to Maeda.  A native of Kobe, Japan, he is the first in his family to deviate from tradition.  His parents’ only child, Maeda is the black sheep in a family of doctors as the first to venture outside of the medical field and even the first to study overseas.  He is the sole entrepreneur in his family.

“I’m not sure why my dad decided not to pressure me into becoming a doctor. However I do feel some pressure that I have to prove myself because I broke the family tradition,” Maeda said.

Since his freshman year of college, Maeda dreamt about creating and starting his own Internet-based company.  He has always been attracted to the accessibility and mobility of an Internet company and the total control of a leadership position.

His recent CEO position is his highest leadership achievement to date.  When he was a senior at the Canadian Academy, his international high school in Japan, he served a term as the school president.  He was also co-captain of the school’s varsity baseball team.  He is also accustomed to teaching and production roles for Web programming.  He has been a teaching assistant for Java programs at Bucknell, he was a network engineering intern at the Canadian Academy, and he also briefly served as a Web and system application developer for Shin Caterpillar Mitsubishi.

During his term as high school president, Maeda sparked an interest in leadership positions.  “No one bosses me around. I do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do,” he said.

Determined to have the complete executive experience, Maeda is leaving no stone unturned.  He is currently launching a small advertising and marketing internship for college students to help spread the name for discovertunes.  These interns will serve as campus promoters for discovertunes, using low-cost tactics to advertise discovertunes.  Aside from Bucknell, his program has taken root at Tufts University and he has interested parties at Emerson College, Pennsylvania State University and Columbia University.  Even though he regrets his inability to pay his interns, he does promise letters of recommendation.

“The whole purpose of an internship is to gain the right experience. I believe I can help people gain the right experience. I know what are good experiences and bad experiences,” he said.
****

Maeda is not only the CEO of Third Floor Productions, but he is also the programmer of the discovertunes Web site.  He spent his entire summer designing and programming the Web site.  One month alone was dedicated to researching his available options for servers.  Even now, after the launch of discovertunes, he devotes about two to three hours a day for maintenance and upkeep.

“Designing and programming was difficult,” he said.  “I spent two months programming that Web site.  Nothing was really easy about it.”

He took an interest in computer programming during his high school years when he started taking his IB computer courses.  During his freshman year of college, he began Web programming on his own time and hasn’t stopped from there.

As site maintainer, Maeda receives many e-mails regarding discovertunes each day.  Users send mail with registration questions and they alert him when the Web site is not running smoothly.  He filters e-mails from iTunes about upcoming advertising campaigns, most of which his new company can’t afford.  He also checks his e-mails from his network administrator, which are usually about security upgrades for his Web site.  On a bad day, Maeda has to deal with over 100 e-mails.  During his recent streak of good days, Maeda has only been answering around 10.

Despite all the work his company demands from him, Maeda finds time to be an active member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity, play on intramural teams for soccer, volleyball, softball and basketball, and, on occasion, enjoy CounterStrike, one of his favorite video games.

“It’s like being in another club,” he said of discovertunes. “It’s kind of fun because it’s like you have two identities, one as an executive and one as a student.”

Maeda, a self-proclaimed music junkie, also sings in Bucknell’s original co-ed a cappella group, Two Past Midnight.  As Delta Upsilon’s resident D.J., he is often found spinning the dance music at his fraternity’s parties on the weekends. Even when he was in high school, Maeda played in the school band and sang in the choir.

But just like any other student, Maeda still faces those same time management dilemmas.  As a computer science major, his workload often keeps him up past midnight in the computer lab.

“I’ve been very bad with time management,” he admitted.  “Working with discovertunes is so much fun that I end up pushing my school work until the last minute.”

For Maeda, the work he does with discovertunes is so rewarding and so much more fun than any of the work he does for school that he usually prioritizes discovertunes over most of his homework.  He admits, with a laugh, that discovertunes has probably taken its toll on his GPA.

