In the few years since Nashville has emerged as a competitive tech city, plenty of accelerators have popped up among the various venture capital firms in town. But none have been quite as ambitious as Project Music, a boot camp for music-minded entrepreneurs.
In January, the Entrepreneur Center (EC) partnered with Country Music Association to launch this first-ever music-focused accelerator, an idea that stemmed from talks between CMA board member Joe Galante, former chairman of Sony Music Group, and Robbie Goldsmith, director of community engagement at the EC.
Unsurprisingly, it takes a village to operate such an enterprising endeavor. Nine investors are involved: DEV, Spalding Entertainment, Ryman Hospitality Properties, Vector, Galante Entertainment, Universal Music Group, CAA, Red Light Management, and DevDigital. On the operational end, Google, Vaden Group, Patterson Intellectual Property Law, Flo Thinkery, Avenue Bank, SESAC, Music Business Association, and Anderson Benson Insurance all pitched in with funding. Project Music also received a grant from Launch Tennessee, and more than two dozen entrepreneurs and music industry executives stepped up to be a part of the program as mentors.
Ninety-two ideas were submitted. A panel of judges, many from the EC, rated each one based on a set of criteria and then whittled the pack down to 16.
'We based criteria on investability and what's going to have the most economic impact in Nashville,” Goldsmith says of the selection process. 'We want to grow the pie for the music industry and create revenue for everyone involved.”
The nine investors then selected eight finalists who would go on to enroll in the program; of those, seven hail from Tennessee. Goldsmith notes that while it was never the intention to actively recruit Nashville participants, it's no surprise that so many of the ideas were developed locally. 'The companies out of Nashville are constantly closer to the problems on a day-to-day basis and had more knowledge of them and came up with better solutions,” he explains.
The chosen finalists tackle everything from developing an app that compensates for hearing damage to creating a platform for live events to disrupting the karaoke industry. Each receives $30,000 in seed funding in exchange for 10 percent equity. And the 14-week program is no cakewalk: The companies commit to educational talks, mentor sessions, and 12-hour workdays, five days a week.
The program culminates on April 23 with a pitch day at the CMA Theater, and Goldsmith is aiming to get as many investors in the room as possible. Each company has 10 minutes to present its concept to the 600-person audience, with the goal of securing funding. To date, the program has raised more than $1.1 million for its companies.
'We're creating a runway for them, and when the runway ends on April 23, if they're not off the ground, it's really hard to stay alive,” Goldsmith says.
Though year one hasn't even ended, Project Music's future looks bright. 'My goal is to double it [in 2016],” Goldsmith says. 'Not double the amount of companies, but double the effectiveness, double the budget, and double the exposure.” More at ec.co/projectmusic.