Olaf Growald
For as long as he can remember, Jason Fox has always loved music and sports. As he weaved his way through some of the most prestigious halls of football, first as a standout offensive lineman at the University of Miami and then over a six-year NFL career with the Detroit Lions and Miami Dolphins, his head swam with entrepreneurial ideas.
Would it be possible to someday bring together his two passions into one business?
Inspiration was not long in coming. As the North Crowley High School product warmed up before NFL games, Fox noticed almost every player bouncing around during their own warmups, their headphones in, listening to music as they strutted past.
“I’d watch players warm up before games with their headphones on listening to music, and I was thinking, man, these guys have massive social followings,” Fox said. “Millions of people are watching these games; whether it was football or watching NBA players like LeBron [James] and Steph [Curry] and [Kevin Durant] or other sports, they always have their headphones on. I thought, What if they could share that with their fans and the people watching at home?”
Fox, as it turns out, was onto something.
In the summer of 2016, as Fox was preparing to make the decision to retire from the NFL on his own terms, the dam of inspiration broke. Before one of his gold medal swims at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps was captured by cameras locked into his pre-race prep, headphones on, eyes fixed into the middle distance.
Over the next 24 hours, more than 23 million people tweeted at Phelps, wanting to know what he was listening to.
At that moment, Earbuds Music was born. “It felt like a sign from a higher power that this was what I should do,” Fox said.
Since 2016, Earbuds has grown into something of a social phenomenon. Fox, a Fort Worth native who started the company here before relocating much of its operation to Austin, and his growing team of eight curate playlists into an app from friends and a growing roster of famous athletes and allow you to listen along. Want to know what Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes listens to in the locker room before a game? Or former Heisman Trophy winner and Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield? Or the playlists your friend listens to at work? It’s all at your fingertips.
And yet, the road to here has been paved with difficulties that threatened his business, which still didn’t stop Fox from running toward the roar.
Sometimes the safest place to be is the one that feels the scariest. Lions — with their intimidating teeth and deafening roars — are designed to provoke fear. But the real danger lies with the smaller, quieter lionesses. In the animal kingdom, the lion’s job is to roar and send prey scattering away from the startling noise — right into the path of the waiting lionesses, the true hunters. If gazelles knew to run toward the frightening sound, they would have a better chance of survival. The roar doesn’t represent the real danger.
Likewise, humans sometimes have an instinctive desire to shy away from pursuits that look and sound scary. But often, running toward those challenges and conflicts is the best (or only) way to grow and meet our goals. In business, those who run from the deafening noise never reach their full potential, while those who turn and face the fear thrive.
Fox’s run-toward-the-roar moment came early in his business, and it came in the form of external doubts. Fox’s passion had always been in the music and sports spaces, but as he started his company, he heard one refrain more than any other.
“You’ve never run a tech company, and you don’t know the music industry.”
Maybe a problem for some. But not for Fox.
“In the early days, I got type-casted in completely the wrong way because I heard constantly that big linemen are dumb and they don’t ever know what they’re doing,” Fox said. “We had to fight so many stereotypes to break into the industry just for credibility to get Spotify and Apple Music and the labels to work with us. There was a long time where it was just us butting our heads into the wall 100 times a day.”
Those difficult days didn’t last long. By leaning on his extensive network of contacts within the NFL, Fox gradually built up interest and buy-in for his nascent tech startup. He’s now gone through several rounds of funding, and Earbuds is beginning to catch fire in certain social circles. In July, it was briefly featured on “Good Morning America.”
In the early days, Fox was mining his contacts for any help he could get. “You can’t just pick up the phone and call the head of Spotify,” he said. But over time, word spread. In fact, Fox said he recently heard from the camp of James Harden, who expressed interest in his venture.
“In the early days, I was so protective of the idea,” Fox said. “I thought I knew what was best all the time. But I’ve learned just to ask everybody, because you can accomplish things so much faster and you can reach people and funding and business development so much faster when you ask for help. That’s really where we found our biggest influencers was ‘Hey, do you know anyone who would like this?’”
The gap Fox found in the industry revolves around how people consume and share music. He found that even with the freedom of technology, 82 percent of music discovery still comes from someone’s social network, and a huge segment of music consumers primarily share music through screenshots and texts. There had to be a better way.
And so, Earbuds Music was born, and the returns so far have been stunning. All in a day’s work for a former offensive lineman turned professional entrepreneur.
“I’ve had people message us I don’t even know talk about how we’ve enriched their lives and they’ve been able to discover new music,” Fox said. “We’ve had messages about people who’ve met and gotten married just by connecting through our platform. I know we’re enriching people’s lives in better ways, which is extremely rewarding. That’s made it worth it to keep fighting when the times are tough.”