Artist Management Through Music Tech with Stagent

The music industry is not always about... It's not the best industry to be in to makemoney. But combine the passion for this industry,the music industry, DJ specifically maybe, electronic and software, it's just what Iwanna wake up for.

It's not often that I'm flabbergasted froma product demo, but I was with Stagent a few weeks ago when I got the demo of their product. This is a really interesting talk. Misha was really honest and had a lot of greatinsights of how it is to be a founder in the music industry. Hi Misha and welcome to Sound Connections.

It's very good to have you here. Hey, thanks for having me, Jacob. Thank you. You and me, we met at a demo because one ofthe companies that I work with is a booking company and we were using a system that wehad, we felt okay about it, but we wanted to try something different. And then we ended up having a demo with youabout Stagent, which is a really interesting system.

Can you briefly explain me what is Stagent? Correct, yeah, Stagent is a platform for bookingagencies as well as artists to manage their bookings from agency. So... We take care of everything related to thebooking, getting there, being at the show, payments, invoicing, contracts, you name it,everything related to it.

Yeah. And what was so interesting for me when I went through the demo was that it was so intuitive. And it was so thought through. And it's really clear that there's been avery clear vision behind the product, but also the understanding of the industry andsort of what different needs are. So, but we'll go get back to the product verysoon because this is a founders episode.

So it is as much about you and your journeyand how that led to Stagent. So who are you? Well, my name is Mischa. I'm 29 years old. And actually from the start of 14, 15 or something, I always found myself busy with...

business things, doing little jobs, side hustles,that kind of stuff. I actually started DJing when I was 14. Did some gigs here and there. That came to a point where the attendanceofficer sent a letter to my parents that I had to perform better at school. So I wasn't able to perform anymore untilmy 18.

And at that point, yeah, it was kind of harshfor me because I had to focus on school, but I wanted to do other things like perform. Back when I became 18, I tried to pick upwhere I left off, but figured out that I wasn't really relevant anymore because due to theage of being 14 was way cooler to see me perform I think than my 18s.

So I figured that I needed to find a solutionfor that and I started a booking agency to help my fellow DJ friends with their bookings. as well as get myself on primetime, most ofthe events that we were doing. So that was actually very interesting. So we got to a point where we did like 30bookings or even 40 bookings a month.

And we realized that we needed software forthat because we were using spreadsheets and it was kind of getting a mess and sort ofhandmade invoices everywhere and contracts that didn't make any sense. So that was the starting point actually forstaging where we started doing, yeah, the business part. Yeah, so you're sort of an entrepreneur fromthe very beginning.

That felt very natural to you. Yes. Yeah, it's something that always intriguedme in a way. Yeah. But before you went to Stagent, after thisstory, you had some experiences in different companies where you worked. Can you just sort of go through the timelineof what you did until you started your own booking agency as an 18-year-old and thenyou started Stagent?

What happened in between there? Yeah, correct. So let me think. I was about 19 or 20 when I had that bookingagency and also did quite some bookings myself, but it always struck me that there neededto be like a platform to manage it all. And I knew there was some competition in thatarea, but I didn't have any connections, no money, no skill set.

I didn't know how to develop software. So flew, flee from it and I then dived into theworld of building websites. It was also something that I found necessaryfor myself. I needed a DJ website to sell myself onlinesort of by myself on Google.

And I really liked working in WordPress andit was sort of creative process for me. So at that time I started doing some sidehustles with creating websites for friends and for some small businesses and stuff. And that made me. I'll be in touch with a casino brand and Istarted working for this casino company that owned 10 casinos in the Netherlands.

They needed a new website and all of a suddenI was building a website for this company and it was so much fun that made me realizethat this was something that I found myself very creative in and it was just a processof figuring things out. I won't call myself a developer but rathera professional Googler.

So in that process, I decided to stop withthe booking agency, stop performing as a DJ and go full on the web development while workingfor this company. Then the company was bought by Novometics,a big casino brand in Austria. And during that process, I became a bit moreinvested in development processes of the company, but I had to travel a lot.