A mere three months as a CEO and Maeda is already making personal sacrifices for his company.

****

Most CEOs prefer to hold their meetings in that big mahogany conference room at the end of the hall.

An avid sushi lover, Maeda always conducts Third Floor Productions’ weekly meetings at Tokyo Diner in Selinsgrove, his favorite local restaurant.  Maeda and his business partners, Mehr and Chew, even conceived the idea for discovertunes in April 2008 over Maeda’s favorite meal of rainbow roll, dragon roll and salmon roll sushi.

Third Floor Productions’ three executives are longtime friends – even brothers.  Maeda, Mehr and Chew all met when they joined Delta Upsilon and their friendship has grown since then.  Their relationships served as a springboard for the company since Maeda wanted his two closest friends to work with him.  The company name even refers back to the third floor of the fraternity house on which they all live.

Chew, a Bucknell junior and Third Floor Productions’ marketing and advertising director, had no complaints about working for his best friend.

“He’s really chill and laid back,” he said.  “But at the same time, he’s on top of things.”

Over the summer, Chew designed posters, flyers and advertising in preparation for the Web site’s launch.  He said Maeda gave him complete creative freedom when designing his project.

“I thought he was going to control everything,” Chew said.  “But he’s the kind of guy you work with, not for.”

Maeda did admit one of the hardest things as a CEO was to make sure Mehr and Chew were on top of their work.

“I don’t pay them and it’s hard to motivate people when they’re not getting paid.  They’re showing a lot of passion and care about the company,” he said.

However, the three, jokingly, agreed that working with best friends was “interesting.”

“I kind of feel like a boss but at the same time they’re still my friends.  They’re not afraid to shoot down my ideas,” Maeda said.  “They’re not afraid to not listen to me.”
On the other hand, however, Mehr and Chew are not worried about voicing their opinions to Maeda.  He is eager to accept their criticism and suggestions.  Maeda understands the importance of a second opinion, especially in his line of work.

Mehr, a senior at Bucknell and Third Floor Productions’ legal director, said that they already understand how each other will work, another beneficial aspect for the company.

“We get along really well and we know pretty much how each other thinks,” he said.  “We all have a pretty strong work ethic.”

That’s not to say Mehr doesn’t have his own concerns.  “I worry about what happens if something goes wrong, if money becomes an issue between the three of us,” he said.

The three have agreed that, so far, a lost friendship is not the case.  They believe working together on discovertunes has made their relationships stronger and closer.

“Hiro is a great friend.  He’s very supportive of any ideas I come up with, even those not related to discovertunes.  If I even need someone to talk to, I know I can go to him,” Chew said.

****

Not every college student can walk into a job interview and tell a future employer that they already successfully started and managed their own company.

Before he started looking for jobs, Maeda wanted to be sure he could say that to a recruiter.

Building, maintaining and owning discovertunes and Third Floor Productions offer him the opportunity to test his leadership and programming abilities.  While he does hope to gain recognition and even a little spending money from discovertunes, he values the experience itself as one of the most important aspects of the project.

“It’s the main reason I wanted to start discovertunes.  I wanted the experience of building my own website and managing my own company.  It would be the best if it became a self-sustaining company without relying on our own money,” he said.

Fascinated with the Internet, its workings and its possible job endeavors, Maeda wants to continue producing Web sites.  It should go with little explanation that he dreams of becoming a CEO, producer or product manager for a Web production company.

“[Discovertunes] is just a first step of what may come in the future,” Maeda said.

With two job offers under his belt and graduation only one more semester away, it seems as if discovertunes has helped to put him at the beginning of the right career path.  However, these new job opportunities force Maeda to contemplate the future of discovertunes.

“I don’t know if Third Floor Productions will still be alive five to 10 years down the road,” he said.  “But with or without Third Floor Productions, I’m sure I’ll be doing the same thing as I am doing right now … leading people to create some exciting and entertaining projects.”