The curriculum comes from the music business, the creator economy, and startup operations. Everyone on the team has run something.
Distinguished Professor of Music Business/Management at Berklee College of Music, with teaching appointments at Brown, MIT, and Loyola. Newsweek named him one of America's Greatest Disruptors in 2021.
Co-founded TuneCore, the world's largest independent digital music distributor, which went public at $337.5 million. Served as president of Rykodisc and COO of Wolfgang's Vault — the parent company of Concert Vault, Daytrotter, and Paste Magazine. Founding member of the Open Music Initiative, which launched Raidar.
The Lab's curriculum is built on what George has taught at Berklee for over two decades: that artists who understand business are artists who sustain careers. The shift from aspirant to participant, from observer to builder — that's the psychological transformation the Lab is designed to produce.
Michael Martin has spent his career between creative communities and startup operations. As Executive Director of St. Claude Main Street in New Orleans, he raised a $275,000 ArtPlace America grant and built programming that gave local artists the organizational and economic footing to sustain their practice.
He then worked with early-stage founders at SignalFire and M13 before architecting the Codebase accelerator, which developed a pipeline of 2,000+ founding teams and helped accepted cohorts raise over $8M in external capital. He has built alliances with the United Nations, Stanford, MIT, AWS, Google Cloud, and JP Morgan.
He brings to the Lab the program design instincts of creative placemaking and the operating discipline of founder development. Michael leads program design, city and sponsor relationships, and the operational architecture that keeps the curriculum consistent from city to city.
Digital marketing and media strategist for creatives and creative technology businesses. Has worked on release campaigns for over 100 music releases, including 14 albums for the late GRAMMY-winning jazz pianist Erroll Garner — composer of "Misty" — and albums by Def Leppard, Megadeth, and many others.
Has run technology and product accelerator programs with Warner Bros. Discovery and Acme Innovation, including Collider On The Lot — the accelerator on the WBD studio lot in Burbank that selected 13 companies from hundreds of applicants.
Co-founder and CEO of Harmonic, a music curation and ecommerce platform. Brings to the Lab a rare combination: deep knowledge of how the music industry actually works, hands-on experience running corporate-backed accelerators, and a builder's perspective on what creative platforms need to succeed.