How Nashville Tech CEO Is Building Music’s Tinder

What does it really take to build a music‑tech startup in Nashville? In this episode, co‑founder Kevin McCarty shares the story behind We Should Write Sometime, the platform known as “Tinder for songwriters.”

Kevin reveals how he built the app, raised money from investors, and risked his own financial security to keep the company alive. You’ll hear the real cost of building a music product from scratch, what startup funding and equity dilution actually look like, and why so many songwriters still struggle to earn a living.

We also dig into how technology could reshape the future of the Nashville music industry: from connecting collaborators across cities to leveling the playing field for independent writers and artists.

Connect with The Stephan Hogan Podcast: Subscribe for more masterclasses on the music business, creativity, and entrepreneurship. Watch more episodes here

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Filmed in Nashville, TN
Produced: Stephan Hogan
Mavericks Media Co. Production

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

One um one investor that was a connection through a current investor, and he asked me the question that none of them have ever asked me, where he said, What percent do you put on this succeeding to the level that you expect? And I was like, that's a great question. And nobody's nobody's asked me that.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

And I said, Well, you know, if I were to sit here and try to sell you and be like, 100% to the moon, we're gonna crush it. Guaranteed, you know, either invest or get up, you know, like you're gonna know I'm full of it, probably.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

I said, I, you know, I don't know what percent you want to put on this. I personally have no other option. And to what level? We're not sure yet. To the level that I expect, there's no reason we can't get there. It's gonna take a long time and a lot of work, and it's gonna be a grind for a very long time. And I was like, uh, but me personally, I have no other option. All my cash is in here, plus a lot more the other way. And I want to get back to the supporting people that are in my life. I I gotta make it work. I was like, I don't know what percent you want to put on that. And he just paused for like, you know, five, five seconds kind of long. He goes, sending a check tomorrow. Now, Ashley Gorley said in an interview one time, it was a printed one, he was just like, there's no minor leagues in songwriting. Because everybody comes here and then it's like there's no structure, there's no pathway, there's no like stability place where songwriters starting out can go. I'm at high school baseball to get to college baseball to single A, to double A, to triple A to the major leagues. It's just like there's nothing. Go, how do we help build those leagues for those songwriters to then find other songwriters to have maybe new publishing deals? Looking at it a different way, where it's maybe it's not what the current publishing deals are now, but like a different version of that, akin to when Uber came along, it was, you know, oh, so you're not a kid. We're doing ride sharing. And everyone's like, what the hell is like nobody knew what rides? It's literally what it, I mean, it's just picking up somebody in a car, point A to point B. It's what Cavs did. Shopify, everybody was like, Toby, there's only like 40,000 online businesses. There's not a big market for that. He's like, Because we haven't given the tools for other people to go make online businesses. Everybody turned, like, he has this story of like hundreds of Easy's turning him down or whatever. And he's like, they all turn me down because they're like, market's too small. Our coolest story was we got a girl from Atlanta, a pub deal, and then a record deal here in Nashville. She was like, I found your app, put my profile from Atlanta to Nashville, connected with a guy that had a pub deal. They wrote virtually, songs got pitched. Year and a half later, she sends Richard and I an email, and she's come to Third and Lindsay this Friday. We were like, Oh, you're in town? Like, I'd love to meet you in person. I'd love to get some content that's cool, like about the story. And uh it was like, oh no, no, no, like getting something to go record.

SPEAKER_03 2:55

So the app that you and Richard started, we should write sometime. Correct. Deemed the tender of Tender for Songwriters. Tender for songwriters, your interest in the economics of the music industry and your love for music coalesced with you and Richard Casper starting this app that now has how many people?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

It's organically grown to 10,000 downloads, but with active users is 8,500. And that's organic, no marketing budget, no campaigns. It's just like events, social media being very scrappy.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Um okay. So I want to stop you before we get into the app. I would love to talk economics of the music business. Yeah, yeah. Because lately I've been I've been thinking about this. I don't know why, but I realize that everybody that I talk to that's not a musician makes money, and that everybody I talk to that's a musician or songwriter, except for a very select few, don't make money. So you take music, business, take the music out, you're just left with business. And at the end of the day, and this isn't to be rude to the music business, but the bottom line is the bottom line, which is making money and growing.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

And year over year growth as businesses. For sure. Because what is the goal of any business? You gotta make money, man. You gotta make money. Yeah, and especially in um, I would say like go global conglomerate type industries that uh are the Sony's, the Warners, the UMGs. So the economics of the music business are very interesting to me because we're at a point where most people in town would tell you, yeah, I'm driving to Uber and whatever. Or like I I had a number one song, but it just recouped my draw, which means now I'm just broken even of the debt I was into the publishing company.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Which always was crazy to me that that's how that structure was done. But I understand that I understand, but it was always crazy.

SPEAKER_03 5:03

Yes. So I want you to tell me about some of the uh basics of the economics of the music industry that you've noticed and where you see things have gone maybe a little too far in the wrong direction.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Um one quote I always like to reference in these conversations because I try to look at it as an outsider and go I didn't start in in the mail room and work my way up at a big publishing company or a label or whatever. I just am obsessed with songwriters and technology. How do I help songwriters that to me are the most important part of the entire supply chain of the industry, but are treated and set up frankly the worst? And it's like they're they're the NVIDIA chip of the AI industry where everything starts with them, but like they're not treated like NVIDIA chips, but it's like they're the beginning where everything, okay, you got to get songwriters in a room to write a song, and then we got to take that song and get an artist to play it, form it, go do the thing. There's a supply chain of of a song. But the way I've looked at it, and and that quote I always reference is when you know Ashley Gorley said in an interview one time, it was a printed one, he was just like, There's no minor leagues in songwriting. And that always stuck out to me. Where and Ashley has how many number ones? Like 85 or you know, 80 plus for sure. 85. Yeah, I mean, and so that was an interesting thing to me as of like a baseball guy that that clicked internally for me and checked a lot of boxes where I go, hmm, that kind of makes sense to me. Because everybody comes here and then it's like there's no structure, there's no pathway, there's no like stability place where songwriters starting out can go, I'm at you know, high school baseball to get to college baseball to single A to double A to AAA to the major leagues. It's just like there's nothing. And it's like you get signed, and even to the point of the pub deals, and then you go, some of those are kind of crazy and screwed up too, just depending on what the structure of those look like and how the economics of that work. So where I sit is I go, okay, if there's no minor leagues in in songwriting, which I would also call them middle class, middle low and lower class, you know. I mean, because there's far in our target demographic right now isn't the Ashley Gorleys to get on the app and find people to co-write with. They're they've got their network, they've got their crew. This is that when he was first starting. How do you find your team? How do you find your class that you're gonna go up with and grow up with and collaborate with? And if you're not in Nashville, like how are you gonna do that if you're in country, if you're in pop world and hip hop and if you're in the UK? So it's like, you know, we'd made all these songwriters from Canada that would come down during Tin Pan just to meet other songwriters to schedule rights to fly back down. And I was like, that's thousands of dollars when you could just get on the app and change your location and connect with songwriters. And like, that's how I met Parker is like I'm like the Tom of MySpace. I took a page out of his playbook, so it's like I'm everyone's first connection, like he was everyone's first friend. But it allows me to like have one-on-one connections and conversations with users about the industry. I get some funny questions that I can get into later. But Parker, you know, she was she was in Canada in Vancouver, and she was like, I found your app through social, got on it. She connected with me or messaged me. We got on the phone that day and chatted for like four hours. She's like, I have so many ideas for this. And I was like, Cool, you know, and and now she's here in Nashville pursuing it. But I say it because it's like, we just want to give tools to those songwriters and go, we're I'm not trying to compete with the current industry, if that makes sense. I'm trying to build this community to give songwriters this global home that they can come and collaborate and connect with. We have plans to monetize as a business, but also to help give songwriters opportunities that they they frankly might not get otherwise. And and so we can get into that. Do you think songwriters need publishing deals? Um, in today's world, I mean, just given the l typically, if you're a songwriter, if you're an artist, it's it's different.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

Do you think in the next decade songwriters will need publishing deals?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

I um that's a really good question. Because I frame it almost as like what I've seen is these big songwriters are starting a lot of their own publishing companies. And what I want to be able to help is those songwriters that get to a level very similar to what Shopify does for small business owners, is takes a lot of the logistics and admin off the plate so that they can just go do the craft. I reference a lot of that, like the structure of what we're building, but also the sentiment of like there's no minor leagues in songwriting. I go, how do we help build those leagues for those songwriters to then find other songwriters to have maybe new publishing deals? Looking at it a different way, where it's maybe it's not what the current publishing deals are now, but like a different version of that, akin to when Uber came along, it was, you know, oh, so you're not a we're doing ride sharing. And everybody's like, what the hell is that? Like nobody knew what ride, it's literally what it, I mean, it's just picking up somebody in a car, point A to point B. It's what Cavs did. But they created this new thing called ride sharing that gave gig economy opportunities to everyday Joe Schmoes to make some extra cash on the side. Like, there's things like that that I constantly think about of what are the new economic models? If we have enough songwriters that we're just helping be songwriters, what that looks like economically, you know, I don't have the answers to it, but what I do know is how it's set up now is most songwriters that aren't at the top echelon aren't sitting there going, man, this is structured super well for us right now. Like we're crushing it.

