A great startup idea isn't enough. The real challenge is knowing how to turn it into a business.

Mikael Säwström from Brewhouse Inkubator in Gothenburg, Sweden, joins Sound of Startups to share his experience supporting early-stage founders in music technology and the creative industries.

From Sweden's entrepreneurial ecosystem to the realities of startup incubation, Mikael explains how founders can validate their ideas, identify the right audience, and work towards product-market fit. He also discusses why startups can struggle when they focus too much on technology and features instead of solving real customer problems.

We explore the importance of bootstrapping before seeking investment, finding investors who understand the market, and building teams that can adapt as ideas evolve.

This episode offers practical insights into startup validation, sustainable growth, and the decisions involved in building a business in music tech and the creative industries.

If you're a music tech founder, aspiring entrepreneur, or building a business in the creative economy, this conversation offers a grounded perspective on turning ideas into viable businesses.

Hosted by Taj A Khan and Produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

Can music AI truly serve a global audience if it doesn’t understand the world’s musical traditions?

In this episode of Sound of Startups, we speak with Jad Al Masri, violinist, composer, lawyer, and founder of Motif, about building technology that helps music and technology platforms better understand non-Western music.

Drawing from his Middle Eastern musical heritage and legal background, Jad shares how Motif grew from a creator-focused idea into a company building licensed, expert-annotated cultural music datasets and metadata infrastructure. Starting with the Arabic Maqam tradition, Motif is working to translate cultural knowledge into machine-readable context for AI, recommendation, search, and other music technologies.

Jad also reflects on his work around intellectual property and AI, the limitations of existing music metadata, and why the next generation of music technology needs to understand cultures beyond Western musical frameworks.

Listen for a thoughtful conversation on music, law, cultural data, ethical AI, and what it takes to build technology for a truly global music industry.

Hosted by Taj & Produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

Some of the biggest opportunities in music tech start with problems the industry has learned to work around.In this episode of Sound of Startups partnered with MUSIC FRONTIERS 2026, Charles Accarisi and Tom Levoir, co-founders of Bridgent, share how more than a decade of friendship evolved into a startup focused on simplifying artist booking.Charles brings years of experience as a producer, touring artist, label owner, event organizer, curator, and booker, while Tom brings a background in economics, data, and strategy. Together, they are building an integrated platform designed to help promoters, event organizers, and artist agents manage the booking process in one place.We explore how they validated the idea through more than 50 conversations with industry professionals, developed their early product, bootstrapped the company, and learned why relationships remain such an important part of the music business.A conversation about complementary founders, firsthand industry experience, and turning a persistent workflow problem into a music tech opportunity.

🎧 Listen to the full episode of Sound of Startups and hear Charles and Tom's journey with Bridgent.Hosted by Taj & produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

We’re excited to bring you another episode with MUSIC FRONTIERS 2026🎵 partnership on Sound of Startups, Maurits Hagemans, Founder of Lotronics.

A strong startup often begins with a problem the founder understands personally.

Maurits has spent more than a decade around music, live events, technology, and electronic improvisation. That experience eventually led him to create Lotronic.live, a platform designed to give the live electronic improvisation scene a clearer place to connect, organize, and be discovered.

In this episode of Sound of Startups, Maurits Hagemans, explains how Lotronic connects artists, venues, listeners, and independent organizers, and why he has chosen not to charge artists for access to the platform. He shares the thinking behind the business model, the challenge of building as a solo founder, and the realities of self-funding a startup before reaching revenue.

We discuss identifying the real problem behind a product, knowing when to take advice and when to trust your own direction, and building a product around the needs of a specific community.

Maurits also reflects on the future of electronic music in an era of AI-generated content, and why live performance, improvisation, and human creativity remain central to his vision.

This conversation offers a practical look at bootstrapping, niche music-tech entrepreneurship, and building a sustainable business around an underserved community.

Hosted by Taj & Produced by Anplitude Ventures AS.

