What It Takes to Build Music Tech in a Resistant Industry

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, I will start in five seconds.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hey guys and welcome back to the podcast. Today we have Mark in the studio. Welcome Mark.

MR M C BAMFORD

Good morning, Just, I think, depending on where you are.

Jakob Wredstrøm

It looks very cozy where you are. Mark, I have been excited to have you on the podcast. We had a conversation about a month ago, which I found incredibly interesting. And I'll sort of set the scene and you can do an introduction of yourself in one moment. But what I found interesting about our conversation is your background and your perspective. So you're a founder right now, but you've also operated as an investor. You've had a long career. And to some degree, you're outside of the music industry, but now operating very much as an insider of aspects of it. So we'll have a conversation today about, let's say, countering the status quo of the music industry or maybe talking about some of the things that might not function perfectly as a founder. And that's going to be sort of a conversation around that today. But Mark, for the people who don't know you, who are you and what do?

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, so, thanks so much, Jake, for having us on today as well. So, who am I actually? That's kind of a good question to start with. Actually, it's weird for me to start from when I was a kid, and it's not going to be a very long story, but I grew up overseas from the age of five or six years old. So I grew up in Hong Kong and then in the Middle East in Bahrain and then in Pakistan, doing all my schooling back in the UK. And then obviously my first job was very natural to go and work overseas. So, and then I sort of spent time in Hong Kong and Australia and the Middle East. And then more recently now in London, married with a two year old daughter at the moment. So, so for me, that's kind of, you know, my means of personality is very much formed by that sort of international, different cultures, different places, kind of adapting to move into new places quite a lot. Quite often going. moving to a new country to get a job and never having even visited the country, let alone, you know, had a network there. So kind of had a few reboots in my life. I never thought I'd end up in the countryside in Essex, which is actually not too far from where I was born. So that's kind of an interesting place to come full circle back here to have a family. But that's a bit about me. But as you alluded to, my career is a slightly strange one to where I'm at today. I find it. It's not really a career. It's kind of like a bunch of sections slammed together. But broadly speaking, I started my career working at the Swedish tech giant Ericsson, selling mobile phone infrastructure in Hong Kong and Southern China at the time. And spent about three or four or five years doing that, maybe five years, I think, total. And then we won a big contract that I was in charge of. I didn't get a big fat bonus check and retire. That was not really the corporate way. That's perhaps why I find... myself here today, my own company, but my boss thought it'd be a good idea now that I'd done all the pre-sales business stuff to go build the infrastructure that I'd sold. So then I spent another four five years actually constructing mobile phone infrastructure and kind of some R &D and some quite deep tech like world firsts and all that kind of stuff with Ericsson. So that first 10 years actually is probably the first 10 years that I rely on most today.

MR M C BAMFORD

in terms of technology and building stuff. my second 10 years, cause I've got about 30 years was much more consulting. I was working at places like PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm and Acom, which is a big engineering construction consulting firm as well in the Middle East, but largely driving innovation, like problem solving in different ways out of box thinking and that leaning into strategy and biz dev and stuff like that, but about 10 years doing that. Then the last 10 years, I found myself going, do you know what? Maybe I should try and build something myself or at least lean into that startup community with the skills that I'd got. And I sort of helped out quite a few startups. I invested in a few. And yeah, and then five years ago, I kind of came across. So I fell in love with the video thing about seven or eight years ago, but then, really kicked off the Viktrs thing about five years ago as very much an outsider in that industry of the music industry, which is where we started our journey at Viktrs.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Tell a bit about Viktrs work you guys do.

MR M C BAMFORD

So, Viktr's, what we basically have done is we've tried to take the concept of video being a very powerful tool, both from a messaging and storytelling and engagement perspective, probably the most powerful tool that we have, but then look at the problem that we're looking to solve, is when we look at the business models of the big players in that space, which is the YouTubes of this world and others, they're largely advertising businesses. So they're actually not making money out of the video itself. They're making money out of all the ad gaps in between, above and below, sometimes interrupting the video as well, and they're making money out of that. And this is kind of, obviously social media is much the same. And we just thought, well, this is kind of crazy because firstly, that is a model that just is kind of a mega view model. Everything has to be huge. The value of a video, especially music videos, is like, how many millions of views did you get? And that's just to feed the business model of the YouTubes of this world, not to pick on them too much because I don't think they get too upset with me picking on them. But we saw that as being a problem because content creators don't own their own destiny. They have to rely on the algorithm. They don't really get any money from those streams in the vast majority of cases. And they certainly don't get any data or insights as to what's going on with the audience in the video. What's the ROI? You know, and that kind of stuff. So what we did at Viktr's was something very simple. said, well, let's dump, get rid of the ad model because that's what YouTube use. And it would be silly of me to actually try and beat YouTube at its own game. That would be insanity because actually they're very good at what they do. So let's do the opposite of YouTube. Let's focus on the video content itself. Let's...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

create a method or a business model and technology and approach that enables a single view of a video to create value. And that value can be of data and it can be of revenue. And what we then did to do that, to try and unlock this dormant value was the simplest of things, which is when someone's watching a music videos in particular, but any video content from cooking to

