Empowering Artists: The Rise of un:hurd in Music Promotion

I want Unheard to be the name that people mention when they think about music marketing. And that's whether you are a major label or whether you are your artist releasing your first ever track. I want us to dominate this marketing space and automate the process of music marketing and bring it really into the 21st century. At what point does a founder meet his breaking point? Sometimes it's uphill, sometimes it's downhill. At this episode, we'll hear the fascinating story with Alex Prais and UnHerd. They've done a lot. They have a lot of people backing them, but there's still a long way to go. I'm excited to follow him. Hey guys, and welcome back to Sound Connections. This is an episode I've been looking forward to. Alex, welcome. Thank you for having me. Really excited to be here. Alex, you have a company I've been following for a little while and you have great people that you've partnered with like Hazel Savage that's been on the podcast. And you have an incredibly interesting company called UnHerd. Could you very briefly, just for the audience, describe who you are and what you work with? Of course. So yeah, I'm Alex Breeze. I'm the CEO and founder of UnHerd. You know, my background is actually in tech, so I came from outside of the music industry to start with. I worked in automotive tech as a trading analyst. So really helping businesses use their data to make more effective marketing decisions. That was really what I was trying to do within the startup ecosystem as well. So I got my taste of what startup life was like very early on and it was exciting. It was fun. I was having an impact every day. I really loved that. I was always very passionate about the music industry. So I transitioned to work at Universal Music and this was my first opportunity to use my skill set but in an industry I was passionate about. You know, really help artists use their data to make more effective marketing decisions around each of their releases. And I did this for some of the biggest artists in the world. And, you know, I've really enjoyed that period at Universal Music where I was empowering artists and creatives, you know, to reach their most valuable fans. And I loved that. But I wanted to have an impact again, you know, in the corporate environment, it's slightly different. You know, you're part of a massive team and actually you're one of many. And I didn't enjoy that.

really, you know, I really was someone who was a go -getter and wanted to do more than just my nine to five job. So I left Universal and this was where I kind of started to develop my hypothesis for Unheard. You know, I had this skill set that could reduce uncertainty for artists making marketing decisions. And there was a plethora of new music and artists coming through, in particular in the independent music sector. You know, it was growing. I mean, it's growing now about 18 % year on year versus the whole, which is about 10 % year on year. So it's very, very buoyant. And that's because of the democratization of music creation and music promotion. But the challenge, the big challenge that arose there was that, yes, artists can create and distribute their music, but how do they cut through that noise? You know, I think there's a stat, I think this is right. It's about 168 million or so songs available on streaming platforms. And about 150 million of those have less than a thousand streams. You know, some of that music is great music. So I wanted to use my skillset and create a product instead of just me doing it manually as an agency type model. I wanted to create a product that would democratize access to robust and data led music promotion. So that's what I did. You know, we raised a little bit of capital to get us going and build our MVP. We then used that MVP and the traction we had from our MVP to go and raise a bit more capital. And now we're a team of 15, 16 of us actually, we've just hired a head of product, our first head of product. And we service 85 ,000 artists from around the world. And really, you know, we're just getting started in our journey. So it's an exciting time for us. It's clear you've done pitches before that was great and concise. Alex, I'm curious. You worked at this major label and you started thinking about independent artists. What is it that triggered that thought at the company? Yeah. It's a great question. And... When I was working at Universal Music, the nine to five was fine, but I wanted to do more, right? And so what I did is I reached out to some artists that I loved, some independent artists, and I said, guys, I'm going to throw a grime event in London at this time. You can also, I'm artist, come and perform, you know, and fortunately four or five artists said, yeah, I want to come and perform. We sold a hundred tickets. It was a small venue and those artists were performing. And I was like, stood at the back watching them perform thinking.

Oh my God, these guys are amazing. You know, they are truly creative. They're raw, they're dynamic, but no one knows who they are, you know? And so I wanted to try and change that. I wanted to empower these artists more so than just giving them an event or format. And I think at my core, I'm a people person, you know, we're all people, I suppose, but you know, I really connect with people and I started to connect to them with independent artists and kind of almost feel their struggle and feel that actually they were creating this great art. but no one was going to help them reach their fans. So that really, that personal connection, I mean, people say it now, right, is when you go and see a live show, that's when you really connect with an artist. I mean, it was the same with me. I started to connect with these independent artists and feel their struggle and wanted to help them.