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Yeah, let's just be honest. I mean like what was done in the 90s, like if you have a publishing deal now, like a first-time draw, 30 to 40 grand a year, you're in like the poverty, uh, what would that be called? You're the poverty class, basically.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Basically.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

Uh, and so you still have to work another job. Yeah. It's and and you can't just get cuts anymore. So you can't get people recording your songs. The only way to make money is number ones. So even if you have like a top 10, you're still not gonna make a lot of money on it. Yeah. Um, this is what I see with the people that I've talked to, and the people that do make money are the ones that have number ones. Um, and that's great. But it's really like you said, number ones are all they care about. I've talked to someone before, and he said, I don't want to sign a writer that's gonna write one number one. I want a songwriter that's gonna write hit after hit after hit after hit after hit. And that is where the mindset is of the music business on the publishing side. And I think if anybody tells you anything different, yeah, that they're lying.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah. I mean, I um it's fun sitting in this spot and not having the like I don't and by the way, I don't have a dog in the fight.

SPEAKER_03 12:37

This is uh pure observation. Totally. Kent Earls was on the podcast, he has Joy Beth Taylor, she has like 10 songs on Lil Annie's new record, co-wrote Choosing Texas, biggest song in the world. I think um it still just hit billboard number one again or something. Yeah. And um he says, when I sign someone, I try to give them 40 grand. And he said, I signed them for at least three deal, uh three years, knowing that it's gonna be at least three years before they're at the point where their songs are good enough for a first-time writer to be able to write a number one. Yeah. And then when you get into that third and fourth year, then you're evaluating like, are they getting a number one? Luckily for him, he has a great ear. He's been able, every single one of his songwriters has had a number one and he's doing very well. Uh, and he's a smart, just cool, chill dude. Um, but he was just honest about it. Yeah. I asked him, how much does a number one pay out on a co-write? He said about 125 grand after everybody gets their cut for a number one song. Um, so yeah, that's just the reality of it. And that your chances of getting a number one are so low.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

So this is just statistics. Totally. So it's like the trend, the chances of getting a hit song. I think I used Chat GPE to do this, but it was like 0.0019% uh are your uh the chances there. Yeah. And that is all based off of you making no money until you make a money, the money that gets you into a room with bigger artists and bigger writers and all that. So it's very much Jirty Williams said on my podcast, another personal reference, because these are all not my words. He said, if you can do anything else but this, do it. Yeah. Anything else. For sure. Because the economics of totally pursuing a career in music is not like the 90s where you could be a lunchbox, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

You get a cut on a seed, an album in the 90s, just like a cut, you know, just song recorded.

SPEAKER_03 14:38

That's that's that's a salary for a year. Yep. The word country politic comes from a real era in country music. When Nashville took country music and made it elegant, strings, background vocals, orchestra. It was country music with polish. Think Patsy Klein, Glenn Campbell, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charlie Pride. Songs that still have the ache and honesty of country, but dressed up with style. And that is exactly what this hotel feels like. The kind of place where every detail's been thought through. The scent when you walk in, the music, the clothes they carry, the textures, the rooms, the coffee cups, the way everything feels curated without feeling fake. So you feel the history immediately, but unlike staying right in the middle of Broadway, it feels tucked away, it feels calm, it feels like you found something. And that's honestly why I love it. It's where I go when I want to get away. Think, slow down, have a restful time without technology. And when you're ready, the Ryman and Broadway are about a four-minute walk. The ContraPolitan Hotel. Stay in the story.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

That's where for us as a business, I'm not trying to go. We're gonna compete against that and try to fix that. Like the other playbook I look at a lot is is the guy that started Savannah Bananas and Jesse. And the way he's approached building something from the ground up, super scrappy, long time. His thing was, I'm putting fans first above any.

SPEAKER_03 16:05

Explain what Savannah Banana is. Do you know what they like? Have you followed them?

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Is that the baseball thing?

SPEAKER_03 16:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Where they're selling out the biggest stadiums in the world. They have a 4.2 million person wait list to buy tickets. And so But why? Like, what is the So what he did was he basically said, I'm not trying to make a new baseball league or a new baseball team to compete against major leagues. I'm gonna make like this new league that started in Savannah and it's he's been working on it for you know two decades almost. And he's basically gonna do, I'm gonna do everything that the that the that I don't like about the major leagues is I'm gonna do completely different. Like the advertisements, the the entertainment, they're doing dancing, they're doing skits, they're doing all of these things that are just gonna bring joy to fans.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

And it's this is where you'll see like a bunch of dudes do the same dance.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Yeah, and it's like in a it's a baseball game. Yeah, but with like it's like a bunch of it's like an entertainment game circus dance thing, song stuff, like flamethrowers and all these crazy things. And then there's baseball game. But he has specific rules that he goes, This is what I don't like about the major leagues, are these rules. And I'm gonna make it two hours max. There's gonna be trick plays, there's gonna be points for trick plays, there's gonna be all these things that like there's no bunting, like there's no, like, if you there's no why like there's all these things that you go, this is what's boring about real baseball. I'm gonna go build this own thing. But it took them forever. But everybody in baseball was like, in major league baseball is like, this is dumb. This is so stupid for for a decade plus. Like, nobody's gonna want this. Nobody does, nobody cares. This is silly. And now, guess who's trying to get them to come to their cities all the time because they're they're filling out every stadium in the world 10 times over? They filled out Nissan like three days in a row. I mean, they're filling out SEC stadiums, they've got, and they built their own ticketing system so that you can't third party sell it and screw and like upcharge um anybody to like resell a ticket. And because he's like, I've always I'm always putting fans first. Long-winded way of like, I've always respected that because people have always come to him and been like, you could make more money doing this, doing advertising, doing like these things that baseball's always made money doing, contracts with the players, you know. These aren't the major, they aren't the major league players. Like they're good baseball players, but they're not the top tier. But they're like, okay, that's fine. We're not worried about that. I'm not trying to go make this like a scouting discovery thing. And if somebody happens to make it, great. But it's like they got to be entertaining and doing backflips and like throwing balls with flames on. It's just crazy. Like a dude's pitching on stilts, it's wild. But like it's for the fans, it's for entertainment. And so again, long way of saying part of what I love about that is like he's like, I'm not listening to the current establishment being like, you can't do these things. But like his fans first motto is very close to us about putting songwriters first in anything. And it's yeah, I could make more money by doing a lot of other things and charging songwriters for this, and charging for courses and all these affiliate things coming to us and being like, I can help them be better songwriters. And then I look at their course list of what they're hawking, and course three or class three is like five hooks to get your song on the radio. And I'm like, that's not how this works. But I could easily sell that to my community, make some money just for me to pocket it now. But we're selling, they're selling the false hope. Like, oh, you buy my course, you're gonna be a famous songwriter and be rich and on the radio. I'm like, that's not how it works, but a lot of in middle America that's pursue it, like, oh, I'm buying this course for $800. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna make it now. And then, you know, as we all know, what was on the radio two years ago isn't what's on the radio now, and all these things. And so I'm I'm going, I'm not even messing with that stuff. I'm gonna like solve the very first problem, which is songwriters need to find people to write music with. And over the course of time, we know that okay, they need when you connect with somebody, when can you write with them? Well, let's make that part easier so that they can put their calendars together.

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Behind this, by the way, in order to be able to develop an app that you can work on and scale, you had to do something, I would imagine, which is make money or have money of some sort to be able to do it. Because I know that you've done some kind of funding, I don't know the arrangement. I just remember you helping me work on projections once, and it was really interesting. And I was like, dang, because you've been in this, you've immersed yourself into it, and from your business background, yeah, you have learned a lot of stuff about that. But how do you how did you go about starting an app? Yep. And like I'm just curious about the funding part and the rounds of funding a little bit just for context for people for sure. Because it's very like altruistic to be like, I want to make an app for songwriters so they can write together and it's free to them and it's gonna help them and they can date, and you know, that's great and all. But um, yeah, like, oh, I have an idea for an app, but I have no money, so I don't think that's gonna, you know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, you definitely need money, so you need a lot of money.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

So, how so can we get into that part too before we go crazy far into the hundred percent?

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Because like the last thing I want to do is like pitch the like here's the features we're rolling. It's like, look, songwriters first, we're gonna help them, but we got a long way to go. But starting it, it was okay, we have an idea. Let's um first with Richard and I like is there other apps out there that do the same thing? What does the competitive analysis look like? Are there other things? And um just look at the market and say, what's what are people doing now to solve this? Problem that I keep hearing about, that Richard's talking about, every songwriter saying, I didn't have my crew. It took me a while. Finding the right co-writer is a lot like dating. You get in a room and it's just like, you know, oh, you know, you're a great person, but we this isn't going to work. Bad dates, right? So, how many bad dates have people been on to find the right one? And I go, if we can minimize that, a lot of these inefficient things are part of the reason why I go, no wonder it's a 10-year town. It takes years just to find the right people to start the right stuff. And I was like, so if we can kind of cut that down in the very beginning, but how are people doing it now? Right. And a lot of it is, oh, you got to go out and network. Well, okay, so if you're not in Nashville, you know, you got to come here. And I'm using Nashville just.

SPEAKER_03 22:51

So you did a competitive analysis against the market.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Competitive analysis against the market. And then, okay, what's what are people doing now? And uh, there's Facebook groups, there's organizations that have pieces of, you know, there's NSAI has chapters all over the place. Part of what they knew is connect songwriters. So you have to have a membership with NSAI. PROs have some people that want to help you connect. But there wasn't anything.

