Verse Chorus Venture Capital
The Thesis: VC.VC will invest in early-stage companies with great and experienced founders, with deep knowledge into their markets and looking to create real impact for the music industry, mainly with software solutions. VC.VC will usually co-invest with other VC firms, leveraging potential collaboration across industry and reducing risk. And since the industry has been fully remote and decentralized for a long time, VC.VC will invest globally, with emphasis for companies headquartered in the US or Europe.
For the past 60,000 years music has been created or consumed by every person on the planet. Technologies that make music easier to create, commercialize and consume like musical notation (~1100ce), the printing press (1436ce), sound recording (1857ce), then streaming (2001ce), have consistently revolutionized music and created fortunes. The weight of 1000 years of history indicates that today’s advanced technology, including Artificial Intelligence, will have the same revolutionary and wealth creation effect.
Our strategy bypasses the fickle whims of the entertainment industry by investing in tools that help creators make music faster, and tools that help consumers discover, enjoy, purchase and engage with music more deeply. We’re not interested in technology that bypasses human creativity; we’re interested in technology that enhances it. We believe that useful technology saves work and creativity is not work. Bringing creativity to market, however, is work and this work is what technology is best at.
In the coming years, more people will engage more deeply with music; as they did when music was first written down, then printed, then recorded, then streamed. The platforms and tools that facilitate this enhanced engagement will become the most important players in the music business.
Verse Chorus Venture Capital is a team of Musicians, Technologists, Business and Investment Professionals. Our strategy is to evaluate a startup in the music technology market along four main metrics:
1. Is it useful?
Lucas Cantor Santiago is a two-time Emmy winning composer whose music is regularly featured in film and television including marquee placements like the 2023 Superbowl and The World Cup. In 2019 he finished Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony with AI and has spoken internationally about the subject of music and technology. Lucas can evaluate a new piece of music technology personally, with his team of composers, and with his extensive network of music professionals.
2. Does it work?
Dr. Rebecca Fiebrink, and Prof. Mick Grierson are at the forefront of music technology. The head the music technology program and University of the Arts London. They can evaluate the functionality of a piece a piece of music technology down to the binary level if necessary. They can also provide meaningful technical insights to founders and add significant value to portfolio companies as advisors.
3. Is it new, useful, and non-obvious?
Cliff Fluet is an attorney who has been at the forefront of the music technology industry for decades. He’s advised music tech companies like JukeDeck (exit to ByteDance) and AI Music (exit to Apple). He’s on the board of Abbey Road Red, the premier incubator for music technology startups. Cliff has a bird’s eye view of the entire music technology ecosystem.
4. Is the price right, and does the business model make sense?
Daniel Ibri is a Founding Partner at Mindset Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in tech startups from the US and Israel, currently investing its Fund IV with a proven track-record. Daniel is also a professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in leading business schools in Brazil.
When we can say “yes” to all four of these core questions, we’ve found a company worth investing in.