On Teaching Next-Gen Startup Founders

When I conceptualized and developed a course on building and launching tech startups in the music industry at UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, my goal was simple yet ambitious: I wanted to prepare the next generation of young entrepreneurs to enter the competitive startup landscape with a breadth of music industry knowledge, a fundamental understanding of strategic business research and planning skills, an entrepreneurial mindset, and founder insights gained from guest speakers, internships, and networking opportunities.

After spending several years advising, mentoring, and consulting founders of music tech and digital media startups, I felt that universities and colleges had a unique opportunity to prepare individuals early on with a robust class in music industry entrepreneurship and innovation. UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music agreed and hired me to develop and teach such a course course in 2016; a course that Billboard recognized among its list of “The 15 Best Music Business Schools In 2017.”

It is with this backdrop that I am made ever more proud by many of my former students who do exactly what I had hoped my class would inspire them to do: pursue a path towards music industry entrepreneurship.

That said, I’d like to shine a spotlight on one of my former students and his innovative startup.

David Hartley is a former student and the founder of SoundSmith, a marketplace for artists, labels and distributors to automate their influencer marketing on TikTok. They’ve recently been accepted to the Startmate business accelerator program.

David took my class in Winter 2018 and was a shining example of a model student. Not only was he engaged during lectures and guest speakers, he excelled in completing course assignments. He and his collaborators leveraged my officer hours to seek advice on their startup ideas and took full advantage of the ancillary opportunities that I offered students to land an internship at Repost by SoundCloud.

Students like David is what makes teaching music industry entrepreneurship enjoyable and stories like his is what makes it rewarding.

See David’s message to me below via LinkedIn (shared with his permission).