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

documentaries, to politics, to sports, when they're watching video they're normally curious about something that they see or they feel like what's that, where's that, who's that. All we did was create quite an elegant model to turn curiosity into discovery of that thing, to turn discovery into engagement, explore, like, share and then obviously to an outcome like buy that item is the obvious one. but learn about that idea, find out about that place, donate to the charity that's behind this content, find out about the storytellers, find out about the events. All these points of kind of 360 engagement of curiosity within a video was like, well, let's unlock that. And that's what we've done. So what it's resulted in effectively is a model that so far we're measuring value today. So data is kind of...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

what we create and we measure how many clicks and engagement points we have within the video. This gives us hundreds of data points more than YouTube's simple how many people have seen the video. tells us that 86 things like 86 % of the people that watch the video wanted to know about the shoes. 36 % of them click through to the shoes website and 2.1 % bought the shoe. This is kind of the true

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm-hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

like holy grail of marketing data for video. So essentially we're really a data business wrapped up in video from that perspective. Yeah. And as of today, just like the projects that we've been doing, running tests on largely in music, but also we've now done projects in the food space and we've even done stuff in American politics, which is a whole nother conversation. And I think it's important actually while we build stuff in music,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm. Incredibly interesting.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

And there's a lot of people, tech companies and founders out there, we're very privileged at Viktr's that we can actually take exactly the same tech and apply it to food. Because curiosity of video is exactly the same in a food video as it is in music video. Documentaries, political speeches, sports, wine, horses, the list is endless. And that's a real privilege to be able to do that. But this is kind of what we've done about...

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

MR M C BAMFORD

uh, Viktr's to date. And I think so far with the projects we've run, uh, we're seeing that we could generate around 150 times more revenue out of one view than YouTube's model. And in some cases we have projects that have gone up to 900 times. You're getting up near like yields of one, one dollar or one pound per view, um, type thing. So the whole idea for us originally with music. was to enable a music artist to earn a living from their music videos, to turn the music video from a marketing cost, which is essentially what it is, into a revenue stream. And certainly I do see that, if we're, you know, poking fun a bit at YouTube here, guess, but I think, I think Spotify get, you know, raked over the calls a lot for not paying out artists fairly. I actually think YouTube are not too far behind in that line of people that really should be paying artists a lot more than they are currently. There's lots of artists that are making money on YouTube and it is a great tool for reach. So there's value there. So that's kind of what we've done.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. It's really interesting. you know, one of the things that I thought found really interesting about our original conversation is sort of the commentary of on the music industry. So, you know, I didn't know how to precisely position this when we had our intro talk around 20 minutes ago. One of the words I use, which is not the actual word, but that's the closest in my vocabulary would be shit talk or like, like actually talk about the music industry as you see it as an insider or outsider or like

MR M C BAMFORD

You

Jakob Wredstrøm

with your perspective. So what surprised you the most by entering a space with music?

MR M C BAMFORD

think the thing that surprised me the most was that actually

MR M C BAMFORD

I was surprised by how little innovation there was. think you've got to recognize as well, as I've learned, I think over the last three or four or five years is that companies, big companies don't innovate, they follow. So while the big labels might have innovation departments and I have conversations with them now and again and they're like, well, have you done this with a hundred artists and are you making money and are you… you know, over that million pound a year mark, whatever those things are, those KPIs that they seek to explore. It's like, well, that's kind of established at that point. That's not really innovation necessarily. It's not disruptive innovation. And I think I underestimated the level of status quo and the ability of people say, do you know what? We've got 10 departments in our company and they do these 10 things and that's all we're doing. We're making cookies out of our cookie factory. Let's just make more cookies. If you've got tech that makes making a cookie faster or making a cookie cheaper or actually doing something with an efficiency, then that innovation does exist. But they're not looking for someone to say, people don't want cookies anymore. They want... you know, smoothie fruit drink or something that's better for them. You know, that's not what they do. They're in that industry and it is a numbers game. And I think if you sat on the board as I have a few companies, that's an obvious thing to say, right? That's their job as a board is to drive efficiency, drive scale, you know, dominate, you know, make more money, more profit. And that sometimes is a counter, is very much a counter, counterpoint to innovation.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So I have a lot of these conversations and criticizing the music industry in the way you do oftentimes is a default from a person who doesn't know much, but you do know much and you do have a background. Let me explain because it's actually.