Is it? So was it the love for the people, the care? Was it because it was unfair? What was that exact feeling you felt? I felt it was unfair, for sure. I could see these independent artists spending all of the money they were earning from the two jobs they were working on creating music, but they didn't have the know -how or any money left to then go and promote their music. And that didn't seem fair to me. because when I was working at the major labels, some of these artists, and this is just in my opinion, some of the independent artists were equally as talented as these major label artists, but they just didn't have the resources around them to go and create a sustainable career. And I felt that was unfair. And I became friends with some of these artists and I started to then really understand their process. I would go to the studio with them on a Sunday, and listen to them recording and writing. And I just couldn't believe the level of commitment that was there and the passion. but yet there was no one around them to support them. And it did feel unfair. And like I said, I developed personal relationships with some of these artists and that then gave me that firepower, I suppose, which everyone who starts a business needs, like some sort of deep connection with a problem that allowed me to then, I think, get to where we are today. We've still got a long way to go, but I think we've made some good progress so far. So there went a bit of time between you stopping working at Universal until you founded UnHerd. Can you walk me through what happened in that time period? Yeah. So the first thing I did is I wanted to get back into the startup world, but UnHerd wasn't making any money. It was just an idea in my mind. So I left and I joined a music startup called Kiki. Now, Kiki was a really interesting experience for me. I learned a lot. I was there for about a year. I joined as their chief marketing officer. Kiki wanted to create a high quality long form audio content, you know, like the Netflix of audio, for example. And I liked that mission. You know, I kind of, I understood what they were trying to create. So I joined there, got back into the startup world, young team, like I said, a founder that had raised a little bit of money. And I learned a lot because I was working alongside him and alongside senior management. And at the time of joining, that's when I launched Unheard as well at the same time on the side as a side project. And the way I launched Unheard was just working with artists directly.

Some of these independent artists, some slightly bigger artists that I now had in my network. I'm working with them almost like as a consultant. I create a marketing report for them, which said, this is what's happened for you over the last 12 months. This is what you need to double down on over the next 12 months based on what the data tells us. These are your audiences. These are the platforms you should be using. These are collaborations you should have. And this was my first kind of inclination into actually the size of the challenge that I needed to try and solve. Because I was creating these marketing reports for artists, working with them directly to run campaigns. And more and more artists kept coming to me saying, I want your help. Can you help me? I'll pay for this, you know. And so Unheard then started to generate a little bit of revenue. You know, it's still a side project, but it was generating £3,000 a month and £5,000 a month and £10,000 a month. And what I then was able to do because there was some traction is leave my full-time job at Kiki, start Unheard full-time, just purely as an agency, as a consultant. And then I started to then productize the idea. That was when I started to then wireframe what a product could look like. That was when I then started to pitch to investors to say, look, people really want this and this is what it could look like. Can you give me some money so I can build this? So that was kind of probably an 18 month period between leaving Universal Music and launching Unheard in around 2020. And then we launched our first product for Unheard in 2021 and the 2021. So while you had this music startup, you work as a consultant and, you know, at the end, generating up to 10,000 pounds a week. That sounds like you worked a lot on the side of your knowledge job. Yeah. How was, how did that, how did it feel for you? Like how did your day look at that point before you like fully went into starting Honored? I think similar to maybe yourself and other founders is that we've got a problem. Yeah. And that's a problem with being addicted to something, you know, like whether that's work. Or whatever it is, you always want to push yourself to the limit. You know, I think you can probably resonate that with that. And I had that addiction. I wanted to push myself to the limit. I wanted to be making the most of this opportunity that we've got to try and create something of our life, you know, almost. My day would look like get up in the morning, I'd go to the gym before work. I would always, I've always exercised. That is like my release.

