Case Studies of Entrepreneurs Overcoming Challenges

Introduction

Hey! Everyone can start their own business and make it successful with profit. However, being an entrepreneur will not be an easy path without any obstacles.

Here are 2 examples of case studies of the entrepreneurs overcoming the idea or legal challenges. Let me share them with you!

Case Study 1: Jack Dorsey & Twitter (Now X)

Overview

Twitter, now rebranded as X, is a social media platform that was co-founded by Jack Dorsey, an American entrepreneur, in 2006. On this platform, users can post and interact with short messages of texts, videos, or audios, which are also known as “tweets”. The company has met many challenges throughout the years, relating to content moderation, misinformation, and user privacy.

Strategies

Twitter has faced the challenge of content moderation, particularly with regard to false information and offensive speech. Around 2020 and 2021, they have met considerable pressure for sharing misleading information and encouraging violence, which surrounded the former President Donald Trump’s misinformative tweets on COVID-19. To address the challenge, Twitter strengthened its policies on content filtration by flagging or deleting tweets that were not in line with its rules and regulations (McConnell & Arvanitakis, 2021)¹. It also permanently banned Trump from the platform to prevent further occurrences of the issue (Cavicchi, 2022)².

Dorsey has negotiated some tough legal waters in terms of platform control and free expression. For example, the legal battle with Alex Berenson, or Plaintiff, where Twitter was sued for banning for the violation of the five-strike COVID-19 misinformation policy, while none of his labeled tweets met the criteria of the stated rule (Berenson v. Twitter, Inc., 2022)³. It meant this might have infringed on the rights to free speech. Although Twitter, as a private company, is not restricted by the First Amendment, it still should consider free speech for its users.

Twitter has implemented numerous technological and policy measures. For example, it has published a Twitter dataset on the 2020 U.S. presidential election (Chen, Deb, & Ferrara, 2021)⁴. It was not only to acknowledge the demands from the government, but also to improve accountability and transparency.

Case Study 2: Daniel Ek & Spotify

Overview

Spotify is a audio streaming platform co-founded by Daniel Ek, a Swedish entrepreneur, and Martin Lorentzon in 2006. It provides users access to millions of songs and podcasts from around the world. During the process of becoming successful, it encountered some challenges, such as the copyright laws and agreements with record labels and performers.

Strategies

Ek and Lorentzon have addressed the challenge of securing licensing agreements with the major record labels, such as Sony Music. Throughout the years, they negotiated licensing deals with those major record companies by convincing them of the effectiveness of combating piracy with streaming (Spoti Trick, 2024)⁵. This would enable the platform to lawfully broadcast the music.

And in 2020, the service was forced to shut down in some countries for disputing over music licensing fees (Chatter, 2023)⁶. Since the failure of reaching a new licensing agreement with Warner Music Group has caused the whole catalog of the label to be pulled from the site, it also led some other labels and publishers to follow the move. To resolve this, Spotify highlighted its promise to pay fair and acceptable licensing prices to all rights holders while voicing reservations about specific labels’ requests that did not comply with industry standards.

Moreover, Ek had to deal with certain copyright infringement cases. For example, in the lawsuit with Sosa Entertainment and Pro Music Rights in November 2019, Spotify was sued for neglecting to compensate users for 550 million streams (Smith, 2021)⁷. In response, it charged Sosa Entertainment with dishonest practices. After the first unsuccessful settlement negotiations, both parties have come to a settlement and sought a lawsuit discharge. This enabled Spotify to hold onto its market share and keep drawing new customers and musicians to the site.

Spotify has implemented an advanced technological stack that integrates the distribution of music with its global user base (Durani, 2024)⁸. For example, the simultaneous streaming of music on several devices could be handled by an efficient design that makes use of cloud computing services like Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It also used strict privacy regulations and compliance measures to preserve user experience and regulatory compliance in international markets.

Summary & Valuable Lessons

To conclude, both cases have shown some common resolution strategies. For example, the negotiation skills used by Dorsey for addressing content moderation issues and Ek for license agreement challenges.

Also, each case study has shown insightful details. The experience of Twitter underlines the significance of efficient filtering approaches to information to ensure public trust and platform integrity. Whereas, Spotify’s case emphasized the importance of adaptability in crisis, as well as the essential equilibrium between industry norms and ethical business practices for managing operations and stakeholder confidence.

That’s all of the article. Thank you for reading it.

References

McConnell, J., & Arvanitakis, J. (2021). What is the harm in misinformation? Shadows of COVID-19 in public discourse online. Global Media Journal Australia, 15, 1-22. ↩︎
Cavicchi, J. (2022). The Law Review of the Franklin Pierce Center for INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY VOLUME 63—ISSUE. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, 63(1). ↩︎
Berenson v. Twitter, Inc. Casetext. (2022). https://casetext.com/case/berenson-v-twitter-inc ↩︎
Chen, E., Deb, A., & Ferrara, E. (2021). #Election2020: the first public Twitter dataset on the 2020 US Presidential election. Journal of Computational Social Science. doi:10.1007/s42001-021-00117-9 ↩︎
Spoti Trick. (2024, January 17). The evolution of spotify: Key milestones from launch to today. Medium. https://medium.com/@spotitrick/the-evolution-of-spotify-key-milestones-from-launch-to-today-64e7f1f07c77 ↩︎
Chatter, C. (2023, February 21). Behind the brief shutdowns: The challenges Spotify faced and overcame. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/behind-brief-shutdowns-challenges-spotify-faced-media-music-news/ ↩︎
Smith, D. (2021, March 24). Spotify settles Sosa Entertainment Billion-dollar infringement lawsuit. Digital Music News. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/03/24/sosa-entertainment-spotify-settlement/ ↩︎
Spoti Trick. (2024, January 17). The evolution of spotify: Key milestones from launch to today. Medium. https://medium.com/@spotitrick/the-evolution-of-spotify-key-milestones-from-launch-to-today-64e7f1f07c77 ↩︎

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