Cooke: Music software industry has at most 10,000 companies
Emmett Cooke · How to Sell Your Startup for a Life-Changing Payout · Mar 25, 2025 · at 6:59
Pulse founder Emmett Cooke describes the market size and distribution dynamics of the music software industry while explaining his early go-to-market strategy.
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“There's about 10,000 companies in the entire industry at most, and I would say if the top 50% in sales is probably attributed to maybe like a hundred companies.”
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“So on the B to B side, I think there was over a hundred anything. And then on the B to C side the actual platform had grown to around about 360,000 users in like the database with around a thousand to 2000 daily active users within the desktop app.”
Cooke leveraged an Irish tax relief scheme when selling Pulse
“So when I sold the company, I was able to take advantage of a far lower tax tax break compared to just paying myself through the company.”
Cooke avoided aggressive negotiations to protect the Pulse acquisition deal
“Where I had, like we had valued the business right in the middle of the valuation range. And I think that's fair. And I think they were getting a fair deal and they offered a fair price. So I wasn't really like with the size of the money we were talking about …”