MR M C BAMFORD

I would say I'm quite happily naive as well.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I have a point. have a point. So usually I hear these from people who don't know much, but you do have a vast experience, well, both in this space, but also from other spaces. I would imagine that your statements here comes from a comparison of other places you've worked. So can you explain that comparison? Like where does that frustration observation come from? If you were to sort of draw it on your experience within other fields.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah. I mean, many, a lot of those roles I had at PWC and ACOM, which was like the 10 years prior to being in the sort of startup space, my role was to innovate within those businesses, to think differently and problem solve in different ways. And actually, you know, I loved those roles, but I knew that 90 % of the people I was working with didn't like me at all because I was being disruptive. I was suggesting that we think beyond, you know, the meat and potatoes of what they'd been taught to do every single day. you know, it's, that just means actually what it meant for me at the time was actually, if you take an organization like PwC in Australia, and I loved my time there, I think there was two or 300 partners that I could have worked with, but I ended up working with about maybe 10, maybe 20 partners on an annual basis. And those tended to be the senior guys looking after the big accounts or in leadership roles because they got there by being okay and comfortable with being challenged and being pushed outside their comfort zone. And so for me, that was kind of always the decade of behavior I saw before I came into music and, or with Viktrs. And so I wasn't that surprised to see it there. We did choose a strategy to work around that and we still have the labels on our. on our roadmap, but at the right time, with the right leverage, with the right proof points, so that when those guys ask me, have you done this a hundred times before? Yeah, we have, as you read in the magazine article in Billboard about what we're doing, or TechCrunch, or how we've helped transform the music industry one video at a time, one view at a time, and this is what we've built. But that's kind of just playing with the ecosystem in the way that the ecosystem operates. and not trying to drag the label into crazy innovation world, which is high risk when they've got, you know, other priorities at a board level to drive value, which is more of spreadsheet-based approach. So that's, yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So I can imagine these big organizations also have limited budget for innovation. I'm just gonna say a random number, let's say 2 to 3 % of their sort of spending would probably be associated to high new innovation efforts. That might be completely wrong. I'm just saying a number. But if you compare that to the revenue of powerful companies in our space, that might not equate to actually that much of a budget. Do you think that's the- The reason why there's not a lot of room for these two things or what is the reason why?

MR M C BAMFORD

I was going to say capitalism is kind of the reason why. mean, a board, you know, even at YouTube, a board is there and the shareholders' interests are actually in keeping their business model and making it leaner, more efficient and bigger to build profit. That's kind of like the fiduciary responsibility of a board, as we know it, of course, in simple terms. But I think the music industry is different from that. I think... But I think when I say the music industry, I see it in two very different lights. One, the majors, and two, the independents. The people that are, you know, don't like to use pyramids too much in this world, but if the labels are at the top of the pyramid with the smaller number of artists, sure, representing the pinnacle of value, you know, from a revenue perspective. But the volume of content that's coming out, the bottom of the pyramid is a huge, huge space.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

MR M C BAMFORD

And we always, when we started our journey, focused on the base of the pyramid. And that was because of the mantra of the business would be, well, if one video, one view of one video can create a dollar, if we can get that to work for small independent artists, that would be amazing because they don't have all the marketing and all the support and all the budgets to help them do that. But if we can actually unlock that dormant value, that's the, that's a major part of the pyramid. that we can service and create value for. And that's kind of what we've done. And when we're bringing AI tools and stuff like that in this investment round that we just kicked off, it's all about giving independent artists access to those tools to begin with, because actually if we can empower them to turn a video into a profitable view, then that changes the game. And if the big labels are like looking at the yield numbers and the data that we're generating. that story will help us unlock those relationships with Sony, with Warner, with Universal, but with leverage and power on our side because we have a model that's working for dozens or hundreds of independent artists at that point and they can use our tech or not and that becomes leverage. So essentially for us, we still want to work with the labels because that's where a lot of the big names are and that's where some of the budgets in the brand side are coming from. But actually, we want to enable the base of the pyramid first, improve our model, that it can make money for the smallest artist. And if that model can just be replicated and scaled easily, just by bandwidth basically and storage to service a much bigger artist, then that's fine. We've built the right model because it's sustainable at the grassroots level. And that's really kind of where we're still at today, although we've pivoted into non-musical stuff as well. But that was still the mantra of the business from day one.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, that makes sense. One of things I'm thinking about is, now you've been on this journey for a while and it's very evident that the problem you're trying to solve has a lot of relevance and the impact of a well implemented system would be very beneficial. But as you mentioned yourself, the stakeholders are... difficult to for a past that's maybe like a reluctance to innovation. And you come from industries where you see a bigger, larger opportunities, more budget to do change and maybe also, you know, more probable and sensible path to run a startup. What is sort of your, what's it called? What you know now, what you didn't know then, what you have pursued this space, not discarding what you have now, what you're pursuing, but what you know it would be this. this hard and maybe, you know, such a long path for innovating in this space.