So I... didn't really like that anymore. And then I ended up with a hosting company. That hosting company started off at the supportteam to learn about everything related to the products. And then I ran up to like a marketing team. They didn't really had a marketing team atthat time. And yeah, I just created it with some of mycolleagues and yeah, we started doing some marketing, funnelling, incorporate sort oftools that the company relied on related to marketing.

It was really fun. But also the websites were going like crazyon the site. I did that as a side hustle still in a veryspecific niche for DJs and YouTubers where they sell merchandise and that took off. So the hosting company gave me the freedomto work less for them to really ramp up the research for my own company.

And then I decided to go full on that company. And yeah. started really the first steps of my entrepreneurship as a solo entrepreneur. And I did that for five years and then I realizedthat I really didn't like to work for other brands so I really wanted to work for my ownbrand. So I sold that company and that gave me themoney and the knowledge of the five years before that to start a company like StageIt and that's what I met with now.

Yeah. That's an interesting journey because it reallysounds like entrepreneurship has been your own only option in life. That's sort of what you felt you were madefor. Is that true? Yes. Yeah. I just really like to work a lot. I don't really see it as work. It's just my hobby.

Whenever I have time in the evenings or morningsor whatever, and I can be behind my MacBook and start working on things, it's just... It feels like the natural thing to me. And doing that for like a boss or not yourown company doesn't really feel the same. And seeing stage and every day on my screen,like a product that my team and I pull is something to be proud of and to start theday for.

So yeah, it's really a thing that I, yeah,it's just, if I follow my heart, this is what I wanna do, yeah. So you said, you know, back in the days whenyou were 18, when you did all these manual invoices and spreadsheets and stuff, therewas a need for a software like Stagent.

So that must have been a sort of an idea youcarried on for many years then, like seven years that must have been, yeah. And how did you practically go about it? Like you sold, I guess you didn't sell yourcompany before you started Stagent. It was like a simultaneous process, but canyou- No. Can you walk me through the process of startingStaging? How do you go about it?

This is an interesting one to me. So there's this one thing that I don't getabout the industry and our competitors basically. So imagine you have a booking agency, so youknow this process, but you try to sell as many artists as you can, right? So how it works with our competitors is thatyou add a booking.

for a specific artist and then you add allthe event details to that specific booking. And yeah, if you make another sale, whichis something that you want to do over and over and over to the same event, you haveto start that process again, add a booking to the system, add the event details, createa contract, create an invoice. And it's also like an annoying process forthe promoter because they have to sign that contract again and another invoice and thenmaybe they want to have another artist and they have to do that whole process again.

So the first thing that I want to test outwith agencies that I have, that I was in contact with is that you take the event as a top levelentity and then add bookings to that and then on event level generate a contract and aninvoice. And you know that process was staging now,but this is something that other companies don't offer, other software platforms don'toffer. And this is the first thing that I pitchedto some agents that I knew and when they saw how easy it was to start doing some optionalbookings in our system.

Yeah, it was sort of mind blowing for themthat they just in a few clicks could accomplish that. And that was the moment that I felt like,yeah, I'm onto something with this idea, but it's not really there yet. So I started this MVP and that was back in2018 maybe even. Then in 2019, I really started the companyand in 2021 I sold my previous agency to really go full out.

So there's like an overlap of maybe two yearsor so. Yeah. And did you just start making it yourself? And how was the process of actually makingit? At first, again, that professional Googleris really a thing still. I'm still not calling myself a developer. I know my way around in our framework.

We're working on that level. I know my way around with HTML, PHP, and thatkind of stuff. I can read it, but I'm not the guy who nativelywrites stuff. So back then, when I did the websites, Of course, WordPress is really easy for me. I can build teams and stuff like that. But I started my first project actually inWordPress to get my head around sort of workflow, how it should work.

And then I started with a friend who becamea freelancer from the same hosting company actually. And he started working on sort of mini MVPfrom the ideas that I sketched for him in WordPress. And that was a sort of cool workflow becausewe could like, yeah. Jakob Wredstrøm (11:39.49)play around with how it should work and how it looks and that kind of stuff.

