“80% of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen, filmaker

Jack Conte first spoke at the SF MusicTech Summit in 2010, representing the recording duo Pomplamoose and sharing his success with YouTube cover videos. He returned in 2011 and again in 2012 with his partner, Nataly Dawn. Throughout these appearances, Jack engaged with other musicians and creators, growing inspired by startup culture.

Recognizing a problem, he returned in 2013 boasting his own startup with his college roommate.  He pointed out that YouTube ad revenue was insufficient for creators with large followings. He decided to take action, launching a platform where fans could support creators directly.

We're talking about people that have like 200,000 subscribers—this is basketball stadiums full of people—and you're making $1500 a month. ... It just doesn’t seem to add up for me. To me, that's broken.  It should be more revenue than that.  ... I wanted to build this for myself when I was releasing an EP. So I asked my fans, ‘Hey, throw in a buck every time I come out with a new video. I'd like you to pledge $1 to me, or $2 or $3.  Whatever you want to give.' We launched 2 and a half weeks ago.  On our first day we had over 1,000 signups!

Within three months Jack’s closed his first funding round. Today, Patreon hosts over 8 million patrons and Creators have made over $8 billion to date on Patreon.  The power of a spark of an idea and the support of a community.

Jack Conte casually showing off Patreon

Listen to Jack’s birth of Patreon at the 0:17 second mark:

CEO Tim Westergren first spoke at the second SF MusicTech Summit in 2008, sharing his life’s work — the Music Genome Project. At the time, Summit co-founder Brian Zisk had recently sold his pioneering music streaming company, The Green Witch Internet Radio to CMGI (NASDAQ:MLNK). We believed in Tim’s dream to create an improved version of what we knew as “radio.”

The Music Genome Project was a groundbreaking database analyzing 450 unique attributes per song, creating the most comprehensive musical DNA mapping ever undertaken, completely disrupting the music discovery landscape. Tim returned in 2010 to discuss Pandora Internet Radio and the future of streaming.

Pandora returned with it’s CTO, Tom Conrad, to host a panel titled “How to Scale,” featuring the top engineers from the fastest-growing music startups:

How to Scale:
Tom Conrad – Pandora, CTO
Eric Wahlforss – SoundCloud, CTO
Dan Crow – Songkick, CTO
John Adams – Twitter, Operations Engineer

Just months later, Pandora went public at $16 per share, reaching a $2.6 billion market capitalization. In 2019, SiriusXM acquired Pandora for $3.5 billion, making it the world’s largest audio entertainment company.

G-Eazy spoke at the SF MusicTech Summit in 2014 to mark his major label debut with his new album These Things Happen (2014). His single “I Mean It” went on to receive triple platinum certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). G-Eazy proudly made every beat on his album himself in his house, building organically and finally reaching the big leagues.  

2013 SF MusicTech Summit

Why? Beyond their ability to curate top-tier conferences, back when I was just a scrappy music tech writer for Hypebot, a student at San Francisco State University, and had just began Fame House with Mike Fiebach, they gave me my first major platform to speak about the industry I love.

That moment launched a ripple effect, leading me to speak at events around the world and shaping my path to this day.

Music and tech are yin and yang—they move in unison. I can’t wait to exchange ideas with the brilliant minds this event will surely bring together”.