Guest
Jeff Ponchick
Jeff Ponchick is Founder at Mogul, as introduced on the show.
Episodes (1)
Mogul founder Jeff Ponchick, who sold Repost to SoundCloud, on why no artist he interviewed felt confident they were paid in full, and how Mogul fixes that.
Questions these episodes answer
Why did Jeff Ponchick start Mogul after already selling one company to SoundCloud?
After talking to 100 to 150 artists, managers and business managers, Ponchick found a consistent pattern: not one of them felt confident they were being paid everything they were owed. That gap in trust and visibility around royalty payments became the founding problem behind Mogul.
How many different income sources does the average musician actually manage?
Ponchick says Mogul's research found the average artist juggles between 15 and 50 different accounts and income sources across distributors, publishers and platforms. Most artists have very low confidence that any of those pieces are organized correctly or paying out what they should.
How hard was it for Jeff Ponchick to raise money for Mogul despite his track record?
Even with a prior exit to SoundCloud, Ponchick says fundraising was still difficult: he reached out to over 200 investors, got around a hundred responses, and heard 85 nos before closing the round with just four investors.
Why did Mogul pitch itself as a fintech company instead of a music company?
Ponchick says a pure music tech pitch is a hard sell to most investors, so Mogul framed itself around income tracking for musicians and content creators, similar to Rocket Money or Robinhood. He was upfront that the company is a music business, but leading with the fintech framing made the pitch land better.
What advice does Jeff Ponchick give to first-time founders?
Ponchick says the biggest failure mode is never launching at all, since 99 percent of ideas never make it to market. His advice is to ship the simplest working version of an idea, get real people using it, and treat any failure as a lesson for the next attempt.