SPEAKER_03 23:16

Yeah, a lot of barriers to entry. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

There wasn't anything that we saw that was specific for songwriters connecting in a simple way that's app-based, which is like, you know, when we first started the idea in 2018, you know, of like what other app everybody was using apps and still do, obviously, but like what other app is specifically to help songwriters connect with each other? And there were some that just had arms, like little little pieces of a side, hey, we want to help you find a producer and a drum player and a bass player and also songwriters. But that we always said, no, no, no. We just want to be so niche and focused on this one problem and start there. And so I, you know, once I had I had my full-time job and I had in my brain, once we started this, going, I want to get to a place where financially I can be totally cool not having a job for a year and live my lifestyle and fund all the stuff and just live without making a dime. And so on the app front, so Richard and I go, all right, we need someone to develop the app. And a good buddy of mine at the time lived here in that uh, you know, he grew, I grew up with him in Cincinnati. He actually lived here and lives here in Nashville and did development work. And so I said, Hey, Richard and I have this idea. You know, do you want to be the developer on it? We'll pay you X amount of dollars, give you X amount of X percentage of equity. We'll give you half the money up front, half the money when you complete just the MVP version, just like a functioning demo. And at that time there wasn't AI and vibe coding and all these things. Like in my office, you can see the white paper, like the the big sheets of Richard and I drawing out what it looked like on day one. And now you can just type it in. Um, but anyway, and he was like, I'm in. And so, okay, great. We knew that out of our pocket, here's gonna be this money that you know I I knew I was very willing to sacrifice and go, hey, we got to make if he's in, then we got to make uh operating agreement, form a company. All right, what's it gonna be called? And so you need legal paperworks. We gotta have a lawyer draft up an LLC, you have to have agreements with a developer, like this is how much we're gonna pay you and how. And so that's all money that came out of our pockets, and we were like, this is our baby, and I, you know, we're not in a position yet to go, like, you know, you could have gone and probably raised a little bit of money, but then you're giving up a lot of equity because it's so early and so risky. So the more risky it is, the more you got to be willing to give up in equity.

SPEAKER_03 25:57

So basically, uh you're just creating proof of concept.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Yeah, in the very early stage, it was we need someone to develop this so that we can see if it works, start getting feedback from people. And that's obviously past like us doing the market analysis, there's not anything.

SPEAKER_03 26:12

So then what's the next step? So, where does the like I need money money come in?

SPEAKER_00 26:17

So uh about eight months in, so I go buy a new MacBook, give it to the developer, because you need him to work on it, because he's got a full-time job too. And about eight months in, every two weeks we're meeting at Double Dogs in Hillsborough just to go over like this two-week sprint. Like, what did we build out? What does the design look like? What do those features look like? What color palettes, like all these things. Uh, just very detailed. And okay, great. You know, let's talk about this. As they're building the back-end infrastructure, he had to bring on somebody else to kind of help with the back-end dev work. Um, eight months in, I get an email from him, and he says, you know, hey Kev, like this is the hardest email I've ever had to write. You know, I don't think I can do this anymore. Just a couple reasons. Like it he didn't think he um could deliver a product that he could put his name on in the time that we had set out. Uh, and he thought, you know, I don't want to put my name on something and take all this money and equity from you and not deliver on it and feel good about it. And also, like, I've known you since we were kids. I don't want to ruin our friendship kind of thing. And so I was like, Well, what the heck, man? Like, we've been working on this for eight months. I look back now and go, I thank God that happened. Because it forced us, me and Richard, to go, we got to get our stuff together. Business plan, go get uh like a real dev shop. Like in a lot of people be like, you need an internal CTO.

SPEAKER_03 27:50

Can you uh explain dev development?

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Development. So someone that's gonna develop the app, just the front end, the back end, you know, make sure that it works, how and then what it looks like, how it functions, you know, how the features work. Because it's like building a car, basically. You need someone to build the engine and you need someone to make it look nice, and then you know, we go sell the car. And a lot of companies and people will say, or a lot of people will be like, you need to have the technical founder that's building and coding all day, every day. And I can get to that um later. But we said, look, like we now know we got to go get a dev shop that's gonna basically charge us an hourly rate to build this, which is gonna be more money, which we knew that we were gonna support the early-on stuff, but we also knew we needed kind of some early what they call incorporation checks, like a very early, you know, 25, 50k check for somebody that's gonna invest just to get it off the ground, get an MVP, not necessarily even in beta yet, just a working prototype, basically. Because you need what's an MVP? Minimal viable product. And so it's like you'll see these, like not even in it's like pre-beta, where it's like if you get to beta, they're still testing stuff to see if it works great, just to get feedback. MVP is like, what is the core thing it needs to do? It doesn't have to look all shiny. Does the car turn on? Like, does it move? We haven't put the hood on yet, like we don't we don't have mirrors, like just does it does the car work? And so having to get that out there, and then this way it's you know, as you're doing that, having a lot of you know, like beta testers, you know, like Ward from Whiskey Jam and some other people, like just give us your feedback, what needs to be tweaked and fixed and all this stuff. And all the while it's like every week this is costing money because you have to pay people to build it.

SPEAKER_03 29:51

Um so have you gotten funding at this point? Yeah. And so how did you do that? Is this friends and family round?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Early on was um friends and family round, and then some sporadic checks early, just kind of incorporation checks, and then a couple here and there as we're kind of also self-funding it. Is that all from your network? All from our network, mostly Richard's network early on, just because his relationships within Nashville, within Creative Ets of just, hey, we believe in we trust Richard and what he's building, and we know that this is a problem. It's not a ton of money. It's just, you know, but getting in something early, like there's plenty of cases you hear in Silicon Valley of like 25k turning into 100 million. Like, I'm those aren't my expectations for those type of things because of our market size. But like early checks you are are risky, so they're gonna get more equity than what we're doing now. But typically it's okay, we've got an idea. Get investors to get that out the door. And then it's now we've got the idea, we got to get a little bit more money, which is like an angel round, friends and family round.

SPEAKER_03 31:04

So if you don't mind me asking, what was the number that you needed to raise to really be able to do it right? 200k was like our around 200k was our like friends and family angel round. Okay. So eight months in, you have massive exposure because you're like all of a sudden, which is a good thing. Well, not massive, but a form of exposure because your guy that was building your app all of a sudden can't do it anymore. And you're like, oh crap, crap, we're exposed because we have this one person that is building this thing. So now we have to find someone else that can build it.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

A real company. Yeah. And I and I look back and go, thank God that happened. Because I, my naivety to it of just learning of building an app, there's always things that are gonna go wrong. Even in and you can do testing all day long, but when there's a bug or you know, you'll see things happen with Instagram, and you're like, it went down. And like sometimes I secretly like when that happens because I'm like, they're you know, trillion dollar company and there's issues that they're having. So, like as a startup, it's you know, it's all part of it. But I didn't know, you know, he had two young kids, moving houses. When was he gonna fix it? When was he gonna find the problem and then code at and fix it? And then so we can update and release it like 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. It could take weeks, right? And so when you go, we need a business plan, we were trying to do way too much, way too early instead of the core stuff. So, like that whole disappointment of, hey man, we've been working on this for eight months, like we had initially thought we were gonna build things that we're testing now, you know, six years later, because we go, we're trying to do too much too early. Like, just get the core thing out there. And so, like a lot of good advisors, um, and people who I trust in the tech field and and that I've known just are like, you guys are doing too much, man. Like, those are cool features. Like, you got to build the house first. You don't need the the hot tub or the pool yet. Like, just build the house. Like, just go live in the house for a while and then see what you need. It's like, all right, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 33:05

So, is this when you had to like swallow the pill of this is gonna take a lot longer than I think? A lot longer and a lot more money. And and what was that feeling for you?

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Um, it was at the time, super exciting, super scary because I knew I was going all in just because after my buddy had to stop development, we got a th we got the developer, we saw what was happening, and it's just like early traction, you know, us actually solving a problem. I knew like this is gonna be the thing for me. Like I'm going all in. Um and so as we're raising money, I have to live, right? And I I didn't pay myself anything for almost 16 months. And so I had to call my guy at Merrill and be like, hey man, good buddy of mine. I was like, I'm cashing everything out, massive haircut. But he goes, you know, my my financial hat says this is stupid. But my friend hat says, well, it yeah, go do it. Because if you believe in it and you're gonna go make it happen, what you're giving up now is gonna be worth so much more in the future because you're not giving that up in equity that you would have to go get you're you're betting on yourself. And so, you know, if it's not a for us, this isn't a house flip that I want to like 3x our investors' money in three years, like I want to 300x their money in 10 plus years, but it's gonna take a long time. We got to do it the right way. But like early on, I I I mean, and God love my I talk about my wife all day long, just her support in this. But when I first met her, it was like six months after I got fired from my tech job because I was like just was working on the app. And they were like, You haven't sold much in the last couple years. I was like, Yeah, tough market. Like, nah, everybody else is doing just fine. It just seems to be you. And I was like, No, it's the South. Like, the South's really tough. And they're like, No. Um, and so I kind of had planned for that, right? I was like, look, there's gonna be a time where I'm gonna have to support myself, but also put money into the company, but that's fine. Like, this is this is it.

SPEAKER_03 35:23

But those are to me that I was your wife and all this. Was she like, get it, baby?

SPEAKER_00 35:30

So I met her like um six months after I got fired. And this is where I, you know, I could spend a three-hour podcast of telling how much I appreciate her support and love throughout this journey. But, you know, like I'd be on the streets. She's my little sugar mama. Um, she was a first question, like, you know, she's my age too, and I'd been through a lot of relationships that um my therapist would say, You have a pattern, and that's a whole other conversation. But my wife was like, you know, first day was like, What are your red flags? kind of thing. And I just laughed and I was like, Well, I don't have health insurance. I'm starting my own company and putting every dime I've ever made into it, plus a lot more. And you know, she was like, Well, it's a good thing I don't really need you. And I was like, Oh, this is and so I mean, being like, she's good. Like, she's she's way smarter than me. Engineer went to Vanderbilt, like works at Nissan, she's she's awesome. And but also is that part of it is the motivating piece of like her support for me. Not that I don't need my own internal motivation, but like to give back to her the support that she's given me the last, you know, six years between dating and then engagement and marriage. But like I yeah, like I want to give her back the life that she's allowed me to live tenfold, but it's gonna take a little bit of time, it's gonna take a lot of time, but it's still one of those where I mean, I needed that's where a lot of failed relationships, but also prayer and what if who is supposed to be in my life at this stage? And because it ain't easy. Like, I mean, she'd be like, Hey, can you stop going to play basketball until we're married? Because you come home and you're all dinged up. You don't have health insurance, dude. Like, what do you you wait till we're married to and get you health insurance? And so she's supportive during this time.

