How To Scale A Music Tech Business - Insights From Eleven75

Jakob

Hey guys and welcome back to the Sound Connections Podcast. Today is something I actually I feel like I'm in deep water because I'm speaking with a person much more clever than me and is working on a level that's much further than me. Jody, welcome.

Jody McKinley

Thank you. I'm not sure how much more clever I am than you. Now there's lot of pressure for me to be clever.

Jakob

Definitely further. Well, Jody, what we're going to talk about today is something that I, in theory, know something about, but is what I think is really interesting for a lot of the listeners who are going into this startup journey and maybe see the company's growing. And that is fractionalized talent, C-suites, like high level people that you need in order to grow your company. And it's talking about... the music industry versus other industries and all those opportunities in growing a company and the growing pains you might have. But Jodi, before we get into that, for the people who don't know you, who are you and what

Jody McKinley

Well, I will answer this from a professional perspective, though I am a husband, father, big sports fan, big music fan. But from a professional perspective, I've spent the majority of my life in music, music tech, or professional life at least. And the ball guy at times been working kind of in a B2B, you know, in B2B relationships. And, you know, even I spent time with Rhapsody or, you know, non-operating as Napster and even those regards. I was responsible for partnerships. So it was working with other businesses to grow our subscriber base for Rhapsody. I think the, I've always been an entrepreneur, worked alongside of entrepreneurs in ventures. Been an early guy in entrepreneurial ventures. So I love that space. love the... ability to create something to have impact in the early stages of an organization. Just the energy that comes from an early stage company is a lot of fun. So I've always been drawn back into those types of environments.

Jakob

Yeah, and through Thread in your careers, you've been working with companies that's been growing. And you probably feel that journey has also seen the issues with getting great people to help scale along with you, but also the realistic part of can you afford them and at what point and how much do you use them, which I guess is why you have founded 1175, which is a company that does exactly that. So could you tell me about the company? What do you guys do?

Jody McKinley

So the, think, lending, approaching this from a couple different perspectives, the origin of 1175 is after I was the CRO at Song Trader left in... October, September, October of 22. Took some time and you looked at some opportunities from a full-time perspective and there was just, there wasn't a lot that was really speaking to me, but I did, through those conversations, I ended up taking on some advisory work and some freelance or fractional work as well. And I really enjoyed it, kind of to the previous statement, I loved being part of. helping move things along and building, right? And so that lent itself from just like where I was enjoying it to the point where it's like, I think this could be something I wanna continue to do full time and began talking to others that were either doing advisory work or fractional work of some time. We can get into that a little bit more. Answering it from being a person who has made the decision to bring the... the talent in on a fractional basis. It's identifying a particular need that you have. And sometimes you may not have the money to bring somebody in full time. Sometimes you're looking for a very specific need that you need to have come in either expertise or somebody that's skilled at doing something that you just don't have the talent in house. It could be for a very small period of time that you need this just to overcome. I think one of those areas is music licensing and that's relevant to your audience. That is... a huge need at the onset of really anybody that's going to do anything that's going to require licensing or be licensing on their platform. that is, I think that perspective lent itself to developing a collective of freelance employees that organizations and you we tend to focus really more on early stage and growth organizations that can tap into a variety of expertise. We've talked about this before, but the

Jody McKinley

The areas that we really focus are three. So revenue or growth or demand, number one. Number two, product, and then third, operations. So I think organizations are used to in the early stages of their lives bringing in legal help or bringing in accounting, outsourced accounting, things of that nature, benefits, know, all of those things that you have to worry about as an entrepreneur. But what we're offering is something that is... unique to those three areas that also does require very specialized skills or knowledge to be able to navigate the musical and entertainment space.

Jakob

Yeah, and I know how difficult it is to some degree. I have, in my sort of career, hired maybe around 60, 70 people. And I suck. I'm not good at it. But the reason why I'm not great at it, first and foremost, is that I am so confused to... I don't know how to sort of look through who's talented enough. I don't know to see like where's that specific expertise I need. And it's sort of like Wild West hiring people. And in a startup, mistakes in hiring or growth company mistakes in hiring can be incredibly expensive also because the capital you have is probably very limited. Definitely now it looks like Amplitude Ventures is now going into a growth period, which we've sort of been building towards. That's my biggest concern. Like, okay, so whenever this starts to go fast, who can I get to help me? Because I have very educated people on my team that has experience. But it's such a specific thing. And I often come with a naivety like, okay, I can train this person for six months and then they'll do it. But really, no. Like, even if I look at myself, it took me 13 years to get to somewhat of a mediocre understanding of entrepreneurship. And I've been doing it pretty much full time. Like, it's not something you just do. It's not something you just train. Most of the time, some of these really difficult decisions and navigation need to do as a growth company. it requires an enormous amount of experience. Sometimes you can do it as a new person, but most likely the experience is something it's just incredibly hard to find. Does that make sense?