You know, if I don't exercise, I'm in trouble because I haven't had the hour in the morning where I've got clear headspace. So I go to the gym in the morning, start my job at 9 a.m., get in a little bit before everyone else, finish at 5, 6, and then I would go home and do three, four hours more work on Unheard. Intermittently throughout the day, obviously, I'd be sending emails about Unheard as well, but mostly focused on my full-time job. And then it'd be rinse and repeat. And then Saturday and Sunday, I would do three, four, five hours a day on Unheard. Um, and then make sure I get a little bit of time to socialize, you know, on a Saturday evening or whatever it might be, but it was fully focused on trying to achieve the, this mission of launching and head. Yeah. What was the, what was the motivation for staying in the job so long? You didn't stay at the music startup so long, but like from you immediately started seeing the traction and the clients coming in was that you just wanted to see how it developed or like, what were you waiting for in that aspect? Yeah, I mean, London's expensive, you know, and I had a flat that I was renting and, you know, I had bills to pay and although we were starting to make a bit of money through Unheard, I wanted to reinvest that in Unheard, you know, so reinvest it in tools that maybe I could use to better prepare for marketing reports that we were creating and things like that. So we weren't generating too much revenue in terms of kind of net profit. So it was a case of keeping it going as long as I could, both. You know, working two jobs at the same time until I felt like, okay, I've got 20,000 pounds in the bank account now that will pay me for, you know, a decent amount of time and give me a bit of breathing space to double down on unheard. But it was, it was purely for financial reasons. You know, if, if I could have started earlier, I certainly would. But, but I think I'd also say is, you know, sometimes I reflect back and I'm just, I've just passed 30 now I'm 33 years old and I reflect back and I see these guys starting businesses at kind of 23, 24. And I get a little bit jealous because I'm like, ah, why didn't I start 23, 24? But my message to entrepreneurs, I think here would be that there's never the time happens naturally, I think, you know, and for me, I couldn't have done this at 23, 24 because I didn't have all that experience, you know, and actually it set me up really well to go and do this. So I think when people are trying to be a business owner and trying to find something to do, I actually don't necessarily that hasn't worked for me.

You know, so I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I say, don't rush into it. It will happen. Find your passion and that will allow you then to go and build a business. So you quit your job at the music startup. You go fully into Unheard. You've probably already by then sort of started productization thoughts or like, what was the process of jumping into it? Yeah. So what I really wanted to do in terms of when we started to think about the product is create something that had the power of a major label, you know, in terms of marketing prowess, but was affordable and available at scale. That was really the premise behind our product. You know, wouldn't it be amazing if an artist could log into something, we could ingest all of their data and then tell them exactly what they need to do. And as well as telling them what to do, they can then go and do it within the product, you know, pitch to the right playlist, run the right social media ads across TikTok or Meta or Snap or whatever it might be. That was the premise. And so wireframing that out was the place where we started, you know, and... That was a great way to then bring this to life in terms of, I'm quite a visual person. So to see something on paper and then in Figma was a great opportunity for us to go, okay, this is actually how it could work. And this is what it could really look like. And then once we had those wireframes created, we wasted no time to essentially go and raise the capital. You know, I think because we had generated some revenue via the agency, I'm using the Royal Wii. It was actually me, but I think it's more comfortable. So after generating some revenue, after Y framing out what the product could look like, it was then all about going raising some money, you know, and that was a simple sales process for me. You know, we had, I had the CRM, I knew which investors I think would be interesting. And it was a numbers game, you know, it was really simple numbers game until someone eventually kind of crumbled and said, okay, let's, let's do it. So the first round you did as far as I remember, I was £250,000. Let me understand a bit more. Was it one investor, several investors? What was the process of raising that capital? Yeah. It was one VC and three angel investors who invested in us at the time. And I had no experience raising capital, but I kind of did a little bit of research online. I started to then type in, you know, I started to complete the type forms that you see online. So if you go to a VC fund page, your type form to send your submission.

I started to do as many of those as I could within the relevant kind of spaces. I started to reach out to investors who were on LinkedIn, who had invested in media and music before or had an interest in that space. And I simply just worked it. You know, I worked it for two, three weeks until I started to get some meetings. And the process actually end to end was about 10 weeks. Like it happened. Wow. It happened really quickly. And that was in a... buoyant space when people were raising capital a bit more easily than they are now. But it was a really great experience for me. I learned really, really quickly about how to go and raise only small amounts of money at that time, but raise small amounts of money that will allow us to build our MVP. But 10, 12 weeks max, it was a really great process. I enjoyed it. Yeah. That's amazing. Very few people, especially in our space, can raise capital that fast. We don't need to dissect why that was, but that's really, really interesting. So based on that money, you build an MVP. What was that process like and what happened afterwards? Yeah. It was great, but also painful and frustrating. And, you know, it was all of the emotions wrapped into one kind of a four or five month period. You know, it took us about four or five months to get that MVP live. So it happened pretty quickly. The great things were the people. You know, we found an awesome senior developer who's now our CTO. We found a great iOS developer who has recently left us actually, but he was amazing. You know, so meeting these great people who have been bringing on this journey since the start was kind of the highlight for me. Getting a product to market is something I hadn't done before. So again, that came with its kind of trials and tribulations, working with the App Store can have its challenges, but you know, it was just... three, four, five months of pure focus on building the best product we possibly could, but with speed at the front of our mind as well. You know, we had to get something live. We had to prove that actually there was an appetite for a product and not just an agency. And we had to do that really quickly to the point where actually, you know, we launched it, I think it was on Christmas Eve or, you know, it was around Christmas Eve. We launched our product much to the dismay of my family, I think, kind of up on Christmas Eve.

