EP01: Interview with Bob "Moz" Moczydlowsky

About This Episode

Bob Moczydlowsky (or simply Bob Moz) is a familiar name for anyone working with music startups. The Managing Director of Techstars Music, Bob started his career in tech at 32 as an intern at Yahoo to become one of the minds shaping the future of the industry just a decade later. A perfect "opening act" for our interview series!

We talk with Bob about his path in the industry, his experience as the Head of Music at Twitter and VP of Product & Marketing at Topspin, running TechStars Music (the music program of the world's largest seed stage investor), the future of the music business and some of the most exciting startups changing the industry as we know it.

Topics & Highlights

04:57 — On starting out in the music industry:

David Weiszfeld: What made you do the flip at 30, wanting to [turn your career to the music tech]?
Bob Moz: I always loved music and tech. I just grew up in a place where I didn't think that having a career in music and tech was possible. I was more talented and had better skills than I realized, I guess, it's how to put it... there was [a lot of places] where I could have worked in music and tech. I just didn't realize that it was possible. It took me a long time to realize that I could participate in that sort of global ecosystem... The ethos of just do it: "What are you waiting for? Just start". I really should have leaned into more. That's where I come from, that's what I believe in.

08:10 — On working at Topspin, Yahoo Music and Twitter:

David Weiszfeld: From Yahoo to Topspin to Twitter, what are the learnings from a huge company to a startup to a large startup? What are the things you would keep and not keep from three experiences?
Bob Moz: I would keep all of it. Topspin was "you thought you knew what you were doing and we're just like we messed it up so many different ways". I feel really glad that the company put a dent in the universe and changed the way directive and marketing works and helped artists make millions of dollars... When you work in a startup for five years and it's really hard and [...] everything seems like it's on fire all the time. Everything is an emergency and you feel like you don't get anything – and you really accomplish an awful lot.

When I [later] got to Twitter: everybody was like “wow that guy knows what he's doing “and I was like "I don't have any idea what I'm doing!". At Twitter it was like "How do you do this at planetary scale? And what matters and how do you do it?" Life in the major leagues is like: here's these big sexy things and a really ambitious plans and they don't always work out. And you're better off being in the arena, being the person trying to do it, sweating it out and failing then you are sitting on the sidelines watching.

15:47 — On Techstars:

David Weiszfeld: For the people who don't know overall what is TechStars regardless of the music program. Can you just kind of sum it up in a second?Bob Moz: We talk about Techstars as a global network to help entrepreneurs succeed. Practically, I think we are now officially the world's largest seed stage investor. We run 45 accelerator programs around the world... All [our portfolio] companies come together to work as a team to help us identify, nurture, capitalize, and then give platform to the 10 most interesting startups in music every year.

[At Techstars] I've created my dream job, which is every year I get to work with like the smartest most interesting entrepreneurs who are trying from the very earliest stages to build big global companies that are solving problems for music. What we're trying to do is attract more venture capital to the music ecosystem and we're trying to help these companies do a year's worth of work in three months and really like reshape the way music and live entertainment, media consumption works for the future.

20:04 — On Techstars Music startups:

David Weiszfeld: What are the few verticals [that you're focusing on]? Last year, I think it was ticketing and blockchain companies.
Bob Moz: I mean there's a couple of companies that are in our portfolio that the people know and that the people who follow Music Tech have probably seen. In our AI Music front we have Popgun that is in our portfolio in Australia, Amper music is in New York: the two global leaders in making music with AI.

[On the] blockchain rights management side, we have JAAK in the UK also from the first class of the program, a company you will probably recognize. We also have Tracer in Madrid Spain doing Blockchain based service layer for tickets (not on the front end but on the backend), making tickets portable so you can sell them on any front end or distribute them around to other sellers.

We also have Endel. They take your personal data and your biometrics and they create customized sound environments to help you relax or focus or go to sleep. But the company is really a controller for the environment. What's the brain of your smart home? If you say Alexa help me go to sleep, she needs to know what your heart rate is, she needs to know how busy your day was or how stressful your drive was. And it becomes a thing that can collect all of these inputs and then the outputs...

Blink Identity is the other one I think people would probably like associate with us from last year: facial recognition and Iris scanning at high speeds. They're experimenting with the guys at Ticketmaster around like "in the future can your face be your ticket".