And we were also focusing on design a lot,something that is really important at that stage. But design always is a very important partto me. It also brings a sort of column to the UIand gives it the XLL vector. But yeah, at that point I had somebody whohelped me with that first MVP.

That's cool. And you know... At what point did you feel like, okay, thisis something I want to pursue and sell my other company because, you know, selling acompany is, it's a big thing, right? It's something you've built up for five years. Like when did you feel comfortable with goingfull-time into Stagent? So my previous company, Pixel Start, becametoo big of an operation to manage on my own.

So I had a few clients with really large webshops. And the hosting infrastructure for that, itgot to a point where I really wasn't focusing on building new websites. I was just maintaining hosting infrastructureand that was not something I signed up for when I started this company. I liked it and I liked to do research abouthow I could optimize the hosting infrastructure and of course it's a really good way of makingrevenue because this infrastructure has to run in a way that whenever there was new productlaunch, like there were...

3,000, 4,000 people in a queue to get handson that specific product. That was insane. We had queuing systems in place to maintainthat, to grant people access in a sort of honest flow. That combined with not being able to workon your own brand, but always having to work on somebody else's brand.

Of course you work on the Pixel Star brand,but it's not the same. It's not touchable in the sense that it'sreally a thing that people talk about. you're always a part of something else. And those two in combination made it reallyeasy for me to sell this, yeah, basically client list to somebody else. And it helped that it's a really interestingclient list because yeah, the names that I worked for, if I think about it, it's stillcrazy.

It was so much fun to be able to work withthese kind of names. But in the end, it was a really easy decisionfor me because I was... really happy with the little seed you saidit before, like it was in my hat for seven years now. And that got to a point where I was able toexecute it. And that made it really easy for me to decideto sell the first company and go full on stage it.

Yeah. And you said, you know, you saw the company,so you had a bit of capital. Was that capital used just to sustain a livingor did you already there go out and employ people? I don't know where it went actually. Okay. So. Of course it helped making the decision togo on a new product because I needed some funds to live basically.

On the other hand I also invested a littlebit in the company but I also had an angel. My first ever angel was also my ex-boss fromPC Extreme from the hosting company. He has a sort of rule. He invests 10k without questions if he likesit of course. then he does another 10K without any questionsif it goes well.

And then after 20K, he started asking questions. And that got to a point where he added another30K. So he was on a 50K investment. And when it became very serious, I found anothercompany who was willing to invest development resources for around 125K.

And that was combined with another investorfrom Austria, Tim Moser, who is one of the founders of Electric Globe Festival. And he also invested around 100k. So Leonard, the first angel, did another additional60 or 70, I believe. So yeah, there were quite some funds comingin into stage and to make it a product where we are right now.

And yeah. Yeah, and most startups when they build stuffwithin, let's call it the music industry, if you can call this the music industry, it'sdefinitely a service towards the music industry. Have a hard time finding investors, but itseems like this was more of a natural process for you or did you need to really go and lookfor it? No, this has been a pain in the ass for along time.

Okay. Actually, at the beginning of this year, itgot to a point where it was becoming very risky. because the investors didn't want to investmore. You might understand this well because youhave an agency, but the customer journey to get people on your product is quite hard becauseI'm a guy that tries to do apps at least four times a year.

I always get back to do this, but I like totry other ones to see if they're better. I like new things and I like software, butthat doesn't mean that everybody likes that. Most people don't like changes. They wanna stick to the things they have becausethey know how it works, they like it. But if they see how easy staging is and howlove time they can win with that by just using our platform, that is something that is reallyused to be now.

But to get to that point, we really had todevelop a lot of features. In my head, I'm still not on the point wherewe are, where we should be, of course. There's always that one feature that you needin my head. In that sense, yeah, it's never finished,you know?

Yeah. No, it's interesting about the time it takesto onboard a client. The reason why we used Stagen was basicallyjust because we used another platform and then that card expired and we forgot to renewit. And then like, oh, the subscription's expired.