We just wanted to get it live. So we managed to get it live. And, you know, what was awesome is that we quickly started to then get a bit of traction. You know, I think that was the best thing for the team because, you know, it's all about the team. It's not really about the leader as such. I think like the team is so, so important, but that was a great nod to the team for them to go. We built something that people want here, which is cool. In this podcast, I think you've mentioned people six to seven times and now team three times in a row. I'm curious to ask you a question about how you see yourself as a leader operating within the company. Can you tell me a bit about that? Yeah, it's really interesting because I wouldn't see myself as the type of leader who is like aggressive and, you know, traditional perhaps. You know, what I see myself is, is someone who's passionate. And is caring and wants to ensure that we achieve our mission. And I think the way I communicate to the team is actually less direct now, you know, we're a team of 15, so it's rare that I'm kind of directly speaking at someone. But when I communicate with the wider team, it's all about the mission, the vision, and us being the people to solve that problem. You know, and I think I want to think of myself as kind of a new leader. You know, a leader who's approachable, a leader who is like transparent and a leader who is like a normal person, you know, who's very committed to this project. And I think the thing that I always say to our shareholders as kind of a reflection on what I can give them back is the only thing I can guarantee to you is I am committed and I will work really, really hard at this and I will make the best decisions possible for the business. And that... That last part to that phrase in terms of making the best decisions possible for the business is probably the most challenging thing that I've had to learn because, you know, again, I talked about people. I love working with people. I'm a people person, but sometimes you have to make decisions which are uncomfortable because actually you're maybe upsetting the other person. But I think that's something that I'm continuously learning to improve on to make those best decisions possible for the business. And I'm lucky to have great mentors around me and advisors and investors who are

guiding me on this journey and understanding that I'm learning as well. So I think it's about being a real person, being approachable. And you don't have to be a traditional leader where you are cutthroat all the time. I don't think that works now. It's interesting that there's so many different ways of approaching this. And just to get personal on my side, one of the things that I struggle the most with as an entrepreneur is being a leader. And the reason I say that might be relevant for other entrepreneurs is I am relatively good at communicating. I'm relatively charismatic. I understand the mission and the vision, but my focus is very much on the output. And what I struggle with is like the internal dynamics of getting to that output. And that's something I'm consistently challenged myself with. And I don't, I haven't really found a recipe yet. And that's why I asked you the question, because I want to learn that myself. Like what is it consistently? Across different founders that succeed or on the way to hopefully succeed, that approaches the aspect of leading other people on the mission. Because you have a company that probably doesn't provide the same level of security that other companies would. You're on a journey that requires an extra bit of motivation and incentive. Than other stable companies. One of the things we haven't talked about, because as far as I know, you don't have it, is co -founders. Could you tell me a bit about how it's been not having a co -founder and maybe how you've tried to compensate for that? Yeah, absolutely. And also one thing to mention is someone once said to me is that if you're asking someone to do something and there's no relationship, it's like a dictatorship to that person. No, whereas if you have that relationship and I see this firsthand is people want to lean into that conversation and they want to support, you know, your mission and your vision. So I think something I always think about are those relationships is like, how do you build relationships which aren't personal relationships, you know, because actually you don't, you know, necessarily want to take this outside of the business, but feel as if they're personal relationships. You know, and I think that's something I think about a lot as well is, is making sure that I have.

