Mosaic engr 245 lean launchpad stanford 2020
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The document outlines the development process of a collaborative platform for music professionals aimed at connecting musicians with producers and other creatives. Initially conceived as a network for musicians to get discovered by agents and labels, the concept transformed after feedback revealed insufficient demand, leading to a shift towards a more effective value proposition. The team identified proactive music producers as a key target audience for their service, ultimately developing a minimum viable product focused on connecting individuals within the music industry.
![We began at a coffee shop with a problem...
“The only way to proactively try to
get signed is to cold call and send
cold emails, and it never really
seems to work out.”
“Getting discovered [by an
agent/label] as an artist is
impossible. It’s a ton of luck and
timing and all done by word of
mouth.”
Week 2](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/mosaic-finalpresentation-200312070238/85/Mosaic-engr-245-lean-launchpad-stanford-2020-3-320.jpg)
Mosaic engr 245 lean launchpad stanford 2020
- 1. Mosaic Elan Halpern James Schull Aditya Naganath Jay Kim Patrick Gilligan hacker+hustler BS CS, MS Sustainability hacker+picker BS, MS in CS picker GSB2, BS in CS hustler GSB2 designer BS Product Design, MS CS Interviewed 106 people (niche market type) Day 1 A professional network for musicians, agents, and labels Now A collaboration platform for music creatives to find other creatives to work with (starting with producers & musicians)
- 2. Key Partners • Music professionals • Agents/labels • Studios/venues Customer Segments Two-sided: 1. Music professionals who are looking for representation 2. Agents + labels who want to find musicians to sign Value Propositions • Create a musical portfolio • Get discovered by an agent/label • Find talent more easily and earlier Cost Structure • Customer acquisition cost • Development and hosting cost Revenue Streams • Fee from users to ‘boost’ their profile • Fee for booking services • Subscription fee from agents/labels/venues Key Activities • Development of mobile/web platform • Onboarding music producers Customer Relationships • Community and professional network • (Potentially, self-serve agent) Key Resources • Users • Platform development & experience • Brand Channels • Web and mobile
- 3. We began at a coffee shop with a problem... “The only way to proactively try to get signed is to cold call and send cold emails, and it never really seems to work out.” “Getting discovered [by an agent/label] as an artist is impossible. It’s a ton of luck and timing and all done by word of mouth.” Week 2
- 4. This insight inspired us, as musicians, to try and solve this problem: How might we help deserving musicians get discovered more easily? Week 2
- 5. Let’s make LinkedIn for musicians Artist s Agents & Labels Week 2
- 6. We thought that we could deliver a compelling value proposition to both customer segments: 2. Agents & labels: An effective channel for discovering fresh talent early 1. Aspiring musicians who need to build industry networks: Get represented and possibly signed to agents and labels Value Proposition Week 2
- 7. So we went and spoke to musicians, agents, managers... 36 musicians, agents, managers, labels, and more.. and asked them about what they needed. (musicians) Are you interested in building industry connections? How do you do it? (agents/labels) How do you go about finding new talent? Are you satisfied with your current means? Week 3
- 8. ...and realized neither side needed our product. Week 3
- 9. ...and realized neither side needed our product. “I never attempt to make cold approaches to industry connections, because they simply don’t respond” - Luigi, DJ Week 3
- 10. ...and realized neither side needed our product. “I never attempt to make cold approaches to industry connections, because they simply don’t respond” - Luigi, DJ “We have our own standardized dashboards to look for artists” - Jose, A&R @ Warner Bros Week 3
- 11. ...and realized neither side needed our product. “I never attempt to make cold approaches to industry connections, because they simply don’t respond” - Luigi, DJ “We have our own standardized dashboards to look for artists” - Jose, A&R @ Warner Bros There isn’t enough demand from the non-creative side of the marketplace.” - Dom, CEO of Daisie (competitor) Week 3
- 12. Where do we go next? Week 3 time our confidence
- 13. Customer Segments Multi-sided: 1. Music professionals who don’t have an agent 2. Agents + labels + venues who want to find music professionals So we removed agents/labels from our customer segments (our first pivot) Week 3
- 14. And went out searching for a more impactful value prop for musicians 27 more musicians, songwriters, and producers... We spoke to Week 4 We trawled online channels where musicians spend time, to observe their behaviors...