Should we just renew it or should we lookfor something else? And then that's, you know, actually very randomlyI had booked. a demo meeting with Stagen for some otherreason, just because I was curious. And that day I got a Stagen email, like, hey,reminding you of the demo we had. So it was really like, even us that's sortof a, let's call it a beginning agency that's very curious about technology, don't reallyconsider that much changing a system.

So I can imagine that's really a big workwinning over clients. It's one of the biggest hassles we face now. But... On the other hand, now that we have more featurescoming in, it's also becoming an easier process to make a sale. So I think it's sort of product related.

And since we are at the point where we'redeveloping features that are differentiating us from our competitors, like for instance,the press kit, like a lot of people really like that press kit feature we have, no drawbox link or whatever, just... a place where we host a page, everything relatedto that press kit. It's such an easy thing and it's actuallysomething that we needed for the agency that I have myself now as well.

It's maybe a nice side hustle, side story. I started DJing again two, three years agoin hardstyle and I was with a booking agency but I didn't have a good time. First, I didn't really like their platformbecause they were using ABUS. So as an artist, I was using ABUS to work,but I have my own platform, so why would I?

So I had a friend who was copying over everything,but yeah, of course that was weird. And then didn't really felt the need to bewith that booking agency. So we started our own booking agency, TrueIdentity. And True Identity started beginning this yearusing Stage as a pilot so we could use our product in real cases.

because you can develop something and youcan test it. And of course it works, but does it reallywork in workflows? And then we figured a lot of things were optimizedenough in good workflows. So we use True Identity as a real companyto, for now we manage 16 artists, but on the same side, we're also testing stage in realcase examples.

And that was also the idea behind the press kit because we wanted to share presskits, we didn't just want to upload it to Dropbox. So that is how we got to that press kit feature. So on the side, we run Tridy to really figureout ways to incorporate really nifty features and stuff in our workflow.

Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, that's probably also why I feltlike it seems so intuitive when we add the demo. But I think you mentioned your loan founder. You started staging together. Is that how it is? No, I started staging on my own with the helpof a developer on the side, but I just paid him a small fee for the work that he did.

And I always worked with freelancers up untilthe point that we had a good investment and I hired my first developer full-time fromthe UK. uh, in 2020, I believe, and he stuck withthe company for one and a half years. Um, insane kid. Like, uh, he, he is also quite a big namein the open source world.

I believe that he was 20 or 21 or somethingwhen I hired him, but seriously good with get like, he has such a skill set. He, he built a complete app how it is now. Well, not now, but like the core of it. from the MVP within four months or so. It was insane. First I didn't want to do it because I wantto stuck with the MVP, but he said, let's rebuild it, it's gonna be better.

And he did that whole thing on his own, likeinsane, insanely good. And I'm still sad that he left because hegot this offer from a US company with a salary that I, yeah, insane. The prices in the US are so high for developers,it's insane. So I could have matched that He also wanted to be with other developersin a team and here he was just lonely.

But yeah, I was really happy to have him forthe first part because he set like a sort of standard in our code quality as well. And every time we hire a developer, they telllike, yeah, this is an insane good app. Like everything is so well structured andI can tell because I can read it, but like every time. a new developer comes in and they start talkingabout our application, it's always good to know that our core is setting high standards.

Sorry, about the question of course. I always did this solo. I always did this solo and last year in November,I were a bit earlier on. I just called all my competitors.

I just called them and I said, like, hey,Amisha, I started a company that might be a competitor for you soon, but I just wantto meet and let's see if you're open to that. And funny enough, they all went in and theytold me so much details about that company and what they were doing for years and even ABOSS,I had a call with their CTO and they were sharing so much information, it was so funny.

But also the founder behind Artwin, companythat's around for 20 years now, focusing more on like live artists, singer songwriters andbands. The conversation with them were very, verynice and at a point I got to realized that it was maybe a good idea tooffer him a sort of merge or partnership or whatever.

So the last half year, we were negotiatingabout how we're going to do it. His platform is sort of outdated, but reallygood foundation for inspiration for staging and a lot of different industry needs, actually, that he already has pulled, which we can incorporate a staging. And we're now looking into we merged in August.