Good relationships with my team. So if I asked them to do something, they respect that ask and they want to do it. You know, they want to lean into that conversation. And then in terms of being a solo founder, I did have a co -founder early on. So I brought someone in who I thought would be great on this mission. It didn't work out. And that was really challenging. You know, that was really tough to go through that period of having to, you know, remove a co -founder from the business. We were friends as well, so it was really unpleasant, but I'm forever grateful for that experience because I learned so much. At the time, I didn't think I would ever say that, but actually, I think having gone through that experience and the lows that you go through and you sit in for a long period of time actually build your character and build you to a place where actually I would love to share that advice with other founders who haven't gone through that but are going through that. And if I can be useful in that space, I'd love to. And I think being a solo founder is great. I really enjoy it. You know, I think and people like sometimes investors are always concerned about that. You know, you're a solo founder. This is challenging, but actually I've got a great team around me, you know, and our CTO is incredible. We've just hired a COO who was a, he's our first adult. I called him. He's the first adult that we've hired there. He was 10 years at a company called AWOL and the general manager there and lots of experience. So I think if you have a great team around you, being a solo founder streamlines things. Because actually you don't need to then go to co -founders to check things off or you don't necessarily need to have those sorts of conversations about equity or what's coming next is you can go direct to the people you need to speak to make the decision and feed it down to the team. Of course you can bounce things off the team, but I love it as a solo founder. It's definitely challenging and it's definitely, I listened to a podcast recently with the founder of Represent, a clothing brand. And he said something interesting where he said that, For him, it's not lonely being a founder, but he's alone. You know, and I certainly feel like that as well. It's like I'm not lonely at all, but I feel alone. You know, there isn't really someone, apart from my friends sometimes, that I can like bounce things off. But I really enjoy it. I think it's beautiful.

When you search on heard, you quickly find a popular media, Dragon's Den. I watched the clip, it was really interesting. I was really impressed by the charisma and the precision you delivered there. So kudos to you for that. Could you walk me through what motivated you to go on Dragon's Den? Yeah. I actually never wanted to go on Dragon's Den. But, you know, at the time we were raising our seed round or trying to raise our seed round, but it was really challenging. You know, it took us nine months really to get anywhere with it. And cashflow was tight, really tight, you know, literally had four weeks left of money type thing. And my fiance had always said to me, you should just go on Dragon's Den. Just go on Dragon's Den. Like, it's that easy, right? But, um, I know I always said, no, there's no point. You know, we've raised 250,000 pounds already. People are raising 20,000 pounds. They thought like, what's the point? But I was desperate, you know, and I was in a corner. So I applied online and within kind of four or six weeks, I was stood in front of, you know, the dragons on the TV. And it was a great experience because I think as a founder, you want to push yourself right into new experiences, into high pressure situations, which... put you out of your comfort zone, but ultimately make you like a stronger leader, I think. And that's what happened. You know, we were stood in front of the dragons, we pitched, it lasted for about two hours, you know, which was, which was crazy, but it was, it was a brilliant experience. I learned so much. One of the highlights for me was allowing, having an artist on their perform before my pitch. We're all about providing opportunities. That's why I started the business. And that was a unique opportunity to get an artist on BBC, which, you know, That was one of the highlights for me, you know, that was really cool. But it was a good experience. We got a few offers for us of money. We actually didn't take the money in the end, you know, we didn't need to. What happened afterwards was the momentum of kind of being able to talk about going on Dragon's Den to pitch allowed us to then close part of our seed round and we didn't need to take the money. But it was a great experience and it follows me around.

Like one of the things when you see a dragon stand, like the valuation they put on the companies is rather low. Was that the primary motivation to not taking the money? That was part of it. You know, it was challenging to kind of make that align with what we had already raised and the valuation we currently had. And, you know, honestly, part of me deep down, I think, thought that the awareness play was greater than actually the fundraising play on Dragon's Den in the sense that I knew that would raise awareness of the business and of my profile. I maybe naively assumed that actually the momentum from Dragon's Den would help us raise our round and actually I wouldn't need to take the money. So I certainly went in there with the view of, okay, I'm going to go and do my best. If we get some offers for the money, I'm going to accept it. And then afterwards I'm going to have a deep think about whether that's the right thing to do. Cause I thought accepting it on the show would increase my chances of being on the TV. So there was a bit of a game plan there, I suppose, but the valuation is certainly something that, like you said, you've got to be aware of and question sometimes. So there's a very big contrast from your first pre-seed to seed race where you got 250,000 to this where you spent nine months. I think it's important to understand that difference. Can you walk me through what happened in those nine months, both like practically and emotionally? Yeah. I mean, practically I was pitching consistently for nine months. You know, sometimes I would have 15 calls in a week, you know, and I would be... pitching to investors from all over the world and different time zones. I went over to Paris and I ended up meeting some investors there that were crypto scammers. You know, I woke up at 3 a.m. and pitched to some investors in Singapore with kind of one eye closed like this. So went through the full range of kind of practicalities of what it means to try and get investment. Emotionally, it was really challenging, you know, because you're trying to do a few things at once, right? We were, I was...

