Mathieu Drouin: Fuzz and I have together for nine years. And we’re 26 years old.

Mathieu Drouin: Since we were 17. And when we first starting going out, I was starting a technology – well it was just an idea, that because of the IT bubble and everything was going on actually took off and we made some money at it. Because the company actually made money in a world where people were buying up things that weren’t making money just based on the dream.

And anyway, Cam Lund was a bit—which it never even ended up getting publicly called but that’s what he called it originally. It was a business-to-business travel services company that acted as an intermediary between big corporations and corporate travel agencies and independent chauffeured limousine services around the world.

Then for various reasons we got out of that. And made a little bit money. Two years later when we were 19 years old, I took the ret and the better part of the next of the year and I sailed around the world. ‘Cause I knew I wanted to be in business but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I wanted to be passionate about it. And I wasn’t passionate about that.

And I figured okay this is great. I’ve proven to myself that I can do it. It works. I’ve got a little bit of flexibility –

Francoise: Time.

Mathieu Drouin: - right now to figure out what it is I wanna do. And at this point having had the success we had early, nobody’s fault but our own if we’re not happy with the way things turn out. So make sure to make the right choice.

And I went and sailed for a year. And then came out, studied finance and marketing and hated it. Dropped out. And happened to see Richard Branson on a TV screen after he crashed his hot air balloon in the middle of North Atlantic—I don’t know if it was live or not—but giving an interview on CNN. And I had read his biography when I was sailing. And I just thought at the moment: why not the music business.

So music business it is. I didn’t know anything about the music business though. So figured I gotta gain some experience. Don’t wanna work for a major label ‘cause they’ll pigeonhole you. And Donald K Donald was the biggest independent company in Canada. So I went and I sat in their reception for two days till Donald agreed to see me and gave me a job as an unpaid intern. And that was in April.

Francoise: Although he thought you wanted a record deal at first.

Mathieu Drouin: Yeah. He’s like, “What’ve you been in my lobby for, for two deals? You wanna a record deal? You’re in a rock band?” I’m like, “No. I want a job.” And he’s goes, “Oh, well we’re not hiring.” I said, “I’ll work for free.” He goes, “Okay, you start Monday.”

And that was in April 2000. And just worked my way up from there to become the president of the English division, on the record side first, and then the whole company.

So yeah, essentially it got to the point where after I was at DKD and had come back from sailing and she was studying in Boston and had come home and hated what she doing, first of all. And second all we weren’t seeing each other at all ever.

Francoise: Sorry, Eric.

Mathieu Drouin: All because I was working like a madman. And she was working. We had different schedules. And we got to the point where we’re like either it’s work, it’s a relationship, or we take a gamble and bring the relationship to work. Which is what we did.

And she came. Started off also, not as an intern, but working as a low-level employee in their radio promotion/publicity department and worked her up to running that, as I came up in the company as well.

And we were effectively running it for a little while. And we had some financial resources from the past, from that technology play. And had made some money, when really good salaries and a percentage of the profits and a percentage of the company at the Don K Don Group while we were there.

We got into a new negotiation with Donald at one point, who had no kids and he wanted to sell the company to – he wanted us to take it over. And we couldn’t ultimately come to a deal. Not because he wasn’t offering a great deal. But it’s because conceptually, I got to the point, and we talked about and we realized, where there was a culture in this company. It was gonna really hard to change it into something that is in our own image. And basically we just realized that we didn’t wanna live or come up through, ultimately, the shadow and the legacy of Donald K Donald. We wanted to do things our own way and do it on our own.

And that just led to the conclusion that we wanted to start our own thing. And it went from there. I mean it morphed. It was gonna be a joint venture with DKD at first, where we would really scale back our involvement in the day-to-day and focus on this new company. But then because of government funding restrictions and things like that he couldn’t be a shareholder. And ultimately over a series of machinations it just ended up that we were doing this on our own.

[End of Audio]