SPEAKER_03 37:29

Okay, still I still so she's supportive. Y'all me, now you've been together and married six years, married uh two and a half years.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Two and a half years. You know, we got I mean, it was we started dating like two weeks before COVID started.

SPEAKER_03 37:43

Okay, yeah, and so I got to know each other real well during that time, real well. Um so in all in all, eight years for the company currently.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Yeah, I I would say we launched like out of beta right before COVID, right? So we had to raise some cash to get it out the get it ready out the door. 200, 200k around there, around there just was kind of that early stage. And then we said, okay, now we're taking this. The company's live, the the users are coming. We had some really good press from Rolling Stone and Forbes and Billboard, just organically, just because it was like um, it was just stuff that they had seen that was going well, and we didn't pay for the PR at all. It just was like, this is cool. And like I still am not great at talking about it just because of how hard it was for a lot of our friends in the industry where it shut down. But for us, it was right place, right time. Super lucky and grateful because it kind of forced people to feel comfortable connecting remotely in that whole Zoom world. And so there's a lot of people that were like, man, you can kind of co-write anywhere. You know, you it's not like setting up a whole band and having to like plug in and do the sound and make sure that sounds good. It's like you can write with anybody anywhere. And now we're comfortable with the Zoom thing. And so we we had a lot of great exposure, a lot of great organic growth of users that came on just because they were like, we need to find people to connect with. And, you know, I I know songwriters in Franklin that are like, man, I because they have a relationship, it's I don't want to drive down 65 and go to Music Row if like we're just needing to hammer out the end of a song or pick up with where we left off or wherever, because they're comfortable with that piece. But you can't you can't replace the in the room chemistry dynamic part of it. But for us, you know, being launched, COVID happening, a lot of user growth. Now it's okay, great. We need to grow this thing. We got to grow as a business, we got to make sure our business plans look good, projections look good, how we're gonna get there, how much money we need to get there. And so that angel friends and family round got us out the door, got us to a place where now the users have come on. Now we go, we need to grow the team, we need to grow the platform and actually spend money on user acquisition to really grow it from 8,000 to 80,000 to you know, half a million. We don't need 20 million songwriters to make this a very successful business. Again, our whole thing is we got to do what's right for the songwriter first and not just blow it out and go, hey, great, we got 10 million songwriters on here and they never come back to it.

SPEAKER_03 40:31

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SPEAKER_00 43:48

I can't wait to not be fundraising, but I know that if if my mission was to just flip this, sell out, and just go golf and and play, like and just do whatever and Five years, like not then, but I don't that's not what I want. Like, so you could do that. Like, there I could charge songwriters to download the app, and then I could get to profitability like much faster if if I do it in where it's a not the songwriter first approach. And again, like I'm building a business to make money and make a lot of money for us and our investors and like do it the but it they all know because it's very difficult to find the right investor. Because if you're looking for venture money, that's a different conversation than an angel investor or a high net worth individual or maybe some family offices, where that conversation is this is not this is gonna be a long-term thing. Like this isn't where I need to hit some metric to unlock, you know, this is your how you're gonna get more money, is if you hit these metrics and then they force us to do things that aren't putting the songwriter or creative first. Now we're going completely against our mission and vision. And so it's just a matter of alignment in the capital that you're bringing in, but also you not trying to raise so much that you're diluted so like as the next rank. Explain that.

SPEAKER_03 45:11

So, like if you bring on, if someone invests money, let's just say a million dollars, someone drops a million dollars into your company. So um just hypothetically, it doesn't even have to be your company, yeah. Because help us understand the economics of investing.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

So if someone gives you a million bucks and they're like like Shark Tank and they're like, I want, you know, if it's early stage and it's a give you a million bucks, I get 50% of the company. And it's like, well, it's early stage. So like that makes a lot of sense. But if you if I give you a million bucks and I own 50% of the company and you need more money in the future, then you're gonna have to go get more money, and then that dilutes your stake and my stake. And so depending on how much you raise is gonna dilute your company, and then and there's a valuation that comes with it. So it's like, you know, 50% of the company at uh at a million bucks, then you know, you're worth two million bucks. And so if you keep raising money, then that valuation you want to go up in conjunction with how much equity you're giving up to make it make sense. And so as I bring in money from my investors, I know that that's coming from myself, Richard, and even our earlier investors. But as we grow the company, grow the product, grow the user base, we're making some cash, getting some revenue, the valuation goes up. Even though it dilutes us in equity, the value of the company goes way up. So it they're like, this is great. Like we want you to grow and scale, even though I'm taking some of your equity as we keep raising rounds. That's why it's important to know if I give if I take money from people, what does that mean economically from a dilution perspective so that I don't get squeezed out? Because this will happen a lot of times.

SPEAKER_03 47:08

And this is when you have no ownership or you don't have the majority share of your company anymore.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

And so people will raise a ton of money and they'll raise too much, and then they won't hit the metrics, and then they'll like if they take VC money, sometimes they'll be on the board and the board has they can get kicked out of their own company. It happens all happens a lot, and so we're just where we sit, and that's not the best example explaining all that because there's just so much nuance to it. But it's the simplest way is like if you take money from somebody, they get a piece of your company, and it doesn't, and it comes from you, the founders, and your earlier investors, typically. But you want to make sure as you raise more rounds of funding that your valuation goes way up so that like your early investors are like, hey, even though I may uh have initially owned 10% at $2 million, man, yeah, like go raise more money if if that's what you're doing, and I go down to 7%, but now my value of the company is is 10x or whatever that looks like, totally fine.

SPEAKER_03 48:08

But where we why does why does their amount go down? Uh it it like wouldn't they why does their equity go down? If I yeah, like if I invested a million dollars and I own 10%. So if someone else invested a million dollars, would I still own my 10%? Well, if it was at the same terms that the Oh, so there's terms with investments.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

So there's a lot of and that's where it gets real a little Okay, because I'm naive. I'm not sure's a lot of variables involved with it. It's it's like when it's done, how it's done, what the vehicle is, how much. And that's where like you'll see negotiations on a Shark Tank where they're like, uh, you know, I'll what if I gave it to you advisory shares? And that's like a whole other way to manipulate, not manipulate, but like control what they call the cap table of like who owns what of the company. And so having a good handle on how much equity each of the founders and early investors own as you raise more money is really important because you don't want to then raise a bunch of money and then realize three years down the road, we don't own much of the company at all.

SPEAKER_03 49:15

Yeah. Like, shoot, Jenny gave me 10 grand for 10%. Yeah, like oh she still owns 10%.

SPEAKER_00 49:19

And there's things that people would say, I want anti-dilution rights, which means no matter how much money you raise, I never get diluted. And so there's all these things in the fine print where depending if you're going for the venture route, but usually angels, uh what's the difference between venture is uh a fund that will have what they call LPs, limited partners that are also high net worth individuals that give money to the fund to for the fund to then invest into companies.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

So someone has a fund, they have a fiduciary responsibility to the investors to be able to deploy the money to have it come back and make babies.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

And what they're banking on is like uh it in it's not I I equate it a lot to like um labels sometimes with artists going, I need the one artist to pop off to cover all my losses with the rest of the artists. So they'll put these bets in, you know, a lot of AI plays. Like, hey, we're gonna put a million bucks into 10 AI companies, really hoping one of them returns the fund 100x, with the expectation nine out of 10 of you are gonna fail. And so they're just betting. And so, but the the money that they're investing comes from other people, and then the fund is, you know, the smart guys that you know do due diligence on these companies and say I'm making bets on these companies to to kill it.

SPEAKER_03 50:48

Yeah. Side note, Kit Moore was on the podcast. He said that exact thing. He was like, I was on a higher grossing artist for the company, and I felt like they weren't giving me the attention. And so I was like, What like looking at you know what they were doing for everybody else, but looking at how much we were generating. And yeah, and at the end of the day, he was like, the deal with UMG, uh, he left because he was like, screw this, yeah. I'm not gonna let them fund everybody else off of me when they're not putting the work in for me that they are for everybody else. Yeah. I I have uh like you know what I'm saying? A hundred percent. I I mean because and that's an interesting parallel, but it makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