Jody McKinley

It does. Yeah. think it's, you're not alone in those regards. think any entrepreneur, the moment that they start to grow their team outside of the founders, that's something that they face. And until they have the resources to, that can really focus on doing the proper recruitment and really even before recruitment, defining what is it that the organization needs. It's an intimidating thing and it can be consuming, incredibly consuming of an entrepreneur's time. to make sure that they're finding the right person and then everything that goes on beyond that is time consuming as well.

Jakob

Hmm. Yeah. And the interesting thing is I have a few friends and colleagues that I've either met through the startup, the podcast or before the podcast. When I know they do like fractionalized things and they also come at a price point. But I also know the quality they bring to the table is something that I would call myself pretty well versed in this space. I don't have a chance compared to them. They are so above my level. And so I do understand how effective they can be in certain organizations and helping them. But what kind of companies do you normally see that would reach out and use your services? What is the sort of typical kind of company?

Jody McKinley

The... think it varies. Our target, since we established the collective, really has been early stage investors in early stage companies, right? So oftentimes even pre-revenue. As you and I have discussed, that's been a very interesting space over the course of last couple years. So more and more companies are opting to bootstrap rather than to raise money or are unable to get their pre-seed or angel funding to be able to afford some outside resources. resources so they're really doing everything in house. The other organizations that we see is like if there's a specific niche or a specific project that they're looking for and it doesn't require full-time work. It could be a licensing project, could be channel development, could be refinement of a product market fit or doing some market assessment. They just need something that's temporary. And I think it's worth mentioning that the collective members that we have, there's about 34, 35 five of us I believe at this stage, many of have established their practices even before becoming part of 1175. So I think they've found that niche and again there's everything from music licensing or rights management experts to people who are product managers that are brought into. to work on a specific project. I think that's where we see it. And then also just in temporary.

Jody McKinley

Temporary periods of time where investment companies tend to have more interest is around functional mentorship. There's been a number of conversations where we've had with investors were like, hey, we love the founding team, but we want some people at the table that can help guide them, have been there before, may be able to look out for the landmines or look around the corner, however, metaphor you want to use to be able to provide them with. some guidance on what to think. It's not necessarily to run the company, but to be there to help support and guide founders through their early stage journey.

Jakob

Yeah, that's so pivotal. I've been quite blessed I have a chairman in my company that is... I still don't know why he's the chairman of the company. He's way overqualified. But in all honesty, I'm not sure my company would be alive without him. And it's not that I'm not a qualified founder. I work harder than most and I study hard. But the reality is that I have a lot of blind spots, as any person has. I think maybe as an eccentric founder, which I would definitely categorize myself as, I have more than usual. And these sort of like experienced people around me are absolutely essential for me to even be alive today and still running my company and now looking at a growth period. So I totally see that. But one question that I've been struggling with, I would also look at the future of the music industry and also the future of ventures that I want to be a part of as a venture studio. is a question of talent. We briefly talked about it before this episode and I had a comment that from my perspective there is a limited amount of talent in the industry for many different reasons. One being that financially speaking this might be a less motivating industry than many others which means a lot of the brightest brains either do not choose to go into this industry or choose to go away from this industry when they meet too many hurdles in the road that's just not worth staying in the industry for. What's your take on that? Do you see the same?

