ThePhatStartup.com | Mahbod Moghadam aka Maboo @rapgenius

We use lyrical content to motivate ourselves to take it to the next level. It was only right that we sit down with one of the biggest Hip Hop sites on the web. In this installment of The Phat Startup Show, we sat down with Mahbod Moghadam aka Maboo of Rap Genius.

Rap Genius has its sights on annotating the web, starting with Hip Hop. The amount of time that a visitor spends on the site is off the hook. Just in case you didn’t know,Andreessen Horowitz recently invested $15 million in the 3 year old startup to take it to the next level. Mahbod goes through the transformation of Rap Exegesis into Rap Genius, their entrance to Y Combinator and going face to face with Paul Graham. He talks about learning from others, then implementing their advice and why entrepreneurship is a form of art.

On the Hip Hop side he talks about the artists he has met like Nas, 50 and RZA. He talks about the lessons he has gotten from them and how they have changed his life. He even reiterate his love of Gucci Man.

When asked who he would have sitting in his 24 round-table, Mahbod picked Gucci Mane or Future and ViVi Nevo. Check out some of the excerpts below.

Traction Is King

It does not matter if you have a good idea, or how far along you are… if millions of people are using it, you are changing the face of humanity. That’s the most important thing.

The Dream

At Rap Genius we did not start with any business plans, and now have 15M people/month using the site. It is humbling to have kids using it as their essay topic to get into schools like Harvard. It is a dream come true to help people achieve knowledge through art. We would like to help pay for the education of every inner city kid that gets into Yale or Stanford. They should not have huge loans because they can’t afford the education.

Learning from RZA

As a team, think as all members as small sticks. They don’t mean much on their own but when they come together, they become a staff. The strength of a staff is unbreakable.