24:56 — On the future of the Music Industry:

David Weiszfeld: What excites you in the music industry right now?
Bob Moz: One [of the topics] is the implication of how we manage media. My son's 9. He talks to Alexa non-stop all day. He has no concept of albums. He has no concept of media brands. He has no concept of playlist thing or groups of songs. His relationships are with Alexa and with the artist or the song name. He is [...] discovering things in the voice environment. And [that is] a whole thread in music right. How we prepare for voice? What's the metadata looks like? What's the tagging look like? How do we read emotions there? We've made a couple of investments this year in companies that are relevant here.

The other thing I'm super into is that I think every kid in the world in the next two or three years will have all the tools they need to become a global pop star. From anywhere on the planet: you won’t have to be in New York. You won’t have to be in L.A. You won’t have to be in London. You could be in Ghana and you could be a global superstar. I think it's like two years away.

Listen as a Podcast

• Soundcloud
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• Google Podcasts
• Breaker

Techstars Music Class 2019

• The Music Fund: a data-driven, smart-pricing algorithm to offer up-front cash for a portion of artist’s royalty income from streaming
• SuperRes: artificial intelligence to separate, classify, and up-res audio
• Inklocker: a decentralized global network of on-demand manufacturers
• Replica: artificial intelligence to create the next generation of games, films, music and other media
• Marble AR: an augmented-reality platform to create live music experiences
• Mila: music therapy methods to diagnose and rehabilitate neuro-developmental disabilities
• Rhinobird: interactive video players
• EmbodyMe: the parent company of the app Xpression, which allows users to create realistic videos with deep learning
• Signal Distribution: the company is off the radar for now, more details will be disclosed in the future
  

Other Companies & Stories Mentioned

• Avex Group: The largest record label and management company in Japan
• Recochoku: one of the largest DSPs in Japan

(To find out more about Avex, Recochoku and Japanese market in general, check out our article on Music Industry in Japan)

• Peloton: fitness company, creating content around music and streaming video
• Concord: one of the biggest independent labels in the world
• Silva Artist Management: managers of Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys, Queens of the Stone Age, Nine Inch Nails and Norah Jones
• Q Prime: managers of Metallica, Black Keys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eric Church and Muse
• Bill Silva Entertainment: managers of Linkin Park, and one of the exclusive Rock and Roll promoters at the Hollywood Bowl
• Royalty Exchange: world’s first online marketplace for buying and selling royalties

Links:

• Sony's Some Christmas Music Compilation
• More Insiders Episodes
  

Full Transcript

David Weiszfeld [00:00]: All right. Hey everybody we're with Bob Moz, one of my favorite people in the world. Hi Bob, it's great to see you. Bob is currently running the TechStars music program out of L.A. but I really think that his path and story so far could be extremely interesting for everybody. So I suggested that we had a quick chat and this is probably going to become a series that we'll do on the Soundcharts blog. So, hey Bob.

Bob Moz [00:26]: Hi! I'm very honored to be the first victim.

David Weiszfeld [00:29]: Yes. You are definitely a victim. So yeah we're going to basically quick start. I think everybody would be interested to understand your story before you kind of explain exactly what you do today. So, where were you born where you're from?

Bob Moz [00:44]:  Well I was born in Washington D.C. on the East Coast but I grew up in a town called Fort Collins in Colorado. It's a little town like an hour north of Denver. It's actually closer to the Wyoming border and Cheyenne Wyoming than it is to Denver. So this is a cool place, very nice, but far from L.A / New York / London / Paris.

David Weiszfeld [01:05]: And you said about 150 thousand people live there.

Bob Moz [01:8]: Yeah. Well now there's 150 thousand people that live there. When I was a kid it was like more like seventy five thousand people. Like it's a little college town.

David Weiszfeld [01:16]: And were your parents in the music or tech industry?

Bob Moz [01:20]:  Yes, my dad was in tech, kind of. He worked for the federal government. So he built these massive IP telephony networks for the Department of Agriculture. And then was a big Federal Computer Center in Fort Collins which is why we moved there from Washington D.C. when I was like three and then my brother was born in Fort Collins but my dad used to go to work The Fort Collins computer center and it was out by the highway. And it had those big mainframe computers and the punch cards and it was a super cool place to go as a kid.

David Weiszfeld [01:53]: I'm guessing that growing up with computer, even if not in the big cities, is still growing up with computers and being in touch with the way tech was evolving pretty quickly...