Jody McKinley

don't know I have any specific data that would suggest that talent sits in one pocket rather than the other. But I think there's obviously some areas that you're hitting on that impact the ability to draw talent in this space. Dollars being a big one, right? I think if you look at what music tech companies or music companies are up against generally, it's often other tech companies who, you know, have are either very profitable or have raised huge sums of money or, you know, are have backing from Sand Hill Road and it is they're able to pay at a much higher rate and provide better benefits, there's more equity, there's a path to exercising the equity. And so all of those things really are, they're certainly a start-ups issue. And I think that music specifically outside of the obvious ones that have reached significant scale, that remains something that's... that's a struggle to attract that talent. Now the talent that I think is attracted in this space to come to work for companies are people who absolutely have a passion for music. I the overwhelming amount of talent in this space, regardless of whether it's full-time or fractional, really they love music, right? Or they love entertainment. And that's something that I believe is very unique to this space where, you know, And I've never worked in health tech. I've never worked in some other, I'm sure that there's some passion there, ed tech, so there's passion there as well. But I do think that the level of passion that you get from employees in the space is, there's this gravitational pull to work within music or to be surrounded by music to help promote music. So there is a lot of that. Whether or not the same skill level is there.

Jody McKinley

I don't know, I just know that from a competition perspective, it certainly is more difficult to go up to some of the big tech companies.

Jakob

Hmm. No, that's definitely how I see it. one of the ways I see this is you can pretty honestly say it's a small industry. Obviously there's thousands and thousands of people, but the inner circles of the established whatever is fairly small. most people would, if there's just a small conference culture, most people would know most people. Which means it's not larger than... If you don't know a person directly, would know a person that knows that person. And so, so for me, it's signalizes, okay, there's, if, if a founder gets an opportunity to, to grow their company, there's still very limited resources available to grow the company. If you want to really be, have a niche competency, which I believe is one of the big issues because it is a very particular industry. There are many things that are extremely difficult to navigate, licensing being one of them that you guys talk about. what other services or skills do you see being very attractive from your side when it comes to the music technology industry?

Jody McKinley

There's, you hit on probably one of the table stakes is really understanding licensing for anything that's going to, which is anything in the space in one way or the other. So having people that can help you not only understand it, how to add context to your particular application, and then help you navigate through what licenses need to be secured. How does that? How does that change when it leaves the United States or leaves the EU and what's required in those regards? You had Vicki Nomen on one of your podcasts and she talks about the industry market fit as well. I think that, I wouldn't say that it's exclusive to music, but certainly the complexity of the intellectual property and rights is something that, certainly in the early days. makes it very, very important to make sure that the product is going to be able to do what you want it to do based on all the requirements of the industry. Outside of that, think there's also just, there's knowledge that's developed over the years. We have a couple of members of the collective that have deep expertise in management, touring, and that's kind of evolved into this. you know, the growth of fans, super fans if you will. I know that's a very hot topic, but essentially it's just, you know, it's super serving the best fans of a band. you know, there's... been a lot of participants that have said, hey, we're getting in on this. the conversations that I have with these particular collective members is really fascinating to because I've never been in management, I've never been in touring or anything. And so I learn something new every time that we have these types of conversations. And I know that they're adding value to clients that they're brought in and help inform them as well. There's certainly a lot that I'm probably not thinking of off the top of my head right now.

Jody McKinley

where there is very specific needs to music. I think that the other thing to recognize is that we also provide a lot of digital expertise as well, that's product or growth, or subscriber growth specifically, for anybody that's running a subscription business.

Jakob

So what kind of companies do you see are growing right now based on the requests you have for your member services and sort of what you see you get financing that can afford expanding and growing? What are you seeing right now that is hot and sees momentum?

Jody McKinley

Yeah, well obviously the bulk of the money that's entered into the space in the last few years has been around AI and catalog acquisition. those have been, think that in my view, those are the two things that have taken the overwhelming majority of money into the space, right? What is, a couple of things that I'm seeing as of late. that I think is super interesting. There are some super fan applications that think have legs, but I also feel like there's a lot of picks and shovels types of business that are really, their timing is right. So with this, the growth of all these digital platforms, there's still a lot of inefficiencies and... broken plumbing, if you will, in the system. And that starts from everything from collaboration in the production of content to sharing the content to registering and then licensing it. And so there's some tools that I've seen in that particular category that they're starting to get some funding. They're getting user adoption. Many of them have really opted for bootstrapping. so they're getting some user adoption. And I think that there will be, But I think anybody who knows the massive, massive problem around tracking who owns the rights for what part of the song, what is the metadata, D-dex, blah, like all of these intricacies of the space, I think anyone who sees this growth is excited by it because it's going to make it much easier to navigate and as a result, hopefully, to innovate in the space as well.