It's exactly right. Because where we sit, we aren't a looking for venture money and we don't fit the model. Because to your point of the fiduciary responsibility, they they have um you know an equation. They basically go, does the money that we're investing can it return them the fund and return money to us for it to make sense in the amount of time that we need it to make sense by? And they have a thesis and you know, a way that they judge those things. And we don't fit those models because we're like, I I'm not and I get it, and it's funny because we started raising our seed round of funding, and so that's what we're in the middle of now. So what round is that? How many pounds is so this is a 1.5, it's not much, 1.5 million, and and I say not much in the scheme of like seed rounds in Silicon Valley is like 10 million. Yeah, yeah. But like for us, we don't want to raise that much for reasons I kind of mentioned, but also like this is gonna set us up nicely for us to get to the next layer that we expect to in terms of uh the product, the users, and the revenue, to then probably do one more see a round of funding and then get to profitability and not need money again and be self-funded. So the goal ideally of any company is not to need investors, it's to build something that you can just make a profit and self-fund the business and grow the business. But there's there's a balance there of like, you know, how you want to do that and how you get there is a different thing. Whether it's a consumer-based app like Instagram, you know, it's free. And but how do they make money? You know, there's the network play or there's the B2B stuff on the enterprise side. There's different ways to make money. And so, like on the funding side, we go, okay, we raised kind of an angel friend and family around. Now we need, now we're set up nicely. We need to raise money to grow the team because I need help. It's just like growing a podcast. You're like, man, we need editors, we need all these people now because we there's traction there. We need to grow the team that's gonna help fuel growth because of you know, all the other things that are gonna happen. We need to actually spend money on user acquisition stuff, grow from 8,000 to 80,000. Well, what's our customer acquisition cost? What's that gonna look like? You know, from influencers, songwriters posting about us, events, whatever that looks like. And then we got to build the product and finish out the things that we're building next that are gonna help bring songwriters back to the app, be a publisher and in their pocket for those that don't have publishers. So we're excited about what we're building for users there. But on the business side, it's like, how do we help them get back to what they used to do and love to do? And this is a blanket statement where I've met with a lot of publishers and they spend 90% of their time on admin and logistics and not the A and R creative stuff that they want to be doing, which they got in the business for. Now it's calendars and trying to keep track of data and song management stuff. And like that's that's where that Shopify model parallel comes in. It's like we can help with that, but we got to build it, and then that's in turn for us gonna help us go. This money is gonna get us out the door and to hit these metrics, to then raise that next round of funding and then get to profitability. Because um, you know, to Kip's point, it's one of those like the venture guys that wanted to invest money in us, and we've had people say, I'll give you the money, you need to do this, this, and this. And I was like, that's to fit your model. It's not, and I get it, it's not in our mission to do that because it's gonna go against the songwriter first uh value that we have, because we need to just grow the community. That's all like we just grow the songwriters to connect, help them do that, and then everything else will come after that. But if you're forcing me to do these things that are gonna make people go, man, you're just like everybody else now, that's the risk I'm willing to take. And why, from an investment perspective, there's a lot of there's like three buckets that have invested with us. Very strategic music people, some that own publishing companies, independent publishing companies that see and understand the data side, that love the the growth part of it, but also know that like I'm not trying to like take their jobs. It's like they see the opportunity there. There's presidents of of sync companies, there's managers of big artists. So there's strategic people that have been around enough. And then there's kind of the the business folks that have done startups. They've they're come from the finance world or the tech world that are angel investors that I love this. I want to help in the marketing world or the business world or finance. I don't know much about music that much, but we know that you've got a good advisory board and good investors that come from music. Then we've got kind of passive, you know, flyer investors, NFL players and and doctors that just like want to be a part of because they have a passion for songwriting and music and helping. They're like, I want to be a part of this, you know, if I can help, great. You know, I don't I don't know how much I can help, but I here's some cat, like I had one um one investor that um was a connection through a current investor, and he asked me the question that none of them have ever asked me, where he said, what percent do you put on this succeeding to the level that you expect? And I was like, that's a great question. And nobody's nobody's asked me that. Um and I said, Well, you know, like if I were to sit here and try to sell you and be like 100% to the moon, we're gonna crush it. Guaranteed, you know, either invest or get, you know, like you're gonna know I'm full of it, probably. I said, I you know, I don't know what percent you want to put on this. I personally have no other option. I ha this has this has to succeed. And to what level, we're not sure yet. And I and and but to the level that I expect, there's no reason we can't get there. There's nothing that I'm going, I mean, it's gonna take a long time and a lot of work, and it's gonna be a grind for a very long time. But that's that to me isn't the the like, oh, this is gonna be so it's like I I love that part of it because it's what we're building. And I was like, I but me personally, I have no other option for all my cash is in here, plus a lot more the other way. And I and I want to give back to the supporting people that are in my life. I I gotta make it work. And so there's I was like, I don't know what percent you want to put on that. And he just paused for like, you know, five five seconds kind of long because you're like, oh man, what's he gonna say? He goes, sending a check tomorrow. I was like, Oh, all right. And I was like, Well, you can just wire it. And he's like, No, like I'm gonna physically write a check. It's like okay. It's like it's fine, but you can just wire it.

SPEAKER_03 58:45

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SPEAKER_00 59:34

Oh, yeah. Like debt for sure. I mean, because it was all right, uh the long-term play is this isn't gonna matter. But I need to f make sure I can pay the bills in some capacity. And there were times where we needed more cash. And it was like, well, I gotta fund it somehow. I gotta fund me living somehow. And you know, I mean, I pay myself probably an eighth of what I used to make at my tech company, but that's normal. I, you know, like that, that wasn't that it's not a surprise, but it was like, I'm not doing this, you know, and and going into debt being like, oh, I hope that hope that goes away. It's like, oh, that's a motivator for sure. And I try to make sure I do my best to contribute at home and all those things, but like I know that it's not at the level that I can't wait to get to five, 10 years down the road. And so, yeah, those long nights and yeah, this is what I wanted to ask, because I think a lot of people are in that position.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:47

I think there's a lot of people just using credit card debt to live, just because they're so expensive, period. Like outside of trying to build a business. Yeah. So I think a lot of people could just relate with the pressure of that, but also knowing, like, for a business person or for me in the podcast with Haley, it's like, yeah, this is uncomfortable, but also like what's the long play? And that's where I keep my eyes fixed, you know. So I'm with you on that. But um, what was one of the times or the hardest times in this whole process so far where you were like, I have no clue how this is gonna continue going, or like I can't sleep for X amount of weeks and I need a mouth guard because I'm grinding my teeth. Like, when when has been its point where you were like, I want to quit?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Um there was a moment when the eight months were going on with the early developer, and he was like, you know, I can't do it. There was like a day or two where I was like, well, we tried, but there was just like, you know, I guess, you know, it's just not in the car. And I was like, no, no, no. That's you know, I'm gonna sulk for 24 hours. But that was like a quick moment of just, oh gosh, man, I feel like we just wasted eight months. And I'm like, thank God there was just something in me that was like, no, this is what you're supposed to go do. Like you, this is this is the reason you didn't do things early on that you were offered in your career, opportunities that would have paid out a lot, um, i.e. early Uber opportunities, just because I grew up with or went to college with a bunch of early Uber guys, and it was there were opportunities to work there before it even got to Ohio. And that would have set, and I know you know, this set me up forever. But I was like, that that's not my thing. Like, I don't love logistics and you know, like that whole it just wasn't the right timing. And guy was like, dude, no, no, no, just patience. Like, you don't love this, like you wouldn't live and breathe and eat that. You can look back now and go, man, you'd be set for life. And it's like, no kidding. Like, there's so many things. It was like, yeah, if I invested in Bitcoin at a buck, you know, and it was a dot, like, whatever. Can't look at it that way. At least I don't. But I mean, there was a time between that angel round and starting the seed round where it was like we got into an accelerator at a DC because Richard being a veteran, and we were just gonna start this seed round of funding to raise a bunch of money, and so that I there was like some a little bit of comfortability. We've got the cash we need to go build it. And an accelerator is like um, a bunch of companies come together and you know, they have this one particularly was out of DC and they they pay for it, they fly you out, all these companies out to DC. It's like a four-day kind of like um, it's like a camp for startups, and then it's eight weeks of classes, virtual stuff, and then at the end of it, the kind of a demo day for you to pitch in front of a bunch of VCs and funds so that you get funded and you're good. And so, you know, that's a lot of time. And it's not like we raised a ton of money in the Andrew round, so it was like very, and it went all it went all to the company pretty much. And it was just for us for me to pay like interest on the credit cards, like just, you know, all right. Uh, and so we're super excited about this accelerator. There was a couple funds that were already like, hey, we're really interested to meet with you guys. We're excited for you to go through the whole thing. Because the goal is for them to bring all these companies together and then get them funded, and then it looks good for their accelerator and like, you know, all these things. And so went through that. A couple funds came out, like six weeks of due diligence with us, you know, which is hammering on projections and numbers and scalability, all this stuff. Um, and then a lot, and then that was right when Silicon Valley Bank crashed. And so that was a big shock to the to the system. And then what they call like post-ZERP era, which was like zero interest. So like money was basically free at that time, and then Silicon Valley Bank happened. And then you like, if you were gonna borrow money or get money, like it was basically there's no interest. So just money was flowing everywhere. But timing was terrible for that. And so, like, we didn't get any funding. We spent probably a eight months to a year trying to track down these VC guys because we got into this accelerator that was supposed to be the catalyst for all the funding. So we basically wasted a year, but during that time, like we still had to like bootstrap and and put our own money into the product, like hosting fees and all these things that like are behind the scenes costing us. I mean, there was plenty of times I was like, something needs to happen within the week, or I'm gonna have to do something make some phone calls that like I don't want to make for pride reasons. But also just for like, I can do this. And so it's, it's, there was a handful of those moments in that year of like, we're told we're VC backable, we're in this program. That didn't happen. None of the companies did. So it wasn't like just us where we're like, there's nine companies I got funded. Like, no companies got anything. But there was a lot of that time where we're like, are we what is missing? What is what what is what are we not realizing how to do this? And as soon as we flipped it to not chasing VC money, just getting those believers and those investors that it's I, you know, I go to Bezos when he raised his seed round, he'll always say, like, I he raised a million bucks from from 30 different people, about 50k a pop. Now everybody in the world would give him a million dollars and try to give him two or five, ten million dollars at that time. But that's how he did it. And it was like, look, I people looked at online books and were like, dude, what is that? That's so stupid. Long vision. And it's like, all right, well, good luck trying to compete against that now. But it's starting with that niche part of it. And so we're like, just the whole thing of I have no other option is is is uh the truest statement I can say about this whole thing is it has to work. And so, you know, VC money was was something I wasn't gonna like keep chasing. And so what's funny now is just some of the communities I'm in in Nashville and got a lot of friends that are in funds and VCs, and they'll ask me about it and and be like, hey, you know, I'd love to hear more about it. And I go, let's not. I was like, I'm not interested in VC money. I get more people following up to ask me to coffee and lunch when I tell them I don't want their money than when I was like pursuing it, which is life itself, which is really funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:57