MR M C BAMFORD

think our first fundraise, we said like, look, it was kind of a different time back then as well. And we've had quite a lot of disruption in society from COVID to Ukraine to what's going on in the Middle East. And while I can't control those, that's another topic for another time. The one mistake I made is I raised enough money to build the tech to measure value, create data that was going to be the new foundation of how we would measure value in video. And I assumed that if we created enough interest in just the data side as a pre-revenue business, that would be enough to raise capital. But then I think the world caught up. with us a bit and like, well, unless you're making a million a year and you're growing by 10, 20 % per month, all the VCs kind of like exits stage rights at that point for us. Not all, but you know, I think it's not too controversial.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, so basically saying that the funding landscape changed and then it being the business as it is in this specific industry and also being pre-revenue, like it's sort of less of a natural choice for many VCs, I guess.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, I mean, what was interesting, I was very fearful of talking about our revenue until recently, just before Christmas actually, so there's a while back, three or four months ago now. But I was talking to a guy from a company called Scrub the Deck, which is, they look at kind of auditing pitch decks and stuff. And he said, actually, you have made money, right? I'm like, yeah, we made money in US politics, selling a project as a SaaS project as a white label. And we're making money actually with a cooking project as a white label, as a SaaS. Cause we'll talk about that then. said, well, I haven't turned two projects into a hundred projects. So I've just hit my lamp. And I felt very embarrassed about that. He's like, well, you didn't have, you, weren't expecting those projects, right? You weren't, they were like inbound inquiries and you've done them and you've made money from them. For what have you learned from those projects? And actually those revenue projects have taught us. we need to remove some of the upfront barriers to entry to do white label projects, to roll it out. And so the learnings from those two projects plus the music, 30 or so music projects we've done is actually manifest now in this new fundraise. We need to build some AI in the basement, some automation, some automatic monetization, some scalability to actually enable us to grow. And so while we have been pre-revenue, actually, one of my mistakes definitely was being a little bit ashamed that we hadn't turned two projects into 100. We didn't have any PR, any marketing, any salespeople. We didn't have funding for it. We didn't raise money for it. We raised money to build something and create data that would measure these types of engagements in new ways. And so now the messaging in the pitch deck is very much around first-party data around a completely new way to measure the value of every single video view, moving away from chasing the view counter up and algorithms and stuff. And that's, you know, that's been something of a bit of an eye opener, you know, for me a year or two ago when we were like looking at that to sort of say we have to drop the music messaging because investors don't necessarily want to.

MR M C BAMFORD

Get involved in businesses that are just out to help music artists make money because that's kind of a very emotional based pitch. Whereas our pitch right now is that we're on a roadmap already on the way to become one of the largest creators of first party data of behavior within video. And that's suddenly, you know, empowered by AI and scaled by AI and, you know, delivering value to content creators in new and different ways. In music, but also in fashion and sports and cooking and even politics. Which is still, think, one of our more interesting use cases that we went from music, music videos being applied to politics in Nevada. It's kind of strange in an election cycle year. And that's quite an interesting angle for us to explore that we are with some guys in California at the moment.

Jakob Wredstrøm

So in other words, sort of to put it on the edge, you found ways to monetize the accidental projects rather than music. And I think that's to some degree symptomatic of music, which is also why it makes this space really interesting and also very, very dangerous to navigate as a founder is that there is for many different reasons, which you can take many different angles and arguments on.