Jakob

Hmm. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting space. What the commentaries that is I see a lot of very talented founders right there out now trying to address it. I don't see a lot of things happening. And of course, like this is very like behind the scenes as a lot of political things. It takes time. But what do you believe will happen in that space in particular? Again, I'm asking you because you see a lot of companies that are going towards this. Like, do you see this happening in the next few years? Is this going to be a big opportunity? Is this going to be a very long journey towards these agreements of how to do these kind of things?

Jody McKinley

I think the companies themselves, I believe that they'll see growth pretty immediate over the course of next two to three to five years. Does it resolve the problem? No. mean, this is a problem that's plagued the industry for a long time. I love the old adage, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And there's... that's what needs to occur here. there's not, if there was a magic wand, think that would have been used a long time ago. you know, I'm being very high level in terms of the problem, but I think anybody in the space understands, you know, how to create this data, how it's distributed and maintained. There's, there's... lots and lots and lots and lots of layers of issues there, right? But I think each one of these tools kind of taking a bit and piece of the, call it the supply chain, there's improvements, little iterative improvements that are going on in that space. And so they're not gonna be, this is not gonna be the next Spotify, this is not gonna be the next TikTok, it's not gonna be massive platforms, but it helps improve those platforms, helps contribute to the proper distribution of... or royalties rather and the and I think it really you know a few of them really that are starting around the production of content and the ability for you know if you're an artist you don't know this is not something that you jump into creating music because you're excited about all of this. It's a necessity. And the tools have just not necessarily been there. You learn about it after the fact, right? And then you have to do cleanup on aisle six, and aisle eight, and aisle 10, and get all of your stuff in order to make sure that the stuff that you've collaborated on or the stuff that you've created yourself is...

Jody McKinley

has been done properly and allows you to make a living off of it and allows you to keep track of it. so it's exciting to see some of that starting to the effort to really inform and educate and bring people early in their careers, very early in their journeys into these platforms.

Jakob

Mm.

Jakob

So what do you see as the potential here? I've been spending a good deal of time together with my team on looking at acquisitions, valuations, financing of music tech companies. And one of the things that we see is that there's a pretty... Consequent amount the company seems to be bought for in this space like pretty like it's around 15 million US dollars is where we see a lot of acquisitions happening and like in these sort of growth companies That's leads our observation based on all the numbers we can find either very clearly or deduct us the way to do it so What do you believe is the potential of these kind of companies? Do you see like there's happening acquisitions at a high level? Do you see like these founders really getting rewarded for the effort? So what's your sort of idea of what's happening out there in the acquisition space?

Jody McKinley

Yeah, I guess my gut response is that there's not gonna be massive exits out of these. highly unlikely that there will be any IPOs out of these organizations. But I do believe that there's valuable platforms that are being generated. And obviously, if it's valuable enough to organizations where there's a big enough pain point, then certainly that's access for these founders as well. back to the business of being in picks and shovels, I think that there's the opportunity for these platforms to service across, these tools to be servicing multiple platforms.

Jakob

Hmm.

Jody McKinley

so that the business can scale. It's just a matter of trying to find how do you build something that's valuable across multiple platforms that sit in various stages of the ecosystem.

Jakob

Because obviously the companies you would be servicing most likely has investors or are profitable. in most cases a founders expectation internally or externally is to sell the company at one point. So do you see that this is happening as of right now? Is there enough consolidation? Is there enough &A for this to be an attractive space for founders to be in?

Jody McKinley

Yeah, personally, I've not seen any indications of it yet. But again, I think this is very early indications of a lot of people that are, a lot of founders and innovators that are seeing this problem saying, okay, we're going to fix this. So they're still in very early stages of product market fit, gaining audiences. obviously have to, in order for it to prove itself out, you have to have users of the product, right? And so that's where I see them is in the very early days of that.

Jakob

Yeah, and it is a long journey. Again, what we see in our research so far is it sort of falls into two categories, which is there's a lot of companies in the space that get bots relatively early based on some sort of technology approach that fits really well into some sort of consolidation of a bigger ecosystem player. or the just long journey of building revenue, audience, problem solving that often takes 10, 12, 15 years. That doesn't seem to be as much as the typical journey, which is, know, six, seven, eight years. That's at least what I see. Normally it's either a short or a long journey. Of course I'm generalizing now, but that's sort of how we see our research so far, which for me also speaks to that. The way to approach building these companies needs to maybe also respect that, that either you double down on building the best technology you can do and find someone who's really interested in buying that, or you're patient. You just, you know, build a boat and build it better and better all the time. And then you're just in the industry and do your very best. But there's usually not this, you know, high growth scenario where you get bought because you have a big market cap or that kind of stuff. I don't see that a lot.