God I don't want that money. Yeah, like when you want the thing, it doesn't happen. Then when you release the thing, it happens. Yeah. I saw this monk dude on diary of his CEO hold up his beads. Love that. And he was like, Yeah, he was like, I've seen that. Have you seen that, dude? Yeah, he's like, when you want it, yes, and he lets go of it and it's they swing the other way. Yeah, I've seen that. And he's like, when you don't want it and you let go, yeah, and he pushes it out, and then you see it swings in. And I was like, what a principle, what a thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:26

It's so simple.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:27

I've experienced it in my own life, yeah. Hardcore.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:30

Yeah, I I I I mean there's countless times in us building this, and I I look at Richard too as as kind of this X factor that um, you know, you've you've met him, like his whenever we give talks, I I go, I'm talking first, dude, because I can't follow you. Like, like for what you're doing, you're saving lives. Like, but what he brings as a co-founder is something that like you can't put a price tag on. When people are like, What's the team? And I go, mm-mm. Because as we talked about earlier, that like the relationship part of this business is so important. We're like, I always joke, I'm like, Vince Gill calls Richard, he didn't call me. But being able to have that network and that connection because of who he is and the trust he's built with Creative Ets and the amazing work that they've done, he hasn't even unleashed what we're building to a lot of his network because we want to get this to a place where it brings value to them. And we're not there yet. Because as you know, you almost you don't some of these people you get one shot. And you want, you don't want to be like, hey, we're doing this thing, and like, oh, let me use it. And you're like, well, it's not ready yet. You're like, well, now you're just wasting my time, man. And so now, as you know, like trying to get somebody to answer you, call you, get a meeting with you, like can be very challenging. And so for him, like he he has been um one of those things where on my like pitch decks, where I was like, he's our conversion multiplier, where like you can't put like, oh, he he brings just creativity and network. It is a 20-year Nashville relationship condensed into Richard that like would take me, you know, 20 years to build those relationships. And so, like, that's why having him and and what he's built has been um something that like you know, I needed was that network piece, but also just him as a co-founder and his goofiness and dad jokes, like is amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:34

And the uh his purity behind why you started creative in the first place. Totally. So the heart behind it. Oh, yeah. And the heart behind you and my conversation with you the other day, where I was like, bro, oh yeah, you should be doing this. Oh yeah, yeah. And and but the thing was, you were like, Nope, I'm not doing that because that is not songwriter first. No, and I was like, but no, I and so all that to say, dude, uh there's a level of that I want to serve people factor that I hear, I mean, I'm no expert, but I hear that when your mission is to help people, and that's where you kind of like stay, keep your eyes on that, that everything works out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:15

I and I go, you know, we're I have no doubt what we're doing, like all day, every day. But I go, God, you have a plan, God laughs a lot. And he's like, dude, and but I and I struggle with that too, because it's like, you know, how it's a grind, it's a long grind. I go, man, I in the in the scheme of life, like I haven't even sniffed the grind to me personally, just like how many years I've lived and started this and actually been like, okay, how do we make this a real successful growing business startup helping these things? I was like, we're this is a small part of it, but like it can feel like it's the whole lie. Like, man, I've been grinding forever. It's like, yeah five years. It's like they call us a 10-year town, and it's like, well, again, like I think just logistically, it takes five years to do anything. So let's help that part so that creatively you can do it faster. But for us, it's it's like, man, I look at all these startups or what the big ZERP era or the big um Mag 7 companies like the Facebook, Instagram, what they started out as. And it was just like these little niche things. And Uber was a black car service that everybody was like, no, man, like no one, the small market, small market, you know, Shopify. Everybody was like, Toby, there's only like 40,000 online businesses. There's not a big market for that. And he's like, Because we haven't given the tools for other people to go make online businesses. Everybody turned, like, he has this story of like hundreds of Easy's turning him down or whatever. And he's like, they all turned me down because they're like, market's too small. And he's like, guess who? Guess who called me after a while? All of them that were like, Yeah, we we missed that one. Because you were giving the tools for people to make online businesses better and grow them and all those things. So I pull a lot of those pieces of like uh Parker and Presley that at work for me, like uh on our team, they're allowed to punch me square in the face. If I ever on calls or in meetings say like revolutionize and disrupt, and and we're gonna change. It's like I you're allowed to punch me square in the face if I if I say that stuff. I was like, we're we're trying to do our own thing because I I think most songwriters now be like, it ain't what it was. And there's not a lot of incentive for it to change with the people that are controlling the economics of it. So why would I try to fight that? Let's just build our own thing. It's gonna take a while.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:49

Yeah, I just watched an interview with Jimmy Ivine, and um, he was like talking about being an inner scope and wanting to do something uh for beats, and essentially there was an issue with something, and he's like, we just went went around it like the gatekeepers, we just went around them instead of trying to go through them. Totally. And um, I don't remember the context of it, but I remember it having to do with something with Interscope and doing beats, yeah, and all he plays music, so there's a lot of a slot radio on a commercial slot. Oh, was that with um Dre? Yeah, so the chronic. Yeah, when it they put he produced that record. Yes, that was it. Yeah, uh, he went around because the radio wouldn't play, so they bought that minute slot, they played the song, and then people started requesting, right? Yeah, the the music, and then it just and it was a genius idea on how to get around. And I feel like there's this book, The Third Door. I don't know if you've ever read it. No, no, no. But it talks about there's a front door and a back door, and then there's a third door, yeah. And it's like maybe it's the wind you window into the bathroom to the side or whatever, into the the bedroom, but it's like how do you get creative in those you know, ways to get around things? And I think it's cool that you're doing something playing a long game, which people don't like to think long game. People don't like they like to think in years, not decades. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and I also think that um the fact that you're willing to stay the course on the human side and the songwriter first side. I I go back and forth with this because I hear people like Dana White talk about like any technology that comes along, we utilize. Sure. Like if you if you don't use the tech, yeah, if you don't use it, you're gonna you're gonna lose 100% of the time. Just look at history. If you didn't adopt the tech, you lost. Yeah. So I see people like that, and I'm like, I know you're a tech guy. Yeah, yeah. So I know you're not dumb to this whole AI thing. Totally. But I also know that you have uh a view that's a lot uh grander and more macro.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:09

Yeah. And it depends which bucket of AI we're talking about.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:12

I use it all day, every day. Oh, yeah. You showed me everything. You showed me different AIs.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:16

It's I I mean, as a business, I'm like, thank God we didn't raise a bunch of money three years ago. I want to hired for positions that I can now do myself much faster and for a hundred bucks a month with cloth. But what that frees me up to do is, and people go job loss. It's like job displacement. It's people are like, there's gonna be job loss. And it's like, there's job displacement. There have like, and this is a bunch of rabbit holes we could go down. But for me, I go, but now I can hire for things that are that I can't, that are gonna help the business that I can't do for myself internally operationally, where it's like user acquisition people, events, all these things, and have people go out and find more songwriters and maybe hire some songwriters to do certain things. Like that whole gig economy thing is so big for me of like, oh, there's a lot of like we're getting paid now by companies and organizations that are tapping into our network to get songwriters to come do these experience things, custom songs, random showcase things, like events. And I all I'm doing is picking up the phone, be like, hey, big songwriter, do you want to make a couple grand and do this thing? They're like, Can you call me every day with this? And you know, we we take a small piece of it, which they're happy to, and then we give even that small piece that we make, a portion of that goes to creative eds. And so, like, there's there's that whole economy that we can give to our songwriting community, but like for me, the AI stuff boils down to a couple things. Like, one is what the intent is and is their consent to it. So, like any bad actor can can take it and run with it with the fake music and run bots to listen to it. That guy's in jail now, that that famous story out of like North Carolina or something where he like made a bunch of songs, made a bunch of bots, listened to the songs, made 10 million bucks. Well, he got caught, now he's in jail. But I can steel man both sides of this whole thing, but like for me, it really boils down to intent. Like, what is your intent with this? And is there consent to it? Like, you know, why I'm we will not be an AI generative company in the sense of until there is consent and payment to whoever's stuff that is. Like that's the consent part of it. It's like until there's that transparency, there's that technology, there's a way to do it, like I I'm not even touching it. Because one, the sentiment against it is so like I'm not even fighting that battle. Because I don't want to. Like, I don't, I don't, one, from a business perspective of like running those type of things, like that's a challenge. But two, lawsuits going on, who the heck knows? But like I ask all the songwriters, is this songwriter first? And they're like, I use it. It's like Ozimpic, you know, for people that are on it. They're like, they use it, they don't like to say that they're on it sometimes. You know, it's just like, yeah, we do it. But if their intent is to go, I want to make a bunch of songs that are fake so that I make money and take from other artists from the pool that are that are owed to them, that's a that's a problem. But I have no way of controlling that at this stage of like what people do with it. But what I can control is whether I give it as a tool or an option or or whatever within our platform and go, look, man, I ain't I ain't messing with the generative piece. Operationally, AI internally, fantastic. If we can help you eventually find better songwriters to connect with and co-write with when we have enough data, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:53

Connection's the key point, too, because people are hungrier and hungrier for human connection, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:58