MR M C BAMFORD

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Limitations to the paying willingness of the industry at large and also the specifics. Maybe because there's lack of innovation, maybe because there's too much gatekeeping, maybe because there's just simply not enough money to go around. And for whatever reason, seems to these opportunities being much more obvious of monetization in other industries. So what is... What's your takeaway from that when it comes to music? Like do you think even it's realistic to have a go-to-market strategy in music, or is that something that needs to come down the line as you pursue other industries?

MR M C BAMFORD

Yes, the second one. I'm going to try and answer questions faster and more concisely. I tend to ramble a little bit. I get on my passion wagon and then I'm off. No, I think definitely the second one. I sat down, and I'll leave his name out of this, very smart lawyer that's been in the industry a long time. And I sat down with him at lunch a few months ago now and explained what we were doing in American politics to use exactly the same tech stack that can measure what people are interested in inside of a video.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah. Yep.

MR M C BAMFORD

For a different outcome in politics and in cooking and wine and equestrian and skiing and all these other things. And he said, do you know what? Go away. I love that you've built this through music, but go away and prove it in those other areas and come back and music will pay attention, but they won't be the first. And this is a lawyer that lives and breathes in the music space. Coming from that individual, especially, it carried so much weight. So our go-to-market strategy right now is we do our fundraise for 750k, we use half of that to build the AI tech we want. The other half, we actually want to do about a dozen or so projects in the next 12 months. Some of those are big projects and some of those are small, but at a portion, about 30 % are music, 70 % are non-music. So things like some of the clients we've already got signed up for that are coming from the adventure travel space, makeup space, cooking, obviously politics is another, but obviously the whole idea is by the, within 12 months, we've got 12 amazing stories that we've been able to tell. But yes, a portion of those are in music and the North Star that I paint for the team is like. Let's make sure we do a project that can get on the front cover of Billboard magazine, of Rolling Stone magazine, that this is actually the future of how content creators and musicians can actually get rich rewards from, data and revenue and brand deals from their music video. But equally, I want to make sure that for our politics work, we ended up with the front cover of Time Magazine for our documentary work on the front page of Nat Geo. On all these kind of childhood fantasies I have of those magazines that perhaps I like and I've read over the years. But all of that is about getting our shares up, our share price from X to Y. So we can do a bigger valuation deal within 12 to 18 months of 20 million pounds plus, and then actually have all the tools in the basement to scale. So this is one big year of

MR M C BAMFORD

Building, improving the monetization and the data side and building fear of missing out, build leverage, build use cases so that I can, you know, be on the front page of not me, but the company can be on the front page of, you know, billboard. And then suddenly get a call from Sony, Hey, will this work for our artists? Sure. You know, sign up here and you know, it's all automated from here on in all AI agents and all the brand deals are there for you. And, you know, but that's just about where we're at. Today versus perhaps next year. But it's about leverage, I guess, is the goal.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, and I see this sort of, it's always a fine line to decide when to exit music, when to take a detour, come back, or, because, you know, as a founder in general speaking, it's about having an industry focus is quite important. But then again, if you have like a pull somewhere else, like the actual pivot away from music or the conversation is quite important. And, you know,

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah. I mean, just to give you one example, Jacob, this is, I'll leave the names of the politics stuff that we did in the state. I'll leave the actual names out of it. But we made like $26,000 out of one project that lasted two weeks for one video that lasted less than a minute that we enabled and provided our service for as a white label. To find $26,000 for one, the economics of the American political system is very different from the economics of East London independent music artists. And I think the question you asked earlier, what's a learning, which is linked to the question you just asked about, do you follow music or do you have like this blended music, non-music approach? You got to go where the money is. You got to go where the budgets are for the, for the market that you want. And music is, there might be budgets at the top of the pyramid, you know, for the Beyonce's and the, you know, the dua lipa and all that kind of stuff. But There's not many of those, whereas, you know, in the base of pyramid, there's not that much budget. So we have to find a different way of unlocking that value. Because I still truly believe that even though the budgets are quite small in or non-existent in the independent space, people are holding down five jobs just to be able to continue their art. The power and the power of music to create culture is built on. A foundation of independent music. And if we don't work out models that can help nurture that, that base of that fed, the foundation of the industry, it's going to really struggle to survive. And we're going to end up with AI tools that, you know, people can either not afford or choose not to use, or, you know, the big labels are leaning into that. And suddenly we'll find a lot of the grassroots of human creativity within that industry will wither and disappear. So.