Jody McKinley

Yes.

Jody McKinley

I agree. Yeah, there's, I guess I share the same perspective that right now there's just, there's nothing that I've seen recently that leads me to believe that this is going to be seismic. You it's going to be massive in the industry and it's going to have a complete effect on how people are discovering or consuming content. And the exits as a result of that are not going to be the big exciting ones like a Spotify IPO. They are going to be smaller in nature. They're going to be more tactical. think the investors, it takes a different investor to say, yeah, I'm behind this. believe in this product. believe in the founders. And I'm fine that I'm not going to make the... a crazy amount of money that I would for somebody that's going to be unicorn.

Jakob

Yeah. I think that it speaks even more to the need for specialized talent to help founders navigate the space because there's not this usual hype scenario of waves you can ride or financing waves or whatever. Like it is very particular what's going to get through the very small window of opportunity. And I think that really speaks to the need for very specific context when you're a company, very specific knowledge. I think that this is where 1175's services are really interesting. But if you were to yourself right now, build a business, again, you see a lot of businesses, where would you hypothetically start a business? Like where do you believe it's most interesting right now?

Jody McKinley

talked about this. It's not, I'm not starting, my latest venture is not in the music space. So you know as it pertains to music, I guess I don't have a great answer for that, Jakob. I, you know, there's nothing that is, you know, in my mind like going, wow there's a massive gap right there. And perhaps I'm not close enough to some of those problems and where these founders are finding them and then tapping into us for particular expertise. I do want to go back to one of the things you said about these rounds of funding and the way that employment happens with some of these, when there's large rounds of money that's coming in. And I think you can look across, there's certainly been...

Jakob

Mm.

Jody McKinley

organizations in the music space that have experience that, but you can also look at, you know, in the tech space generally. And, you know, when we founded this, what I was not anticipating was, you know, some of the market changes to occur and the amount of layoffs that have occurred in these spaces as well. Right. And so Facebook has just announced, you know, yet another round of layoffs and they really ramped up during the, during the pandemic in 2022 on the employees and then went, yeah, we, you know, we over hired. And they have the luxury of being able to do that because of where they are from a financial perspective. But they're an anomaly. That's not how most organizations operate. Even though some organizations, I would suggest, find themselves in that spot. They get a round of funding. It might be very small. seed round or a round, go, I need this particular talent. And what they're not necessarily looking to do is solve the problem to get them to that next phase. All right, so I got a seed round. My goal here is to figure out product market fit. I want to get some customers on board and then I know that I'm going to need to raise another round. So what do need to do in order to be able to do that? Right. And so by taking those little steps, we think of it as two metaphors that we use is the term horses for courses or more so a relay race, right? So instead of thinking about running a marathon, you have individuals that are running different legs of your relay. And I think that it's not natural sometimes to think about that from a marketing and sales perspective, from a product perspective, from an ops perspective, but the reality is the talent.

Jody McKinley

And the experience for somebody that's pre-revenue is very different than somebody that's worked for Spotify or Amazon when they're much, much larger organizations. me personally, my experience is very much on an early stage. perspective and so I would be a fish out of water if Spotify at this stage brought me in for expertise in most areas of their business. Now there might be something that would be where I would have the expertise but there are people in the organization who have that large, in 1175 specifically, that have that experience with Amazon and Spotify and so on and so forth, the larger organizations that can provide valuable context there.

Jakob

Yeah, I think that's such an important point. Not to hang anyone out and I'm not going to do it with any particular names, but I do a lot of the time see like decks going around with advisors where there's just such a big gap with where they are in this person's career. And I'm also very like, I'm oftentimes very skeptical. Like this person might be able to give you advice, but I'm not quite sure how... that person's experience would be correct for your situation. We even see it in some of the companies we're getting into now. We've started doing sweat equity models with some of our clients that's already had a client relationship with us. And what we see like these advisors and experts that are part of the companies, I'm just like, we know your company pretty well by now. And we believe this to be very misinformed advice. Not if you were an established company, but you're just simply not. which means that the game is different, the perspectives are different, and what might be the right prioritization when you are big will not be the right prioritization when you're small. And these are just nuances that's really going to affect your capital. And it's just very sensitive to the decisions you make at early stage and how you spend the money.