100%.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:59

And that's just what's going to continue to be a hedge for your business in the next decade is people's hunger for human connection, people's hunger for authenticity, for real songs, non-AI songs. You know what I noticed? Uh I noticed a huge dip in my numbers when I started using AI-generated thumbnails. So, and I and then I was talking to a guy that runs a marketing company, and he's like, even if you put it in like Canva and edit it and re-like save it or whatever, I guess there's some like code in the back end, and like YouTube knows, and even like Spotify, and it like happened, and I saw this decline for all the AI-rendered thumbnail episodes. Yeah. So now I'm going back and I'm redoing all of the thumbnails the old school way where I came up with the title and I put the pictures that Haley will take of us today together and cut them out on my blue background with yellow text. Yeah. And it was just interesting where it was like people are rejecting 100% it already. Do you have a theory as to why? Why they're rejecting it? Yeah. I think there's multiple things. I mean, and that's a rabbit hole. I think one of the things is data centers. I think even like within um like Nashville, what we see going on, people want to do that one by the zoo. Uh, and and people like Brad Paisley standing up against it, and um, a lot of stuff going on there. I think that um people want to see what is real. I know Gen Z has an authentic the authenticity factor. Uh vinyl sales have gone up 19 straight years in a row. If there's anything that I can see trending, it's tech gets to a point where people circle back to wanting. And then we see it in music too. Like, why did Zach what's his face work? Brian. Yeah. Yep. Like like 10 years ago in Bro Country, they'd have been like, man, that guy kind of sounds like that. Did he do that on his iPhone? Is that a crappy iPhone demo or whatever? Like, that's not gonna be, he's not gonna sell his catalog for what 200 million or whatever it was. Yeah, so things are changing.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:19

I I've been doing a lot of just deeper meaning as to why the the rejection part. And you can see it just in some numbers and figures where like Deezer put out a report where it was like 75,000 AI generative songs are generated every day or uploaded every day. But can and so that's like 44% of their input with a 1 to 2% listen rate. Like, because people just are like once they, you know, so it's not the input's not matching the output part of like consumers wanting it. And so that's gonna have a business effect of like how much it costs to run those things to build that to then like keep it a viable thing. Where, you know, now you've got all these companies that um 2026, it's projected like AI, like 100% AI companies on the generator space are revenues are gonna be like 36 billion-ish, but the cost from infrastructure is like 700 billion. So like it's gonna come to a place where, like, you know, sorry to the crypto guys out there, but like the NFT world, when that came around, everyone's like, dude, this is the next thing or whatever. And that's and I know AI is gonna be here in some capacity forever, but it's one of those, like, how it's done. But it's it's a matter of like what people use it for now. There's got to be an underlying business case to keep that thing operational because it's like if we're bringing in 36 billion total for everything, but it costs 700 billion to do it. That's you can't sustain that if there's not gonna be the consumer side going, we need this, and this is why. Like Zuck is higher trying to hire back a bunch of people he fired because he thought he was placing with AI. So he's like, We're not getting anywhere close to the city. Because they go engineers. We thought we were gonna make more money and do it this way and be faster, and then it's like this and right. So, like all these, like, oh, this is gone. They're hiring more developers now than ever before. Like, so job rates of sales for like software developers are going way up. It's I mean, it's no different than uh bank tellers when ATMs were coming around. Everybody was like, Oh, the bank tellers are gone. There's more bank tellers now than ever before. So, like, there's always the steel man, and I there's a bunch of holes you can poke in all that stuff. But like the to me, I've been trying to dig into deeply like why people are connected to the authenticity part, not just okay, yeah, we are, but why and what does that look like?

SPEAKER_03 1:24:54

And it's like to me on an emotional level, if I boil it down, yeah, it feels empty. So that's the feeling 100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:02

And it's like song AI can write a song, but songwriter but doesn't know why it needs to exist or should exist. And songwriters are the reason that they know why it should be there, why it should exist, because they felt something, they went through something. And there's like there's a couple like effects like of studies done of what that looks like and feels like because you being a human and then watching kind of your favorite athlete or favorite musician just crush it, and they go, Oh man, they're like a machine. You hear that a lot, and you're oh, they're like a machine. And you go, okay, well, that's interesting because you go, there's risk involved, there's work ethic involved, there's you knowing that they had to put in so much time, energy, and effort. But when you see them make a mistake, you go, Oh man, he's just like me. He can mess up. I like that guy. When a machine messes up, you go, this thing's what is wrong with this? It's a defect, it's a problem, there's an issue. But like when you see Rory miss a two-foot putt in a high-intensity thing, you're like, been there, dude. And then it makes you go, I want to work harder. Because then when you see them on this tail of a run and you're like, dude, is a machine. Or you see guitar players slaying it, and you're like, oh my gosh, for three minutes he slayed that solo, didn't miss a thing. And then you hear one thing, you're like, oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:27

I love seeing John Mayer screw up.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:29

Because you go, I you know he's one of the best in the world, but then you go, now I know it's attainable.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:35

Yeah. I can't too. He's human too. He screws up too.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:39

I mean, Charlie Pooh talks about all the time, like in all these records, when you hear the mess up, he goes, that's what makes us like go, oh, you're just like me, man. But it then it makes you go, I want to work harder. Because if you see my favorite example is uh the waste management tour, I think it was 2018 or something, where they had the robot, uh golfer, and they gave him five golf balls. And you know, it was like this huge thing where he hit a hole in one and everybody went crazy. And it was just like this cool thing where you're like, oh, a robot, you know, golf. And you go, Yeah, I I I kind of expected you to do that. You're a robot, you know, and no one asked for his autograph after, no one took pictures, was like, oh, this robot's sick. And like afterwards, if he did it again, people be like, Yeah, like because you have how to do it, you need to do that. You're it, you know, it's like we get it. But like you see a human do it, and you're like, that is one of the coolest things ever because you feel that hours, that failure that it took him to do those things. And you go, Man, like that's I want that guy's autograph. I want a picture with that guy. And you go, the that's where to me, um, I belong to this community called Torch here in Nashville. It's like founders, funders, and connectors, and it's out of the glass house in Wedgewood, Houston. Sounds bougie. It's well, it so it's just glass blowing, it's beautiful. Oh, it's glass glass. It's called glass. You get to go with blow glass? So they have like classes and stuff. But the guy, but so they started a it last year. It's a it's kind of a founders, funders, connectors. I could go on forever about it. And a couple of our investors are from there. Um, they're great. But I I equate a lot of AI music in conversations there because a lot of them aren't in music or understand. And they go, Well, songwriters are gone. AI, man. I, you know, it's like, don't, you know, don't get me started on the copyright, the legal battles, like the the all all this stuff. I said, like, there's there is a building for these guys and girls that are doing glass blowing, and we're watching them and see like all the art that they've made from this is unbelievable and it's really expensive. And it's really cool because you get to watch them do it. And they're like making the things and making all the crazy stuff. You know, I I can buy that from this person because I know he made it. You're like, that's worth a lot, and that's very valuable because like that's a craftsman working forever on his craft, and they're producing beautiful things, and it's not all perfect, and it's not all the same. And I go, you know, AI to me is like a lighting, uh like a glass manufacturing company that's just like a manufacturer, just pumping out the same light bulb in the same condensity. Like just I go, the there's a big difference there. And it's like you're watching these masters do their thing, or it's just like now, now it's just like a manufacturer of of glass. You're like, yeah, I don't know. Like, I think like those are those things that I love having those conversations about. It's like, you know, you're paying to watch this guy do the thing that this company can just like pump out thousands of very similar things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:55

Because they got the technology, distribute them to Walmart glasses.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:59

Great, you know, for your and AI reads on what's been done before, and it goes to the mean of what's been done because it reads off the back.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:07

Carly Pierce is one of my favorite examples when we interviewed her on that podcast, and her story was like she listened to a lot of the head guys and girls in town. You need to sound like this, write songs like this, look like that. So she went and did it. And then after a while, it was well, now you're too much like Miranda and Carrie. We already have, you know, you gotta have your own vibe. Be unique, be authentic, and be true to you. And it's like, you told me to go look like them to be successful. And so she says, that's the moment I wrote every little thing. Which, if you hear the the structure of the song and how it and how it goes, it's not like anything else. And that was her first big hit, and that was the thing that took her off. That thing, and so it like to me was the prime example of why like people are like, Well, I song, AI can write any song, it could write what's already been done. Music's always forward thinking, it's always moving forward to the new next thing. But if AI can't read what's forward and think it needs the human, and I was like, that's my like favorite example of like she goes, I'm gonna write what I want to write, how I want to write it for me. And the structure of the song is completely different from everything else, and that's what was the turning point. She pushed the beads away. She it's great. She let go. She did. I mean, and and so these are those combos I I love obsessing about. Because, like, fun, it's like people like, oh, I could vibe code that app. I was like, sure you could. Now go get 8,000 people to join it and have that trust and brand and loyalty and go, are you songwriter for are you gonna grind all day every day? Because just because you vibe code something and whip it out over the weekend doesn't mean you have the back-end infrastructure and integrations to help it grow and scale and support it, it's gonna break. Like, and that costs money, so are you gonna go spend the money to keep it updated yourself?