removing my co-founder at the time. We were running out of cash quickly. We were trying to build a product, a tech product. We also had an agency side to the business that we were trying to keep afloat. We had employees who were asking for pay rises and what's going on in the business. And I was doing it on my own. I didn't have a team that I have now around me. So it's like kind of make or break. But I think you mentioned something before about when you're kind of in that deepest pit. You know, that is when you thrive as an entrepreneur. And like, I felt alive. You know, I really did feel alive. It's weird saying it, but I've never felt more alive. You know, I've never felt more engaged in what we need to do. It's certainly stressful, but I think I have this theory about my own stress where I can kind of keep a pretty level head around most things, but I think it's going to hurt me in later life. You know, I think it might be shortening the end of my life, to be honest. But it was a journey that I'm again forever grateful that I've been on an experience because it taught me a lot about how to pitch, you know, who I should be pitching to. And also it taught me the power of transparency and honesty. You know, as I was very honest and transparent with shareholders throughout the seed round about the position we're in. And sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't work, you know, to be honest with you. But I think staying true to your beliefs and being transparent and being honest is really, really important through that process as well, because people will help you. You know, if you tell your own shareholders, you're in a precarious position, they're not going to kind of step if they're good, shoulders are going to step away and go, you solve that problem. You know, they're going to lean in and say, OK, I can connect you with this person or do you need help on this? And I think sometimes entrepreneurs have this thing where they've got to be doing everything themselves and they've got to be showing to doing the right thing all the time and not maybe share what's going wrong. But actually. You share what's going on. That's when you're going to get help on what's going wrong. So I think I learned that too. Yeah. There's one thing about founders who've done this for a while, that they don't break. They can be close to breaking. They could be at way beyond the point where pain is just overwhelming. One thing about me, at least as a founder, is I grew up in the childhood, there was a lot of things changed. There was very few...

stable things. There's a lot of beauty to that, but there's also a lot of things you need to maneuver and get used to. And as a founder, when I'm put in constantly put in positions where I'm so out of my comfort zone, I'm close to breaking, but I don't break. It's because of my upbringing has learned me that there is another side and I know how far I can bend and it's pretty far. But what was it about? you that didn't break. Like, why didn't you break during that time? It's such a great question. I actually don't know why I didn't break. I certainly have this, and I was speaking about this to someone, I'm doing a public speaking course at the moment because I think, you know, it's a skill that as a leader, I think you must have, but no one ever suggests that you should go and learn how to speak publicly. You just kind of go and do it. So I'm on this course at the moment and we were, you know, talking about the kind of vulnerability and, you know, things that have made or... or broke you. And I can't really seem to put my finger on why I have this capacity to push myself to the edge. But it's almost like an addiction, you know, and I think maybe we spoke about this offline before, but I have this addiction to want to push myself to the limit. And whether that's through sport, where when I was younger, I played so much sport to the point where I was probably exhausted, you know, and I looked exhausted, you know. And now I have this addiction to want to... push myself to the limit to build a great business. And I don't know where that addiction comes from. It's probably some deep dark place that I probably don't want to go. But I want to push myself to the limit. And I feel as if not pushing myself to limit, I feel guilty that I'm not pushing myself to the limit, which is pretty unhealthy really. And I struggle to switch off and I certainly have some challenges with maintaining balance. There is no balance in my life.

But I think that's common, you know, and I think you've got to get comfortable with that if you are trying to build a big business. Yeah. So by March, 2023, you closed your round and within music tech, traditionally speaking, the mounts are not that big, but this was like relatively speaking, a good amount. As far as I remember is 1.2 million pounds. Slightly more. We ended up raising slightly more and we've just extended our seed round. So we've just closed some more money now. Yeah. So just walk me through, because one of the things that I really love about at least your cap table, as far as I can see, is the industry representation. Like some pretty heavy headers you have on. Can you explain to me who they are? Yeah. So we have Willard Aueritz, who is the chairman of Cobalt. He's the founder of Cobalt as well. Cobalt is one of the biggest music publishing companies in the world. He's also a founder of AWOL, which is an independent record label that sold to Sony last year for half a billion dollars. He is an advisor and a mentor as well to us, which is, you know, an incredible experience. I spoke to him last night. I speak to him really regularly. And he really does guide the ship in the sense that he's guiding me, you know, and he gives me a lot of advice that I apply every single day unheard. So he's been awesome. Hazel, who I know you had on the podcast. Hazel's great, you know, she's the founder of Musio, an AI company, and she sold that to SoundCloud a few years ago. We also have some artists on the cap table. So a guy called Sam Felt, who's an electronic music DJ. We have Mr. Easy, who's a Nigerian recording artist and entrepreneur himself. And then we have some guys from Roblox who invested in us. So we got a good insight there into how we can apply kind of gaming. Nice. Wow. And we have... people like Matt Spezler from Francisco Partners who is involved in SoundCloud acquisitions and things like that. So it's a great cap table. There's other people on there that I'm not allowed to speak about who are also kind of really senior in the music industry and influential. I feel very lucky to have those people. Yeah.