Jody McKinley

I think one of the reasons for establishing the collective was what you're hitting on is if you think of it from, just think of it as a matrix, right? So the different skill sets or expertise that an individual has and then at what stage of a company have those been applied? And so. What we've been very intentional about is trying to fill in that matrix as much as possible, right? So having somebody that we can lean into that has expertise across all that way. that, you know, as an example, if I'm involved with an organization and say, look, think it's, you guys have reached a stage where you need this expertise, that's not me. Let me introduce you to, you know, this collective member who can help carry the baton for this next stage of the relay race.

Jakob

Yeah, that's so important and for example, with my own practice, I believe I am really, really good on the bullshit level, which means if founders not even come that far that they actually have tested their product that much, which means they need a person like me that has enough bullshit detector to tell them like, that's not going to work. Not necessarily from an informed decision, just like seen experience or just reasoning. But already now, when my company's growing, how to run good operations, I have no clue whatsoever, to be honest. I see myself as a chef. I like to cook food. Now I just do businesses, right? So how to run a really good kitchen and how to make... proper profit out of that is outside of what I know. But I'm really good at making food though. So I can help you with that specific thing. And I think oftentimes when people come to us, they also have that misunderstanding. Like, I'm not gonna be able to help you. I think I know something about it, but I really have no idea. Which means you need to find the right people with the right thing. And even people in your team who would be specializing in one thing would probably only fit for that particular part of the growth cycle. And if they grow further or if they need to scale down on operations and become smaller, that person might not be relevant anymore.

Jody McKinley

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's important to note that we recognize that there's different types of value that we can bring. You talk about, I think, you mentioned kind of an advisory role. Certainly something that many of our members are engaged in advisory capacities. But I think that what the bulk of us love to do is to be embedded in an organization. And to be able to really impact results, know, contribute to the results and be part of the growth.

Jakob

I want to sort of end the conversation on a sad note because I think it'd be really interesting for the audience to reflect on this as well. We've had a conversation about it before. You also mentioned it now. Like if you were to start a company in music, you probably wouldn't because you don't see the opportunities. And this is also where I'm very curious because we're now officially as a venture studio starting to bring music as a part of what we focus on. And we're going to... go broader for the reason that, you know, after not soon, I think this will be episode 101, this like that. We've seen a lot of the industry, we've built companies in this space and I believe there are some companies that really has its relevance. There's a lot of startups that I know right now that I believe could go all the way if everything plays out route. And we have at least, I would say two bets in this industry that I firmly believe in. But beyond that, I struggle to see the potential. And I think it also has a lot to do with the founders. I think there is a lack of really, really smart founders in this space at scale. So I don't want to offend anyone, but like the reality is there's not a lot of founders going into this space and there will always be good founders and there'll be amazing founders. And I think if you have amazing founders in this space, I think there's also a potential for pivots. Potential for like really trying to find program market fit and find that specific niche that is beyond the initial vision. But there's even a lack of that in my opinion. I don't see that a lot. So the combination of I don't see a lot of like companies really doing the right thing in my opinion compared and also combined with I don't like there's enough of great founders really makes me very curious to see like what's actually going to happen in this space because we are in a part of the music industry's history where things are changing so much which also means a lot of the things that were hot two years ago

Jakob

The way to build that address has fundamentally changed. The audience sentiment towards your product offerings will be completely different in a year than what it is right now because of all these external factors. So it's three things. It's the lack of founders at scale. It's the lack of what I see to be really good problem solving companies. And then also a changing audience sentiment over the next year, which confuses me, but which I also believe brings an opportunity. Because when there is this confusion and cloudiness of the potential, there is also an opportunity of really sticking with it and really, really trying to understand what the problems are, not just right now, but in the future. So it leaves me very split, in my opinion, about the opportunity industry. But I do believe the people who can navigate what I just said and find that specific niche and just stick to it and really try to pivot through whatever expectations you have, I think there's potential there. Does it make sense?

Jody McKinley

I'm sad. No, think you're perhaps I'm the glass half full here. Just because, you know, I there's nothing right now that I'm that I would say, yes, I want to go start something here doesn't mean that there's not that there's not opportunity. It doesn't mean that somebody that has the proper vision or understands problems at a deeper level than I do.