SPEAKER_03 1:32:13

What protects you legally from other people taking the idea?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:20

Uh nothing. I mean, from a legal perspective, like this is this is the fun conversation of why why did Friendster go away? Or MySpace. Or MySpace. God love Tom. Tom Tom did fine. Tom cashed out, 570 mil, something like that. He's doing just fine. But I mean, nothing technically, like Bumble tried to sue, uh, Tinder tried to sue Bumble when uh Whitney started Bumble because she was at Tinder. And like, oh, you're doing the same swiping. That's literally our app. And so the judge ruled, like, you can't trademark and copyright a thumb movement on a phone. And so what take what separates you is kind of a lot of the intangible things. Like, one is the the users and the brand, and do they trust you? And and are you giving them an experience that is going to keep them coming back, but also tell other people about it? Are you providing a service to them that solves a problem for them? But also, is it a community that like is is active? There was a company that came up not too long ago, started very similarly, or is a very was a very similar company to ours, and started by somebody that's much more successful in the business than I was, much more well known, had much more experience, and was helping songwriters connect through an app that they launched. And and that was a uh that was another tough, like, oh man, because I saw on their website who their team was, big team, who their advisor was, top-tier team, advisory board. I was like, oh man. All right. Well, two things. One she validated that we're solving a problem. If she's trying to solve this problem, that's all I needed to know that like we're solving a problem, that she's trying to do the same thing. But the execution was what was different of how it was being done. And, you know, like a lot of social hype before it was launched, building a beta, like a waiting list, and then it launched, and then I had, and then you know, I had seen how big their team was, and I was like, that's a lot of money. That's a long, that's a that's a monthly burn that is a lot of money to keep all these people on salary employed, and I don't know what the structure was, but I was like, they're gonna need to raise a lot of money, and so and there was some other difference in terms of how it was used, like or like how it was connecting people. They were trying to use AI and psychology to help connect people, which I get at a core level, but you need a lot of data for that, and you need a lot of data, and then the ability to take that and aggregate it, and then distribute that data to help the users do that thing, that's a lot of money. And so they came out on the app store and then never came out on Google Play. And um, I knew they were raising more money right after that because a lot of the people we were talking to, they were kind of talking to as well. So we kind of heard it. And so I mean, they eventually had to, they no longer are an app that are connecting songwriters. I think just ran out of money. But that's why for us it was bootstrapping early on, not raising a ton of money, being very scrappy, not doing a big launch of like betting a bunch of money to get a bunch of people in, because if they come in and then leave and never come back and have a bad experience, you lost them. What's the point? It's a small market, it's a small niche market in terms of our user base. And so if it is well communicated, and we could do a much better job on so many things, but it's one of those where I go, I'm not doing certain things until we we can deliver on the value. And that takes money. And so is it there's a lot of chicken in the lot of chicken in the egg in the in that whole thing. So anybody can do it. I mean, we had a conversation with one of the big three publishers that wanted to, that wants to still white label what we're doing for their publishing company globally because it helps it they have the same problem internally. They wanted to invest a good bit of money. Uh, we haven't taken them money. I mean, we didn't, you know, I mean, as great as that would be. Um, so you know, do they have the capital to build it and whip it up? And of course. But you got to hire a team, you gotta build the thing, and then you can't go sell it to other people. It's an internal cost because you're providing it internally to your employees and songwriters and artists. Like, so for us on the outside, it it it's the same conversation that most startups have, or like people, well, Amazon's gonna do that. It's like, you know, do is that part of their strategy, their goals? Like, they have all the capital in the world, but do they care to do that? I don't know. So, but yeah, I mean, for us, the protection is the brand, the company or the the community, the songwriters, like us building that to a place where they go, that's that's our global home. That's our home. We needed this home, we needed those minor leagues, you know, and we're not promising like you get on a set, you're gonna be a hit writer. Our coolest story was we got a girl from Atlanta, a pub deal, and then a record deal here in Nashville. And so, like, it's pinned on her Instagram, and she reached out and she said, You're the reason I got a pub deal. And so I wanted to verify a couple things and obviously get some details. And she just said, you know, my in short, my dream was to be a Nashville songwriter. But, you know, I have kids in Atlanta. Getting there to write a bunch and meet a bunch of people was just really hard. And she was like, I found your app, put my profile from Atlanta to Nashville, connected with a guy that had a pub deal. They wrote virtually, songs got pitched, she got signed. And then a year and a half later, she sends Richard and I an email. She's come to Third and Lindsay this Friday. And we were like, Oh, you're in town? Like, I'd love to meet you in person. I'd love to get some content if that's cool, like about the story. And uh it was like, oh no, no, no. Like, I'm getting signed to a record deal. Come out. So we went out and I was like, this is crazy. And she's like moving my family to Nashville. And I remember her mom coming up and being like, Are you those guys with that app? Like, yeah. She's like, she always said it. She didn't find that, she doesn't know if she'd be doing this. And I said, She probably would do it, just might have taken a little bit longer, you know. You know, but I that's the stuff that I go, we're on the right path. Long way to go, but it's just giving a resource for them to do what they and it's up to them. Like, I didn't help them write the songs.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:35

Yeah, it's just I love that man. I um I intentionally didn't go into the app and what it does today. Great. Because I wanted I wanted to leave it mysterious, yeah. So that way you have to actually go check it out for yourself. I love that if you're a songwriter, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:51

Um just dangle it, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:52

Yeah, that's that's all we did. Richard told the cool story um about someone in LA that was a hit writer out there that couldn't get co-writes, and she learned about the app and now create like she literally couldn't, her publisher couldn't get her rights in Nashville and she used the app. So I think there's gonna be a lot of stories like that, and you can tell them forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:11

I reached out and I was like, I love that you signed up, but I have a question. Like, why do you need this? Like, you written monster songs, monsters. And it done really well in the pop world in LA. I just want more cross-genreal country stuff. I don't care if the country writers are hit writers or I just wanted to write with country writers. He was like, and I, you know, I can just sit anywhere and put my profile in Nashville and start connecting with people and write. And it's like democratizing that location of going for now, you still need, you know, it's just like acting and modeling. It's like there's certain pockets that you should be in, but over the course of time, it's like you can kind of do whatever you need anywhere, you know, but it's gonna take some time.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:58

Democratizing songwriting. That's it, man.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:00

Just giving them a home to do their thing. Is that our thumbnail? Democratizing songwriting. Um is that too confusing?

SPEAKER_01 1:41:08

It's I think a little too confusing because people go, eh, it's just what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:12

I so um one of the things. One of our one of our investors said something that uh was annoying to me when he said it, but like because it was so good, where I was like, where were you when we first started this? But he made a career in marketing, like big companies, Nike, and just and he was like, So you're making the world's largest writer's room. And I was like, Oh, that's so good. It's like, yeah, that sounds good. He was like, So you're yeah, you're making the world's largest writers room.

SPEAKER_03 1:41:41

I was like, Is that in your mission statement? Uh, it's in a lot of our stuff. We're making the world's largest, largest writer. World's largest writers' room. I love that. Yep. That's sick, dude. Uh thanks, man. I could talk to you all day, and yeah, but you've been really cool and helpful to me too, man. Well, I just think about those days when I was trying to figure out projections and you you lent me so much of your time and even gave me what you used for it. And um one thing I did learn was that that is not my strength, but it's thing there are things that you have to learn over time, but it's such a journey, entrepreneurship, yeah, and it's cool to hear it from someone that has uh has a heart for the people that are using the product, and it's not just about the making money fast, it's about the long play, and it's about songwriters first. And a lot of people say that, totally, but they don't mean it. I I think that like it's a cliche, you know, it's almost like asking someone how are they doing, and you're like, Oh, I'm just busy, man. But like everybody says they're busy, like live in the dream and busy. I'm like, we're we're songwriter first. Yeah, we're songwriter first. This is a songwriter's time for songwriters or whatever. But it's like, yeah, are you really songwriter first or are you making money first? Does it sound good? Does it sound good? Is it commercial? You know, what yeah, let's put them, you know, let's look at the data. Yeah, but anyway, man, um thank you for being here on the podcast. Where should people go to download the app or check out what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:18

We should write sometime.com everywhere, socials, but also the website. And then I mean, it I always joke and they're like, there's not much on the website. And I was like, Have you ever been to Tinder or Bumble's website? And they're like, no. I was like, when we build out the rest of the stuff that's coming for both the users and the business, we'll obviously make the website like a real robust one. But for now, it's just directing you to the app because that's where you should go. Yeah. And it's free. It's it's free to do it. And so, like, you're like, well, so we're the we're the I was like, so we're the product. I was like, not yet. But yeah, eventually, because if I know where all the guitar players are, you know, like that could be of help if if we need to make sure that people need to find guitar players. Like, I we're not I'm not out here to like sell ads to you.

SPEAKER_03 1:44:10

But like, you know, I think it's cool too, because you could be like a guy, like uh you could be a physician that bought a guitar guitar center, and you're like, I want to start writing songs in my free time, and I'm old and I'm work, you know, whatever it is. Yeah. And it's like, you don't have to be uh some professional, you could literally have a like the idea of writing songs and start.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:34

And I'll shut up because I get I don't I and I'm never gonna like be pitching like it does this and this and this. The cool stories though are like, okay, we're on the right path. Of a guy reached out in Houston and said, Hey, I I I went to Nashville, I got my email and goes, hey, I came to Nashville the first time and I went to the listening corner and saw a writer's and I go, listening round? I go, listening round. Oh, corner. He goes, listening corner? I goes listening round? Yeah, yeah. He goes, I've never seen a writer's round. And he was like, It it I've always booked bands and artists for my bar or bands, like full bands. He goes, I want writers. How do I book? Can I book them through your app? And I was like, not yet. I can help, like I'll I can manually kind of help that, but like there's not a way. But I was like, that's interesting. Because if there's writers that want, like, you know, the that's where the data comes in, right? And so there's opportunities, but like I just love that from a writer's perspective, where they got, and he's not knocking the bands and artists. He was like, I just love the story. And I didn't care that they weren't the best guitar player, the best singer. It was like that story to the song that I know and how it came to be. He was like, that blew my brain. I was like, Yeah, man, I I think I'm spoiled, but that's why people love it. You know, I was like, but it's listening room, not listening corner.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:59

Dude, uh, well, thank you. Thank you. And super fun. Thank you guys for tuning in for hanging out with me and Kevin McCarty. You're the best. Uh, we should write some time, download it, and also leave a review for it in the app store. Five stars. Five stars. Yeah. And if it's not five, DM Kevin and let him know why, and he'll make it right. Yeah. So it is five stars.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:26

The laundry list of things that I know need to get fixed, but it it it it does what it needs to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:31

It does what it needs to do, and that's what matters. Yes, sir. Um, thank you. And and over half of you are not subscribed that listen to this podcast. So do us a free gift of just smashing that subscribe button, leaving a review, and appreciate you guys for tuning in. And we'll see you here next week. Peace.