MR M C BAMFORD

Behooves stupid idiots like me to go, actually, we have proven a model that can generate 150 times more revenue on average per view. It's not a mega view model. It's not chasing the view count up model. It's a yield model. It's a data model. It's a revenue model. And that's a different, and if you can make that sustainable within this grassroots, that's a sustainable business as well. Much more so than, you know, doing a one-off project for a list celebrity that you might make a hundred grand out of, but then there's not that many of those around. So, you know, let's look to the grassroots. Let's look at sustainable commercial models. It's kind of profits, but with purpose linked to it very heavily. And I think the music world still is very much, I mean, the name of the business is still, I don't think it's going to change until some branding genius and we may have a bigger budget to change it, but.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

MR M C BAMFORD

The name of the business is named after the first music video that was on MTV, which was Video Killed the Radio Star. So we're always going to have some, actually one of my investors told me they didn't even know that and they'd invested in the company two years ago. So I should probably make that message a bit more clearer. But yeah, the music industry has a lot of very passionate people in it with a lot of purpose and a lot of people struggling as well, both techie and creatively as well.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

I think at the end of the day, like what I see, I get to speak with a lot of people and I get to speak with lot of startups and I of course get to study this space a lot. And it's particular, resilient founders that stick through all the alternative energies that you could put on other things and just stick on music that actually sees the success. Then also, how do I put it this way? I've yet to meet. Many cases and situations where a founder would say this would be an equitable return on investment compared to what I could have done if I succeeded somewhere else. Like that is the reality of the music industry and innovation here. It can still be impactful. You can still make a great business and also make a great return on investment. But the reality is that it is painful. It is hard. And the reward will probably be less than if you did succeed elsewhere. But it is that I think also is very affected by this very fact that innovation maybe serves the industry less than other industries because ultimately it's not attractive enough and that leads to a lot of issues with capital inflow and also motivation and the industry structures and talent themselves. But if you were to look at entirely as an investor, investing into the music industry, would you put your money here or would you put it somewhere else? And I'm not talking about your company in particular because again, you're raise and you have your own storytelling, but just looking at the industry at large. Yeah. With the industry at large, would you put your money here or would you put it elsewhere?

MR M C BAMFORD

You

MR M C BAMFORD

All of it into music, all of it!

MR M C BAMFORD

Think it depends on the investor. think...

Jakob Wredstrøm

But for you, if you were to make a decision and you had extra capital.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, I would definitely want to support. If I exit the business and made decent money, if I was a rich person, I would definitely look to lean in. But with a different eye on multiples and a different eye on horizons of exit in the music industry versus others, there is other places where you can make more money. You know, for example, we could have gone into politics. Rather than music and just double down on politics in America. And we might be a much richer company and our investors be a lot richer perhaps. But that's not what we did, right? But your question is a scenario based question, right? So if we'd done that, I probably wouldn't be as happy as I am. I'd probably be anonymous. I'd probably have to be hiding from every single Elon Musk supporter. I would have a different DNA to my life and I'm... very, very happy that the thing that I'm leaning into in the music industry is a wholesome thing. And I think investors that actually also recognize the power of their capital to create cultural change and to create cultural significance might not be a share price up investment. If it's all on a spreadsheet then arguably it's going to be music's always going to struggle, always. I'm going to look at the bottom line. And that's kind of what seemed to be a bit of a critique of ours, but obviously we've tweaked our journey to embrace other genres of content. We've tweaked it to very much a data first, the data that we're unlocking. I mean, we get people from the big ad agency saying to us the other week, we've never seen data like 360 degree behavioral data like this inside a video. Yes, we're measuring click-throughs and shopping and blah, But you know,

MR M C BAMFORD

So we're getting great support from outside the music industry now, but would I put my money in the music industry? I think I would. But I think, you know, with your investors in the music space, it tends to be a big, big dollop of ice cream of passion in there. Wow. Especially in the early stages. I mean, it's quite hard. Mean, I've tried to raise money in this space and found it very difficult with a purely musical focus. That's why we've embraced these other messages and these other projects in the last year or two. And of course, I would say anybody running a startup, especially in the music industry, feels a bit like a cult in the sense you've really, the passion and purpose you're going to have behind it. You know, think it's always said to me today, what's the key fuel that keeps your business going? Charm. Just charming people to help you to lean in, to believe in the purpose, to believe in the mission, to believe in the North Star, to, you know, give you a bit more time to pay a bill. You know, there is, there's a big element of that as well. You might not have that if you're in medicine or finance. They wouldn't, you wouldn't get that level of flexibility. With that as I do here, because the nature of the, of the, of the company is a slightly more empathic one, a slightly softer one that has a bit more of a cultural, element to it. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I know you didn't ask me this question, but I will, it behooves me to kind of say it, but one of the, model that we've created that takes us away from the advertising algorithm style business model. Of the major players like YouTube and the social media platforms where people's curiosity and exploration and engagement and education and learning and sharing of the things they're curious about within the video doesn't use any algorithms. It's using a person's own curiosity. It's really good to have an alternative business model for the future of the media and society as a whole.