Bob Moz [02:01]:  Yeah, my mom is a social worker. So she works in local hospitals and places health care spots up and down the front range of Colorado. But my dad worked the whole time for the Department of Agriculture so he would make sure that my brother and I grew up like knowing how to use computers. Our first computer at home was a Kaypro 64 which was the world's first portable computer. It was this metal box, the keyboard folded up into the into it and you could put two five and a half inch floppies into it. And it had a 64K hard drive.

David Weiszfeld [2:40]: A portable...

Bob Moz [2:42]:  Yeah, It weighed like 300 pounds. It had Halliburton style classic case clips that would clip the keyboard to the metal box. And I very vividly remember when we got it in 1982-1983, something like that, I remember people coming to our house to see the computer. People came over like my mom went out to like put out some dip and some chips and some veggie plate like why is everybody coming over, coming to see the computer like it was a as cool thing.

David Weiszfeld [3:11]: That's amazing. I know that you started that Yahoo Music, what people would call pretty late for music and tech career. I think you were in your early 30s.

Bob Moz [03:23]: Well, I started at Yahoo Music got a “oh you were a product manager at Yahoo” and I was like “yes I was but before that I was an intern” which is like a little-known thing: I think it's a funny story. As I was going to grad school at Carnegie Mellon, I'd worked in media and publishing, got an undergraduate degree in journalism. I was getting a master's degree in entertainment management and I had to do an internship and I was working for a movie producer and a big movie star, story for another time and I didn't like that at all: that was not for me.

And my friend Cody Simmons who I had worked with had just left the New York Times and was working at Yahoo. And he introduced me to Ian Rogers and Michael Spiegelman who then introduced me to Dave Goldberg (Michael is now like one of the heads of the product at Netflix and you know Ian is in Paris, LVMH, but like most people know Ian Rogers is a music tech). They convinced Dave Goldberg, who is one of the great tech leaders of the last 20 years and has so many people that he gave their starts. David took a flyer on me as an intern at 32 which is totally crazy. Nobody else would do that. And then a year later I graduate, and they made me a product manager which was a pretty amazing thing.

David Weiszfeld [04:52]: So yeah you took quite a big leap from media and journalism to tech. So not only some people trusted you and actually gave you a shot even if it was an intern shot usually everybody starts as an intern. What made you do the flip at 30, wanting to restart?

Bob Moz [5:15]:  I always loved music and tech, like always. I just grew up in a place where I didn't think that having a career in music and tech was possible. I was more talented and had better skills than I realized, I guess, it's how to put it. I was managing bands. I was actively building things. Brad Barrish who worked with us at topspin and who works now at Sonos. He and I wrote a music site at the University of Kansas in 1996. Had he been at Stanford or UCLA or NYU or somewhere around any kind of venture capital community we could have raised millions of dollars. Sonic.net came two years after our site.

Instead we got a B on it in class and went our separate ways. It wasn't until I moved back to L.A. and was working at Yahoo that we reconnected, and we brought him into Topspin later. So I had all day there was like a bunch of things where I could have worked in music and tech. I just didn't realize that it was possible. It took me a long time to realize that I could participate in that sort of global ecosystem.

David Weiszfeld [06:23]: So what would you think if you met now the 19 year old Bob, would you tell him. Kind of trust your gut. Trust your talent or progress. Geography doesn't really matter or...

Bob Moz [06:39]: I got it. Well, first of all I'd be like "hey don't worry about it. You're gonna meet the best woman ever, the person you'll marry is gonna change your life". My wife totally changed my life. I'd be like "hey, that woman is coming to save you". So It will be the first thing I would say. And secondly I'll be like...
I was always a ravenous music fan. I was a big punk rock kid. I still am in terms of what I like to listen to. And the ethos of getting a van right, that flag ethos of like just do it: "What are you waiting for? Just start". I really should have leaned into more. That's where I come from, that's what I believe in. Like I've come all the way back around. I'm the 43 year old straight edge guy. I think that I should have just listened: it was right there. I believed in it and I didn't connect it like I was could be part of that and participate.

I thought everybody else was like more talented than me or bigger or whatever.. It's a feeling we all have, you have to have that first experience to feel that you can do this. Like I can participate here. And I just wish I had done earlier so. But you know, I'm super stoked with how it worked out. So maybe I needed those years like learning how to work hard and pay my mortgage and all that stuff.

David Weiszfeld [07:52]: Yeah sometimes if you have it too easy too early it's creates like human debt.

Bob Moz [07:58]:  Like it's never been easy, but I feel like maybe it just worked out the way we're supposed to work out.

