They Pay for Water
About this audiobook
“Radio is free,” my mother said. “Why would anyone pay for this?”
I asked her whether she paid for bottled water.
In 1998, Dan Murphy walked away from a VP title at Sony to join fourteen people in a rented basement office with bright orange walls, an $80 million FCC license, and roughly twelve months of money left.
The plan was to build a radio network in space and convince a country that had never paid a dime for radio to start paying ten dollars a month. Nobody knew yet whether a satellite signal could even reach a car moving at highway speed. Raise the next round or disband. That was the whole strategy.
The launch was set for September 12, 2001. Murphy drove past the Pentagon on the morning of the eleventh, 9/11.
They Pay for Water is the inside account of that decade — the funding rounds that nearly failed, the fight onto retail shelves and into car dashboards, the satellites, the programming wars, and the two numbers, CHURN and SAC, that quietly decided whether any of it would work. Written by the man who was there for all of it, and who ultimately walked away from the company he helped build to fight a harder battle at home.
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About the author
Dan Murphy is a technology veteran who helped turn XM Satellite Radio from a paper concept into a national broadcaster. As a founding executive, he was instrumental in raising capital, building the satellite network, and convincing millions of subscribers to pay for service. With decades of global experience and a career spanning from Sony to tech entrepreneurship, Dan is passionate about creating new technology and sharing adventures with his family. Based in South Beach, Miami, he enjoys start-up work, ocean swimming, and family life. His new memoir recounts the inside story of building XM Radio.
MIAMI • SOCCER • ROBOTICS •