MR M C BAMFORD

That is perhaps a safer one that moves away from clickbait, fake news, addictive behaviors, gamification, algorithm driven advertising. And then actually one of the most powerful things that we've done, I think, to an investor today to answer the question from a different perspective is, wow, this company actually, Victus have created a kind of a business model, which is the alternative. It's like the opposite of YouTube's and they can make money from it. And it doesn't use algorithms and it doesn't have all that gamification and things like that. That's the key to unlocking a safer internet is to actually have business models that are more, I would say ethical, but have a different focus on them. And, you know, I watch the news most mornings and there's always something on about, you know, someone being sued for some horrible event that happened because of social media, because of the algorithm, because of the addictive nature. And while we're not saying, absolutely not saying we've solved the problem verbatim to investors.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

MR M C BAMFORD

Investing in a business at least is holding a bit of a candle up to a better way is a good thing, but it's not based on spreadsheet Not right now. Not right now

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And I think very few startups can be based on a spreadsheet unless they've really reached that critical mass, which takes a whole lot of time, whole lot of capital and the right industry, to be honest. Mark, I love this conversation and it was sort of like a small back and forth talking about your company, but also how you look at it. And my takeaway from this is really, well, not somewhat dark. Think that would be wrong to say, but I understand. How hard it can be music. And I applaud when there's opportunities elsewhere that you can take and benefit and monetize on to then ultimately come back and be present and solve problems in music. But that's really how it is for most, and including for us at Amplitude. Again, we're very, very set on having a presence of music. But the reality is it takes us...

MR M C BAMFORD

God, absolutely.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Four times as much effort to make the same amount of deals, to make the same amount of revenue and also finding cases we want to co-own and co-invest in. That is an untapped opportunity because if it's that hard, but the problem is that evident, you know, if you stay long enough and you're smart enough, that would, you would reap the benefits of that. But it's really, can you stay alive for that long to be that present for that problem? That's the big question.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, I think, I think for us at Viktrs, we've been through what's called the valley of death, as they call it on the sort of journey of a startup. We might still be in it, to be honest as well. And we're going to work our damnedest hardest to get out of it and continue on and grow. And this kind of just starting a fundraise now is, you know, the right time for us with this sort of shift outside of music.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

MR M C BAMFORD

But I'd love to be in a space where I come back and go, wow, we did so much good in the, let's say the politics space in America. Like, hey, we've helped the Democrats with the midterms and we've been part of that journey. But hey, all the money we've made out of that is going into East London or English, know, grassroots music artists to help them scale and help them. So, you know, it's nice to have the model that can span across both. Yeah. And I'm sure that would not, that'd be a nice story for an interview like this in two or three years time, right? Like how did we make that money to work over here? And I think if we'd stay purely in music, we would be in a world of trouble, I think, you know, if we just stayed over there. Now the world is kind of our oyster with any content genre because curiosity is ubiquitous and video is huge.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Mm.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

MR M C BAMFORD

So yeah, yeah. I would ask if you had any tips for me, Jacob, from that perspective.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Okay, this is interesting.

MR M C BAMFORD

This is another hour and a half.