Jakob

Hahaha

Jody McKinley

has a brilliant idea that not only solves a problem, but could change the way that we consume music. You know, I guess from a, if we zoom out for a moment and we think about... how we as consumers, not people working in the industry, but how we as consumers, how things have changed over the course of the last 10 to 20 years in how we're discovering music, how we're sharing music, how we're listening to music. It's changed so much, right? And I believe that there's a couple things that, there's a number of things that are amazing that have occurred through this, right? But there's also some things that have been diluted in that particular experience and that people are finding new ways to hold on to some of those. Those elements or finding new ways to rediscover that intimacy with music, whether that's through live shows, obviously vinyl sales and having the physical. And I think there's, I believe that there's ways to, there's opportunity in the marketplace to really continue to expand on that. Level of intimacy between consumer and music and consumer and the artist. Clearly there's a lot of belief in that as well with the amount of time and attention and investment that you're seeing in super fans and developing these platforms where the listener or the fan is able to get closer to that artist. I also believe on a macro perspective that there's the way that we have traditionally thought about musicians as artists and now creators as artists. There's this merging that's going on and I do believe there's opportunity to create new experiences and reinvent what that means. We've been limited to listening to them, perhaps engaging with them on social media or some other format that they've made available to us and seeing them live in concert, right? Certainly, technology is no longer the...

Jody McKinley

That's not the limiter in how you can engage. Technology can do anything, right? So I think it's just a matter of finding that appropriate context in the business models that will support it, that consumers will be interested in, and that artists can make money off of it, right? Or the artist ecosystem can make money off of it to really support it. What that is, when it occurs, that's beyond me to say in this moment. What I can say is it intrigues me, and I'm excited to see some of those, what will come in those areas. And along the way, you're still going to need the picks and shovels to support all of this as well. So I think continuing to solve and invest in solving the big issues in the industry to help encourage that growth to feed to innovation. I'm optimistic about that. With regards to going back to if... If I were to invest or if I were to start something new I don't know that you and I have in our conversations that I've shared this with you, but there is a I have a concept that I've been working on for a number of years and we've just not had the ambition to give it a go, but it is in the live music space. I love it, I'm sure, same thing with you, I love to see small intimate shows, I love to be surprised, I love to be in a room where you see an artist just pour it out and completely vulnerable. And there's something very, very special about that. During the pandemic, we lost a lot of stages, right? And the aftermath of that also is we have ticket prices that are

Jody McKinley

incredibly high, particularly here in the United States. I know that there's some controls in other parts of the world, but that fans of live music just don't have the ability to go see their favorite artists as much as they might have been able to before pre-pandemic. And so, you know, I think that, you know, if I were to point to a space that sits out of my area of expertise, that's an area that I think does need to be solved, is how do we leverage technology? How do we create enough inventory for these artists to go out and do what they love to do? Deliver to what people you know people who love consuming that I do believe that there's you know that's an opportunity in the space right now.

Jakob

I agree. No, Again, for me, for me that is correct. And I do get dark when I think about it, music in general, just because it's so close to me. And I think it's just observing what's happening and what's to come and the disruption of who's going to be there, who's not going to be. I think I'm also very caught up by that.

Jody McKinley

Was that enough of a roller coaster ride to get you away from sad?

Jakob

Very honest about that. But I do agree that especially in live space, think very, soon that solutions to exactly what you're talking about is going to be very, needed. And I also believe like maybe this is a call for founders out there, like something's going to happen here. And I also know a lot of my colleagues in this space are researching this so much. This program is like trying to map out what's happening in this live space, the investment and... and how to use technology to address it. So I agree. I do see momentum there. And thank you for reminding me.

Jody McKinley

It's easy to be jaded, especially when you're so close to it.

Jakob

That's the thing, that's the thing. Jody, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to hear about how you go about building your business. I think it's very interesting to look at talent in this space. And it's interesting to talk about what is to come and what is the opportunities as founders in this space. For people who would be interested in it, I guess you have your website out and you read about your company.

Jody McKinley

Yeah, so easy to find us on LinkedIn.

Jody McKinley

The, T-H-E, and then the number is 1175.com. So www.the1175.com.

Jakob

Amazing. Jody, thank you so much for being on.

Jody McKinley

Yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity.

Jakob

Talk soon.