- 15. We learned that musicians and other creatives make creative/collaborative connections through social media (FB groups, Instagram, etc)... “I use Instagram to find musicians whose work I like, and DM them samples to see if they want to collab” - Cat, musician “I’m a singer looking for a band or musicians! I have tons amid great originals but open to playing anything!” - Tora Week 4
- 16. ...but these channels don’t deliberately address their needs “I wish Instagram had a private section just for musicians… I scroll through hashtags but have to look through a ton of junk” - Finn, producer Week 4
- 17. So we decided to become a collaborative network for creatives (our second pivot) musicians, songwriters, videographers, graphic designers, and other creatives... Week 5
- 18. Value Proposition - Create a musical portfolio -Connect with potential collaborators -Find other music industry creatives to work with And changed our value proposition Week 5
- 19. Customer Segments - Music professionals who don’t have an agent -Music industry creatives (musicians, songwriters, graphic designers, etc) And redefined our customer segments (again) Week 5
- 21. Week 5 Experiment: landing page click-through rate With targeted marketing (FB groups), we thought a signup rate of 5% would indicate interest in our value proposition... 54 visitors 0 signups
- 22. What did we learn? ● No one wants to come to an empty landing page ● Need more than just a sign up page to get traction Week 6
- 23. What did we learn? ● No one wants to come to an empty landing page ● Need more than just a sign up page to get traction And, most importantly… ● None of our customer segments were eager enough to use this unless there were quality people already there Week 6
- 24. We had a chicken-and-egg problem... “For me, it’s all about success rate. I need to know that what I’m doing is translating directly towards my goals.” - Jordan “I need to see why this would be valuable to me at sign up for me to get on.” - Alex Week 6
- 25. Looking for a solution to the chicken-and-egg problem... We dove deep, looking for a customer segment that could ignite the fire Week 7
- 26. After several interviews we realized music producers could be part of our solution “I spend 70% of my time combing through social and streaming sites to look for musicians to send my tracks to” Finn, producer “Every week I look through 1000 new artists and find the 5 best to pitch to my producers” Tucker, manages producers Week 7
- 27. We found two broad producer personalities Proactive Reactive ● Get paid to work for others ● Do not search often ● Use existing platforms effectively to find work ● Laid back mindset ● Release music as themselves ● Search aggressively for new artists ● Savvy with social media ● Hustle minded Week 7
- 28. Our target is the proactive producers Proactive ● Release music as themselves ● Search aggressively for new artists ● Savvy with social media ● Hustle minded Week 7
- 29. So we divided our customer segments chronologically Week 8 Customer Segments -(Short Term) Independent proactive music producers -(Medium Term) Musicians/producers/ sound engineers looking for collaborators -(Long Term) Creatives across industries, looking for collaborators
- 30. Scraping our way to our second MVP An easily searchable directory pre-populated with Spotify artists With relevant and accurate artist contact info Week 8
- 31. MVP 3: Live Website
- 32. Key Partners • Spotify • Instagram • Youtube • Chartmetric • Soundbetter Customer Segments • (Short Term) Independent proactive music producers • (Medium Term) Producers/sound engineers/musicians looking for collaborators • (Long Term) Creatives across industries, looking for collaborators Value Propositions • Find more relevant artists to work with in radically less time. • Allow producers to centralize their portfolio- sharing workflow • Give producers a central place to find musicians & securely exchange tracks Cost Structure • Customer acquisition cost • Development and hosting cost Revenue Streams • LinkedIn-style Premium subscription Key Activities • Development of mobile/web platform • Collect artists contact info Customer Relationships • Discovery network • Track-sharing platform Key Resources • Users • Platform development & experience • Brand Channels • Web and mobile
- 33. No product-market fit… yet “If you send my this once you have a live beta I’ll send it to every producer I know” - Cori Jacobs, Grammy Nominated Producer Week 9
- 35. Thank you... To our wonderful mentor Carol! To the teaching team, from whom we have learned an enormous amount in 10 weeks! To our interviewees, from whom we learned an enormous amount in 10 weeks!
- 36. The story of Mosaic - We began as a professional network for musicians to get discovered by agents and labels (LinkedIn for musicians) - We got out the building, spoke to musicians and corporates, and realized that the idea wasn’t a) sticky enough for musicians or b) useful enough for corporates - So we set out defining a new value proposition… - And after a couple of weeks, settled on a collaborative network for musicians to meet musicians - We struggled with finding an approach to the chicken-and-egg problem - Until we met producers: a customer segment with such a strong need to connect with musicians that we could attract them with a directory, not even a network - So we build an MVP, tested with producers, and here we are
Editor's Notes
- #2: We’re Mosaic, on day 1 we were X, and now we’re Y So Elan and I began Lean Launchpad as part of Butter, a different team, and learned an early first lesson in startup team pitfalls when half our team quit after week 1. In a 24-hour scramble, we formed a new team with Aditya, Jay, and Patty, and embarked on our new journey as Mosaic.