And now I'm with a co-founder, which is reallyhelpful to have somebody on the side to be able to talk about the products and not justhave an idea in my mind and work it out and think that's the best solution. Cause now you can really brainstorm aboutthings and have, have like a proper idea from the start to work on. And that is really helpful to me.

And we have a bigger customer base. I went from startup to skill up in, in a fewmonths actually. And now we're. investigating how we can migrate everythingfrom art into stage within the upcoming year. Yeah. That's interesting. But of course, you know, you got a co-foundernow, but the journey until now for many, many years has been solo.

How have you tackled the level of disciplinethat takes and the level of focus that takes? Because that's not everyone who can do that. Um, my focus is bad. Like if I, if I could, I give myself advice,um, that would be focus on mounting.

Um, it was a point that I, I brought a sortof book to get my head around an idea. I thought that I learned something from aninterview with Steve jobs, where he mentioned something about five products at once or something, but I tried to find that interview and it's something that I. took from that, but inspired me to createa format that you can only have five projects at once.

But if you have a kid, it counts as a project. You have a relationship, it counts as a project. If you go out with friends a lot, it's a projectbecause you invest time in it, right? So I got to this idea, the five project rule,where you have sort of structure that you can only fit five projects in your window. Do you want to take something on?

which is the six, you have to drop one offto do that six one, to get to five again. And in a sense it works. But even though I've written a book aboutit, like a short book, to get my head around the system, I can't even incorporate it inmy own life. Because I tend to do so many things on thesite. And if something is not going fast enoughfor me, I tend to find my spark in another thing.

So when it was going bad with staging, I wasstarting True Identity because like, yeah, with staging, there was bad negativity. I had to inform my investors all the time. We couldn't find money. It was a hassle to get the deal with Artwingoing. So I needed to have a spark and I couldn'tget that spark from staging at that moment. So I had to do something else.

And it's a bad way. And if I could get control about that, itwould be... beneficial for the company. But at the same time, True Identity broughta lot of good things to stage it. So to get to your question, yeah, it is hardfor me to focus on things, but at the same time, I think that is what gets me on theroll all the time.

And discipline wise, it's not hard for meto have discipline. But Jakob Wredstrøm (27:55.126)It's somebody described once that it's sort of my rocket. So I can be in a rocket, but that rocket onlyfocuses on one thing again. So if I want to work out a lot or focusingon that specifically and everything else has to drop for that.

So you could tell that's discipline, but thediscipline is also focused on one thing. So, yeah, I don't know. It's sort of a bad thing, but also keeps meon track on the things that I need to achieve. And I'm mostly in my stage of rocket, of course. And even nowadays with the whole merger, likeI'm on top of the game now. And that keeps me on track. Yeah.

I think that's really interesting. And thank you for being open and honest aboutit. I think that's something a lot of founders,especially in the creative industries, uh, experience, uh, especially me, like I get,you know, whenever you talk, I'm like, Oh, good, that's a hundred percent me. You know, one of the reasons why, why I'mdoing the podcast is because I need stimulation. What's funny about the synergy is the samewith true identity. You know, this puck has only been out fortwo and a half months.

but I've gotten so many opportunities becauseof the podcast. It's people like, you know, tell me like,this person listens to the podcast, like that person listens to the podcast, okay. That's cool. And, because I think that's the same thingwith, you know, people like you and I, it's, we need the stimulation, but then we alsohire performers maybe. Like we really work effectively.

And there's some, there's a big downsidesto that. And it's, at least in my experience, you know,being able to navigate the downsides is more the hard thing. than doing the actual work. The actual work is easy if it's sparked. But in my experience. I can imagine that with like running a podcast,it's not only discipline.

It's more, it's like an extra form of disciplinebecause you need consistency with that. Yeah. If you forget about one show or something,or you think like, yeah, I'm gonna postpone one, later or so, yeah, it already breaks the consistency of it and that breaks your discipline in my head.