So you raised the money. What were you using the money on? Tech, all tech. And you know, we, I was very clear with shareholders that we weren't interested in growth in 2023. We were interested in building a great product, you know, and so we spent last year ensuring that we build deeper and broader technology. So how can we ensure that our tool works for not just independent artists releasing their first song, but artists who are much further along in their career who need deeper insights and deeper technology. And then we also broadened our tech stack. So we offered things like a fan hub whereby an artist can create a mini website now and they can then use that to showcase new music or collect first party data and build their community. Something really important within the industry at the moment. We also built our product on the web on desktop. So it was native on iOS previously. We launched a desktop version of the product. We launched our first membership offering, you know, so you can now subscribe to the product, which is something brand new for the industry. There are many subscription products when it comes to music marketing. They tend to be very transactional. And so we're trying to turn it change the way artists think about their marketing by offering that membership. And, but it was very much tech focused and bringing in people who could really double down on building a great product for us. Yeah. And where are you today? I don't know. No, where are we today? We have built a lot of that tech now and we've launched a lot of it in the last couple of weeks, actually. So we've soft launched a lot of what we've been building. We haven't talked about it publicly yet. That's going to be coming in the next couple of months, which will be really exciting. And then we are interested in growth this year. So it's a slightly different shift and kind of come the summer, we really want to be seeing that high, you know, hockey stick growth curve if we can on the growth side. And we'll be launching partnerships around that to see what we can really do. It's very interesting to hear a story. And when you navigate LinkedIn, which is a funny tool, you do follow along what people are supporting. And one of the things I see consistently is you. It is unheard. I think there's a vibe around what you do that is very supportive. And it might have something to do with your mission to empower.

independent, or not just paraphrasing. And, but there's a good deal of your personality. Like it's very clear when I talk to you that you are a person you immediately trust, that I trust what you say is honest. And there's something about that when you work with founders, like especially within sales, I can myself consider myself a salesman of some sort. And when I talk with people of why I believe I'm a good salesman, this is my own words, is I believe I have a very high level of transparency, a very high level of honesty, but also a very high level of directness of what I wanted to achieve. How do you see yourself as that trustworthy person? What is it you do that makes me trust you right now? Do you know that? Such a good question. I've actually never been asked that. And I think when I think back to school, you know, I think that I was always very involved in sports. So relationships were something that I really valued, you know, and I lent into. You know, if you're in a team, you want to be popular within that team. And so maybe you develop techniques such that you are actually popular and you get on with everyone and you are open and transparent. And I think that I was never great at school in terms of academically, but I think the emotional side of it, I really started to get a grasp of quite quickly as a sports person at a young age. And I think I've managed to perhaps, and this is unconscious, but perhaps then build that emotional intelligence or an understanding of how people are feeling or what I'm saying might make someone feel. into my adult life because I feel a certain way when I hear someone speaking to someone and I know there's not a connection there, I can feel there's no connection there, you know, and that makes me uncomfortable and want to lean in and say, actually, I can feel there's something going on here, can we try and solve that problem? You know, and it's just a feeling I have. And sometimes in work, I talk about feeling a lot, you know, and sometimes that's a really nice way to approach something or works for me where I say,

What you said there makes me feel uncomfortable. And I think this is why it makes me feel that way. What do you think to that? Do you think that's a fair comment? How does it make you feel? And I think it's kind of maybe something I learned over time, like I said, being in sports teams, but feeling is something that can be really powerful. But I'm not sure why maybe I'm switched on emotionally, but it's certainly useful, I think. How big of a part did that play in you? landing the cap table you have now. Do you think? Yeah, a big part, I would say, because if I think about Willard, I met Hazel when I went to Saudi Arabia to a music conference. We were sat in the desert next to each other. We said hi and we got chatting. Then we met again back in London and she invested in us really quickly. And then a few weeks later, she introduced me to Willard and said, you guys should have a chat. And I've been trying to get a hold of Willard for months, you know. And I think because Hazel trusted me, you know, and she trusted what I was doing was a good thing. She was open to introducing me to people like Willard. You know, so I think it, and then you build a relationship with Willard and that becomes a trustworthy thing. And he introduced me to some people as well. So I think it plays a huge part, you know, a huge part. Yeah. I view that to be true, but does that also conflict with the business side? If I want to really make it super caricature of what's happening is you have this emotional state that you can read people, you can talk with people in a way that makes them trust you, but that openness could also potentially feel conflicting with the very capitalistic side of building a business. How do you navigate that?