We’re excited to bring you another episode with MUSIC FRONTIERS 2026🎵 partnership on Sound of Startups, featuring Nicole de Beer, CEO & Founder at Gigevate.

What does it take to leave everything familiar behind and build a music tech startup from scratch in a new country?

In this episode of Sound of Startups, we speak with Nicole de Beer, founder of Gigavate, a digital booking and events management platform built for the electronic music industry.

Gigavate is working to bring artists, organizers, and other parts of the electronic music ecosystem into one connected platform, creating more structure around bookings, communication, payments, and opportunities.

We explore what it means to build as an immigrant founder, enter a new market without an established network, raise funding at the pre-seed stage, and keep moving forward with a very small team. Nicole also shares why transparency and better infrastructure matter for emerging artists, and how accelerators, community, and the right environment can help founders think bigger.

A grounded conversation about persistence, building from zero, and creating opportunity in the electronic music industry.

If you want to learn more about Gigevate:

• Website: https://gigevate.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gigevate/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gigevate

Hosted by Taj & Produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

We’re excited to bring you a new episode with MUSIC FRONTIERS 2026🎵 partnership on Sound of Startups, featuring Jelmer Rotteveel, Founder of FindSocial.

In this episode, Jelmer shares how he turned a simple data-scraping script into FindSocial, an AI-powered music intelligence platform built to help music professionals discover emerging artists and find the right industry contacts.

He also reflects on an important shift in the company’s journey: moving from collecting vast amounts of data to building a more focused and relevant music database.

Jelmer shares valuable lessons from building a music startup, including why timing matters when raising funds and why founders should look beyond the music industry when seeking investors.

If you’re building a music startup, working in music tech, or interested in artist discovery, this episode offers practical lessons on product focus, fundraising, and knowing when to scale. Tune in and learn from Jelmer’s journey.

Hosted by Taj & Produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

If you want to learn more about FindSocial:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/findsocial/

Website: https://www.findsocial.io/

A great idea is not always enough to secure funding. So, what actually makes a creative project fundable?

In this episode of Sound of Startups, Ludovica Michelin, founder of Flumi, breaks down how EU funding works for creative startups and what makes a project fundable. She explains how founders can translate creative ideas into policy language, align their projects with EU priorities, and build complementary international partnerships that strengthen funding applications.

Ludovica also explores the differences between programs such as Creative Europe, Erasmus+, and Horizon, and shares why founders should think strategically about funding rather than treating it as the starting point.

If you're building a creative startup and exploring EU funding opportunities, this episode offers a practical perspective on how to approach the funding landscape with greater clarity and strategy.

If you want to learn more about Flumi:

• LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/flumistudio/
• Website: https://flumi.net/
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/_flu_mi/

Produced by Amplitude Ventures AS.

Most founders spend countless hours thinking about fundraising, product, and growth. But according to Sebastian, they're overlooking the one skill that makes all three possible: sales.

In this episode of Sound of Startups, Taj sits down with Sebastian Ferraz, Chief Revenue Officer at Watchdog and Founding Partner at Atlas Accelerator, to explore how sales became the foundation of every company he has built, from startup validation to enterprise growth.

The conversation goes beyond closing deals. Sebastian shares why customer validation should come before fundraising, how traction creates investor confidence, what founders consistently get wrong about sales, and why building trust is one of the strongest competitive advantages a startup can have.

Whether you're launching your first company, raising capital, or trying to find product market fit, this episode offers practical lessons on building startups that customers actually want.

In this episode:

• Why sales is one of the most underestimated founder skills

• Customer validation before fundraising

• Building traction that attracts investors

• Common fundraising mistakes founders make

• The role of trust and relationships in sales

• How to improve as a founder selling your product

• Lessons from building and investing in multiple startups

If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more discussions with founders, investors, and operators building the next generation of startups.

Hosted by Taj & Produced by Amplitude ventures AS.