So I think it's a really cool thing for youto do because it learns you about discipline and it gives sort of structure to somethingin your life. And that's also a good thing to have. Yeah. So how do you see your journey moving on? Right now you're in an interesting place whereyou're sort of merging with other company. And there's a lot of things happening there.

What do you believe are the next steps forStagent as a company? Yeah, we were thinking about setting up abig, hairy goals, of which one is setting milestones for the migration, of course, todeprecate the whole art platform, to have everybody full on Stagent.

We have an idea of acquiring other companiesto scale fast. Um, which companies we focus on, I can't reallytell you, of course, but, um, there are some competitors that we think, um, are not reallyfocusing on development anymore. Uh, they tend to have, um, a focus to other,uh, software platforms instead of maintaining the platform that they are competitors platform,so to speak.

So that is something we might focus on aswell. And of course we have a huge roadmap of somany cool features. I'd love to show you after the call. There's so many, so many cool ideas. We are actually working on advancing now. We are revamping our invoicing system. We have a complete new dashboard. We are adding event statuses.

We're adding chats to the system. We're adding... requests for the promoters to log in so theycan retain the booking as well and see everything related to the contracts and invoicing. So many of these artists websites, reallycool. So yeah, a lot of new things going on. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of things to do. And we just had an episode with Eskeda Norwaythat's also re-attacking a lot of the practical advancing aspects of an event.

So it's really interesting to see that youguys are going further in those thoughts. And you as a founder. What's your plans with staying focused, withstaying motivated? What do you need? Well, honestly, with the merger, we got tothis point where being a solo entrepreneur is great because you have the flexibilityto work on whatever you want, you know, and whenever you want, you have a lot of freedom.

But with that freedoms, also comes a lot ofresponsibilities. And you also have to do stuff that you don'tlike. And you have... You have to do things that you really don'tlike. And one of these things is finance. I hate finance. Like I hate it. And my new co-founder loves it. So there's this synergy between like productthat we really like, but he gives me the freedom to work on product alone.

You know, and he, like when I'm working on,for instance, a new marketing website or for staging now and, or, or some UI changes orstuff like that, like Proland. I tend to be in this focus thing and he justlets me. He even does stuff for me so I can be in myfocus. That is something that motivates me so muchand that brings back energy that is insanely good for me.

At the same time, I feel that he is focusingon the things that he's really liking. I think that is enough for me right now tostay on track and to stay motivated. Yeah, of course the whole merger is stillpretty fresh, like three months. So we're still in the excitement of that aswell. And we learned recently that you have to celebrateall the small baby steps as well.

So we tend to do that and bring new energyin the office as well. Yeah. So as a part of the merger, you talked aboutsort of the dire situation of fundraising because building especially software likeyou guys that's sort of subscription-based takes time to build momentum. So, what's the need for capital in the future? Like, do you still need to fundraise or likeare you self-sustaining to some degree?

Yeah, so we're focusing on a few things. With Emerger, we found an investor who investedone over a thousand. And we have a quite a long runway. So we hired a new developer. Well, we are in the process of hiring fromJanuary. And with that process, we are trying to figureout how we can improve the runway.

Do we have price increases or not? Or are we going to invest in marketing? And we are not really in need of new funds,but if we have funds, we can grow faster. So we have two options for that. We have some very big Dutch agencies who arewilling to give an advance on their subscription for like quite a few years, so eight to 10years or so, which brings in like 25 to 30 K per year.

per team and we have three or four of them. And on the other hand, we are focusing ondoing another round, but only if we see that it's really necessary. And honestly, we are, how do you say that? Like we're growing and doing an okay revenueat this point.

So we don't really see the urge to focus onthat so much. Yeah, and it takes some time to get there. So, you know, you've been, you've been doing this for four years andhad a merger in order to make that happen. Yeah, but I think the process would be easiernow. With Stajan and Alona, I was in a processwhere the chances were there and the product was good, but the customer journey was toohard.

And also because Stajan wasn't having toomuch customers yet, it was also assigned to other potential leads that they were. Becking off a bit like, yeah, prove yourselffirst. Like if I'm going to invest in this, I wantto know that you'll stick around for like at least a decade or something. So yeah, all valid points that I couldn'treally tell them, give them another answer to.