- #3: So a brief look at our day 1 BMC, before I tell the story of how we got there. We began with a focus on two customer segments: For music professionals...we offered the ability to create a cohesive musical portfolio, and be reliably discovered by an agent/label For agents
- #4: Address feedback: clarify in commentary So the idea for Mosaic was born in Aditya’s local Brooklyn coffee shop, where the baristas, both independent musicians (meaning not signed to a label) made two complaints about the process of being discovered. In the music industry, ‘being discovered’ often refers to being signed by an agent or label like Warner Bros who help with distribution, brand, etc. These baristas said that: 1. It’s seemingly random, determined by luck and word of mouth 2. It relies on unproductive cold calls and emails
- #5: Aditya
- #6: Our initial idea was simple: let’s make LinkedIn for musicians, a professional network specifically catered to musicians trying to be signed by agents and labels.
- #7: WE THOUGHT AGENTS WOULD CARE
- #8: Jay Key questions we asked How do musicians and labels find each other currently? Where do musicians and industry people hang out? What does it take for them to get connected? Is there a need to create artistic profile/resume among musicians? How important is the in-person interaction to build trust?
- #9: Address feedback:
- #10: Jay Too many words on this slide
- #11: Jay Too many words on this slide
- #12: Jay Too many words on this slide
- #13: In the graph of confidence against time, this was our low. We’d come in bullish about our idea, and by week 3 had discovered that nobody wanted what we had. This was undeniably deflating.
- #14: Address feedback: in commentary We crammed into a conference room, went back to the whiteboard, and after a long night, made a unanimous decision to scratch agents/labels, and double down on musicians. This was partly rational: we felt that we had gathered more insights about musicians’ needs than agents or labels, and partly emotional: half our team are musicians, and we felt passionate about solving their problems.
- #15: Story 2: Becoming a collab network Elan
- #16: Elan “My entire job this summer was going through Instagram to look for artists I thought would be a good fit to work with our musicians” Jensen, Intern at NYC label
- #17: Elan “I spend 70% of my time combing through social and streaming sites to look for musicians to send my tracks to” Finn, Producer
- #18: Elan Changed out target customer segment
- #19: Jay
- #20: Jay
- #21: Elan We came up with the world's most boring MVP in the world-- the mosaic landing page to see if our value prop was meeting a need Here’s what we found form out MVP
- #22: Elan Though we had a decent amount of visitors through guerrilla marketing, we did have any sign ups
- #25: We had a chicken and an egg problem. How could we get creatives to the platform initially, before we had the scale of a large social network? We heard this from tons of interviews, so we knew it was something we needed to crack
- #26: To solve this problem, we dove deeper into our customer segment to find which specific customer group we could provide an initial, tangilbe benefit for.
- #27: After interview more people, we found our ideal target user in music producers. Music producers are always reaching out to musicians to work with, and we heard this need in man interviews. For instance, finn told us he spends 70% of his time combing through social media to find artists
- #28: However, we started to realize that there were two different categories even within producers, proactive and reactive. Proactive producers are always hustling and reaching out to artists to try and stoke collaboration, reactive producers aren’t
- #29: Patty We wanted to focus in on the proactive producers, as we thought we could actually provide tangible value to them
- #30: Patty So we redefine our customer segments to reflect this. Our short term customers are the proactive music producers. We wanted to not forget about our medium and long term vision for our customers, but for our MVP we will be targeting only the producers.
- #31: To provide value to the proactive music producer, we scrapped Spotify data to provide a database of musicians that producers could search to find their next collaboration. Currently, there is no artist to artists facing search tool, only fan to artist. We provided value to the producers by creating a streamlined way to search for artists to work with, based on criteria important to producers such as genre, follower count, and more.
- #33: By the end of the class, we still had many remaining business model hypotheses, particularly around how to generate scalable revenue. But we had discovered previously unknown customer segments, revised our value proposition, and learned a ton along the way. Value Prop, customer segments, Key partners
- #34: Address: clarify in commentary
- #35: Aditya
- #37: By the end of the class, we still had many remaining business model hypotheses, particularly around how to generate scalable revenue. But we had discovered previously unknown customer segments, revised our value proposition, and learned a ton along the way. Value Prop, customer segments, Key partners
- #38: By the end of the class, we still had many remaining business model hypotheses, particularly around how to generate scalable revenue. But we had discovered previously unknown customer segments, revised our value proposition, and learned a ton along the way. Value Prop, customer segments, Key partners
- #40: By the end of the class, we had some reduced expectaiotns about market size and ability to capture reventue,...
- #43: Add titles to each pedal leaf and then drop logos into the pedals themselves Use search tools (either those on from the Market Research section in Steve Blank’s Startup Tools or other publicly available sources)
- #45: Story 2: Becoming a collab network Elan
- #46: Jay Key questions we asked How do musicians and labels find each other currently? Where do musicians and industry people hang out? What does it take for them to get connected? Is there a need to create artistic profile/resume among musicians? How important is the in-person interaction to build trust?
- #48: Aditya
- #49: Story 1: LinkedIn for creatives -> don’t need it Jay