Back and forth, if that is a back and forth for you. Yeah, it's certainly challenging. And I think the thing that when you start a business is the thing that you really want to do is make that business a success. And you know what you have to do to make that success. And ultimately it comes down to your revenue, your gross margins and your costs. And that's underpinned by a great product, of course. But I think because that has always been at the core of what I'm trying to achieve. I think I managed to balance those things quite well because there's the emotional side where I want to connect with people. I want them to trust what we're doing. But I always have in the back of my mind, is that the best decision for the business? And if it's not the best decision for the business, that's when it's challenging because then I have to maybe speak to someone about maybe their performance or speak to an investor to say, okay, that's great advice, but actually I don't think it's the best thing for the business. And that can be uncomfortable at first, but actually what you learn is that... with the right people around you, they take on board you saying no or take on board actually that's not the best thing for the business really well. You know, so I think it's actually a great filter as well. If you have that transparency and honesty, if people don't like that, that's fine. But that's the way we do things here, you know, and I think it can be a great filter to make sure you've got the right people around you. Yeah. But it's tough. I have a few more questions left and then I'll let you go focus on the actual work. Um, where is Unheard going? What, what do you envision? And this can be taken to. Yeah. I think there's a few ways I described this. You know, the first is that I want Unheard to be the name that people mention when they think about music marketing. And that's whether you are a major label or whether you are your artists releasing your first ever track. I want us to dominate this marketing space. And also make the process of music marketing and bring it really into the 21st century. That's what we want to achieve over the next three to five years. We want to be that dominant player. And I think the other thing is I want to create something that impacts people away from music in other creative industries. You know, I think if we're creating great, deep marketing tech, shouldn't that apply to people like yourself who are creating great podcasts or gamers or radio show hosts or TV personality, sports stars? So I think that's something that...

Is really interesting as a longer term vision is how can we then impact the wider, you know, 50 million or however many you say content creators available out there, you know, posting great content. See, there's an ambition to, um, you know, see how big we can get in terms of our user base and see how much, you know, we could sell this for at the end of the day or merge with someone. You know, I think those are also things that I think about, but right now I'm very focused on building the best product possible. To try and serve as many artists as possible so we can be that household name that people think about when they think about music marketing. You have this full dedication to your company and you might not be thinking about what happens after, but if you were to imagine what happens after, what would be the end and what would you do? I'm laughing because I spoke to an advisor yesterday and he said, if someone asks you about selling, you say, we're not selling. So, you know, I can't put a number on that. But, okay, if we were to sell, and I'm sorry for going against the advisors' advice, although I'm not, I'm not going to talk about that, but what I'd want to do is support people. You know, I think I've talked about people so much, probably I bored people with the amount I've spoken about people today, but I think I'd like to invest in others. You know, I think right now we're really focused on music and supporting artists. But wouldn't it be great if you could support people who had great ideas in the same way that I've been supported and you've been supported too? And I think that would certainly be a long term ambition of mine, you know, when I'm in my 40s or 50s or whatever, is to start to invest in people and support them on their own journeys because I think as someone who is a founder now and hopefully has been a founder that's been successful in the future, I think there's a lot that you can teach others and you make lots of mistakes now so others don't have to. And so I think I would love to be able to support other people in 20 years time or whenever it is when we're finished with Unheard. But, um...

Yeah, I'd say that'd be my mission long-term. That's amazing. Alex, this has been just such a great conversation. I really enjoyed understanding Unheard and your journey a lot more. I think there's so much value to hearing different founder journeys, different struggles, different success. Like one of the things that you have done that not a lot of founders have done is being so backed by so impactful music industry people. And I think that's super interesting. Because it is a space that is difficult to navigate with who can back you. And the combination of great product, a great founder and great backers, I hope is a recipe for success. Me too. Alex, thank you so much for your time. I hope to meet you in person one day. Definitely. Thanks, Jacob. Thanks for having me. I've really enjoyed speaking with you. Thanks very much. That's good. And I'll go back to work and do the actual stuff then. Then I can sit and edit this. I will, I will. It's been a welcome break, but yeah, I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Thank you, Alex. Cheers.