But since the merger, we are a healthy company. We have over 200 phooking agents using ourplatform, both on our Gwyn and Staging. Some of them are already migrating to Staging. And since that, we also see user from AVOs and system one and gig wellcoming to our platform. So yeah, it's I think just a process of timeand Keep sort of the stage and trigger going around with them That might be a littlead or a call or check-in or maybe at a festival somebody sees Another artist with our appcould be tiny things.

But if we stick around for long enough, we'llget there yeah, I think that's a super important aspect of a founder's journey is time. Things takes time to land customers, to sortof get your team right, get your own mentality right.So then that's really inspiring. Cool. And so you've been an entrepreneur since youwere a kid.

You're an entrepreneur now. Is that where you see your life being therest of your life? Is that an entrepreneur? Yeah, I think so. Once you go there, I think it's really hardto... ever get back in normal routine or like workfor a boss. And I think you know what I mean.

So it's not that I wouldn't want that. Like, of course you can have like a directionallevel or a C level function within a company or so, but it's not the same as feeling thatit's your own thing, you know.

If I wake up, the first thing in the morningis I think about, okay, what I'm going to do about the product today or the things inmy to-do list. How can I accomplish that today? And I think you don't have the same feelingif it's not really your product. Of course you can make it yourself. You can be part of a company, but it's notthe same thing. So I don't see myself in a situation whereI, how do you say that, work for a company.

Yeah, and maybe that's also what it takesto really be an entrepreneur because the journey is so hard and it's so little rewarding inlike, you know, financial gain if you over a short amount of time. I imagine the jobs you did for other companieswere much more lucrative than the journey you've been on with Teigen, right? Absolutely.

It's so I, I dare to say that I know how tobuild good software and it doesn't really matter which industry it is. And if I chose another industry to work with,I think I could have made a lot of more money, like a lot to build software.

Because the music industry is not always about,it's not the best industry to be in to make money. But combine the passion for this industry,the music industry, DJ specifically maybe, electronic, and software, it's just... what I want to wake up for. And that makes, I think that also adds upto being a entrepreneur, that you do what you love and money is not really the mainfocus.

Of course it's important to be healthy andto be able to do what you want to do in life, but it's not the main factor for me to getout of bed. Yeah, you learn a lot from running a podcastand One of the things that I hear consistentlyis the issue about the music industry not being comparable to other industries withthe worth that it compensates if you succeed.

And that's a huge dilemma. But I'm on the same boat as you, like, youknow, music industry is what I'm passionate about. Building companies is what I'm passionateabout, so that's what I'm gonna do. But why do you think it is so? What's your commentary on why the music industry is so little rewarding compared to other opportunities? It's a hard question.

Um, I think it's not specifically. Little rewarding. I think the gap is larger. So you have a lot of, you have a very, verybig pool that doesn't really, uh, that is not able to live from there. You come as an artist, then you have like a second pool of people that do stuff professionally, but are on the lower end that we just talkedabout.

And then there is like a very, very high. portion of small people that make a lot ofmoney with the music industry. And between these two poles, there's likea lot of nothingness. And I think that nothingness is somethingthat is a hard question. That is what I'm talking about. Like, how did that evolve over time?

And of course, like if you look at the eventindustry, the whole pandemic, I don't want to get too much into the pandemic thing, butthe whole pandemic left a mark on the industry. You see that with ticket sales people waittill the last time to go to ticket get a ticket and That all adds up because Event organizersdon't want to take the risk anymore because they know the cash flow is Shorter and theyneed to wait on their money way longer and that brings back to that's back to theartist that I need to ask maybe less fees or something or have to adapt to that newway of working So I think there are a lot of things due tothe pandemic that changed the industry as

well. But before that already, I think that themusic industry is more about passion and money. Yeah, then you just have that gap in between. Yeah, I think the gap is a really good explanation. So thank you for giving your opinion aboutthat.