Jakob Wredstrøm

No, okay, so this is my take. I don't necessarily know the specifics of your round. We've been communicating back and forth on email and I will have soon. My general take on music is that there are a few different categories of angles you can have on music technology. One, when it's early stage, really it's all about just the storytelling. But storytelling of I can get to somewhere to prove something, but the amount of money you can ask for that is very little. One of the things that you will experience in general as a startup founder, especially music, is the fact that you can raise one round does not mean you can raise the second. And that is where I see most businesses fail in this space is they have an assumption that the general rules of being able to have multiple rounds, which counts in most, you interesting startups with interesting founders doesn't necessarily apply. Like there might only just be that one pre-seed and you need to make the business work within that. Like that's one thing I see. I think maybe you've been sort of feeling that yourself as well to some degree.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, 100%. mean, that's the reason to go to change our business model and also to embrace non-musical content.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm. Because when you argue on something, let's not call it emotional, but when you play on sentiment with music, which is one of the strongest sides you could do early stage, that stops really fast when the first amount of risk capital has been deployed. So the way to circumvent that, I think, is whatever you do, get to revenue and proof points as fast as you can. Like that's one thing. And when you aren't sort of in situation like yours, which is very typical and also like that's the nature of what we do, I think it's to some degree lowering the expectation of investors and making something super tangible. Like, okay, this is the valuation, this is the comparable cases, and this is like a multiple that could be realistic, and that number should be relatively low. because if you try to sell on storytelling the second time, I think most people would have this sort of fundamental disbelief. And that's nothing to do with the actual case. That's just what I see over and over again. Like the reluctance of believing storytelling in music disappears in round two. So what really only counts is the realism to get to a tangible result from round two. And it's about lowering expectations, lowering the multiples, lowering the valuation, lowering the amount of capital you need to raise. And again, you said, think you said 150,000, like that's brilliant. That's a brilliant round two in music tech as I see it is you have something, you've proved yourself. Now you need to prove something else. Do that with as little capital as possible to get to the next stage and not shoot for the moon. That sort of...

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

In your case, that's sort of what I've seen and actually, as far as I hear, you're doing something that I repeatedly see as the right choice, is being grounded.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah. by the way, it was 750 we're raising. But actually, was defending that there's some guy in America. I mean, this is the American thing versus the English thing. How come so small amount for this thing you're doing, you need a lot more. I'm like, well, actually, to get through the next 12 months to get to evaluation of, you know, 20 million plus, this actually is the smallest amount of money we can do to do that. And, you know,

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, okay, it's 750. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yes.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah, so it's actually, I am getting a different number, but I'm actually applying the principle, I think, in the right way.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah, but as far as I'm concerned, American math does not count in Europe. It's, it's that simple. It's that simple because, you know, math for raising capital and exiting, like the math needs to have some sort of sum that goes together.

MR M C BAMFORD

Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

And if you just take one component out of the startup math and try to apply it to the Europe, like nothing makes sense in that math. So math needs to be very specific to what region and territory you're sort of navigating. And that also counts for industries, it counts from territories, it counts for local economies. Like, you know, let's be honest, the UK investment economy is interesting right now. So all of these plays in, all of these vectors.

MR M C BAMFORD

I have so many more questions but we can take that another time.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Good. Mark, this has been brilliant. And I love having these conversations that are a bit more sort of fluent and a bit more sort just talking about your experience. So I appreciate it, Mark. It's been beautiful to have you on and thank you.

MR M C BAMFORD

No, it's been a real pleasure, mate. And thank you for having me, so to say. I would say as well, just a last shout out, one of our categories is podcasting. So actually, you know, when we were saying at the beginning, it's a nice place to finish. I just did our first podcast interview for our new podcast. We're basically using our own technology at Viktr's on our own podcasting platform. So we're kind of customer zero. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but we thought, you know what?

Jakob Wredstrøm

Yeah.

MR M C BAMFORD

Let's apply this model that we've created to our own podcast series is called the outsiders. And it's about doing exactly where you teed up today, taking someone from outside the industry that succeeded in that industry. did the first interview. It's a video based podcast. It's in the filmed in the real world, not over this. This would be a lot easier actually, because not only are the outsiders. So my first interview was with a ex Canary Wharf.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Hmm, interesting.

MR M C BAMFORD

City of London banking guy that in his mid late 20s decided to quit all that life that his parents had invested significant amounts of money and time in and went skiing and decided he was going to open up a ski wear brand called Oosk. Now this did this 10 years ago and now it's quite a successful ski wear brand. So it's won awards like the King's Award for Commerce and all these other things. But we do the interviews outside as well. So for him, we did the podcast interview at an indoor ski slope we have just north of London in minus eight on the ski slope there, wearing his ski wear with the helmets for safety reasons. And it's called Outsiders and we have Viktr's enabling it, of course. So all the concepts and projects and awards and ideas and things that are driven him. We can interact with as well. So we are going to get around to transforming the podcast world as well. Yeah.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Amazing. Well, I look forward to it. I definitely haven't sort of monetized this podcast to any degree. So I think that could be a smart thing for me to explore as well.

MR M C BAMFORD

Well, you should be selling Copenhagen posters and a subscription to some kind of plant, you know, company that delivers a subscription model for plants.

Jakob Wredstrøm

Thank

Jakob Wredstrøm

First step, now everything will make sense. Thank you, Mark. Talk soon.

MR M C BAMFORD

All right, I really appreciate it, man. It'd be an absolute pleasure. All right, cheers.