But when you talk about the money- What doyou think? I'm interested in what you think. It's a really interesting question. Yeah. Well, I do agree to a big degree. I also believe that it's an industry thatis undervalued by consumers, not by individual consumers, but the markets. Yes.

For example, price increase with Spotify thatcame this year, it's been years and years and years with no increase, so there's a lotof inflation automatically devaluing music. And I think the system around the consumptionof music- is devaluing music. There's a lot of elements of that where it'sjust an integral part of our culture and it doesn't have the same physical, tangible valueas going to the cinema and buying a ticket.

You can compare it to a concert, yes, butit's also very much different because the margins are much different. It's a different industry and it's a differentapproach. And when you look at it, I was just... When I was eating my lunch today, I was justwatching a Jamie Oliver video when they talk about McKinsey and talked about, it was afun video, but they talked about the annual revenues of being $15 billion a year, right?

That's half of the reported- That's a lot. .. using industry in one company. So the industry is small because of a lotof different things, which also means that the potentials... or smaller, or there's a few companies thatreally has a lot of power just culminating in things. There's so many aspects to it.

But I really like your explanation becauseit really gives a really clear example of one of the reasons. Well, let's call it more, it's a symptom description, you said, and that might be a reason, right? But also I do believe there's a lot of potentialfor when you make it, if you make it. There's a company that's acquired doesn'tneed to be a little amount.

And that sort of feedbacks into a question,what is your end goal with Stagent? The what, sorry? Your end goal. Like what do you want to take this to? The end goal. Do you want to scale this at one point, orwhat's your goal? Like, I think I'm at a point where I don'treally have an end goal yet.

Of course I have like goals with product,and I know when I want to go with the product itself, but yeah, the- that the big hairy goal of the model is beingthe one platform for all the booking agencies, as well as artists, but as well as speakerslike other industries, like other verticals that we can discover.

I like to say that everyone who performs onsomething could use Stagent. And then everything around that performeris also on Stagent. So if you can manage that and play away allthe other competitors. that will be the end goal, of course.

So yeah, and very, very long term, if we becomethis successful company that is at a point where we need a dedicated CEO, I would liketo be sort of head of product or something. Just focus on product, be with a team to brainstorm about new features, how can we...

deliver new cool things for artists. Maybe we can focus on artist management, butwe can start integrating tools that help them with social media or launch their websiteor gain insights about artists for agencies to scout new talent. There's so many ideas what we can do. I think it's not only about bookings.

It's way more than that. Yeah, that makes sense. It's a very good and informing answer as well. Well, I'm very happy we had this talk. And thank you for being open and honest aboutyour journey. I'm definitely gonna follow Stagent for along time because we use the platform, but also because I think it's a really interestingcase.

I really love when people do things that Ithink is excellent. And that's sort of definitely the vibe I'mgetting from you guys. That's what you striving for and already nowin many degrees are achieving. Well, thanks for these kind words. Yeah. If you, the last question I'm gonna ask is,obviously this is a podcast for entrepreneurs in the music industry, is if you were to giveyourself or others an advice about being an entrepreneur in the music industry, what wouldthat be?

Focus. Yeah. I'm not the best at it either, like maybeeven the worst that I think, but like it's so important to focus on the right thingsand time is of the essence, you know, so you really have to invest your time in the rightthings.

So yeah, focus is really important and mostentrepreneurs are really bad at it. So try to get that on a good level. That was my advice to myself. Yeah, I thought that was an advice to me aswell. So thank you so much for that advice and everyoneelse listening out there. Well, Amisha, it's been a pleasure.

Hope we can catch up at one festival at onepoint. I'm definitely planning to come to ADA atone point so that I can imagine you're going to be at ADA every single year and havingfun. You should absolutely come there next year. Yeah.And we could have a drink. Absolutely. There's a lot of story with things happening. You know, it's been really spamming my Instagramfeed with everything that's happening at ADE and the initiatives they're doing.

So that's amazing. That's great. It's really great. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure to be here and yeah, goodluck with the rest of the podcast. You're onto something. So keep it going. Thank you, man. Talk soon.