David Weiszfeld [08:05]: Sure! We are we're basically speaking a bit about about it about the past. We mentioned Yahoo Music and then between Yahoo and TechStars. You went from Yahoo to Topspin from Topspin to Twitter. One thing about this interview I realized that basically you went from a not so startup extremely large tech company which was Yahoo at the time. If you go back in time Yahoo at the time was literally the juggernaut of the web.

Bob Moz [8:32]:  Yeah Big company - startup - big company - startup.

David Weiszfeld [08:35]: And then Twitter was kind of a huge startup before I think it was a public company,.

Bob Moz [8:42]:  Just barely before. I started a Twitter I think six weeks before the company went public, it was a big company by then.

David Weiszfeld [08:54]: So what if you had to do a quick learning of Yahoo to Topspin to Twitter: What are the learnings from a huge company to a startup to a large startup? What are the things you would keep and not keep from three experiences?

Bob Moz [09:19]:  I would keep all of it. Some of it was harder than others and some of it was more enjoyable than others. Yahoo was just me learning how to work in a corporate environment and realize that I could participate, and my voice was good and I learned about how to manage monetization and users, attract growth and how to hold yourself accountable for building product that people use. It was amazing place to start because there was millions of people using Yahoo Music right at the time, it was like 25MAUs using those services. We had to deal with the rights and the budgeting and we had to shut radio service down we had to shut the streaming service down and transfer that's Rhapsody.

So there was tons of that stuff like like just in the generations of streaming music where this learned so much. The music match product was better than the Yahoo products, they shut the music match product down. You just learn a lot of lessons about how big companies operate and what music costs on the Internet.

Topspin was like "you thought you knew what you were doing and we're just like we messed it up so many different ways". Look I feel really glad that the company put a dent in the universe and changed the way directive and marketing works and helped artists make millions of dollars.

David Weiszfeld [10:33]: So for the people might not know but Topspin was basically the first venture backed DTC artist to find commerce store. There was other companies doing it around but it was the one that had the larger scale at the time.

Bob Moz [10:47]: We grew it from zero to 20 million dollars in GMV, at its peak it was the most powerful most robust – it was too complicated to use that didn't have a great user experience, but it worked. It made people earn buckets of money and it's a really learning like how important usability is and really learning about how important self-service sustainable growth is. Chasing revenue rather than having sustainable happy customers. That's a whole other conversation. There is a million things learned there.

But I also learned that there are things that I didn't know that I thought I did. And when I got to Twitter I think people would like value my opinion in ways that I didn't expect. People cared about things because when you work in a startup for five years and it's really hard and you're slogging your way through it, everything seems like it's on fire all the time. Everything is an emergency and you feel like you don't get anything accomplished. And you really accomplish an awful lot. You learn tons of things, the value of those skills gets comes back to you in ways that you just cannot appreciate until you're on the other side of it.

This will happen for you with Soundcharts. Like success or failure, no matter what happens to Soundcharts you have learned so much stuff. You're a music manager, then you're a smart marketer and then you're like "I want to run a tech company". And your journey doing that is like crazy amounts of learning and rapid amounts of time and the human being that you'll be on the other side... You're so much more powerful than you could ever imagine.

It's like that scene in Star Wars where Obi Wan gets killed and he's like "you strike me down you'll make me more powerful than you can ever imagine". That's the same for yourself: you just don't realize what you're capable of and when I got to Twitter: everybody was like “wow that guy knows what he's doing “and I was like "I don't have any idea what I'm doing!".

David Weiszfeld [12:37]: You learn a lot more in adversity than you learn in any type of success for sure.

Bob Moz [12:42]: Totally. And then to finish and answer your question and at Twitter it was like "How do you do this at planetary scale. And what matters and how do you do it." And you know we tried to do a couple of things there that were sort of outside the frame big. And it didn't work and it just goes and that's OK. That's that was a whole another lesson: life in the major leagues is like: here's these big sexy things and a really ambitious plans and they don't always work out. And you're better off being in the arena, being the person trying to do it, sweating it out and failing then you are sitting on the sidelines watching.

The first year I was at Twitter was amazing and I learned a ton. Then it kind of all fell apart for plenty of good reasons. We didn't do what we planned to do. Then the second year it was "not that great", my job went from this to this. And it wasn't that interesting. And it's a great company and I learned a ton of amazing things and again you get to build product and put things out. That little play but in the Twitter feed you know. Three or four people did that. It didn't take hundreds of people to do that. And those three or four people I still talk to and we're really proud of it. And it's still in there today and people still listening to stuff and discovering stuff today because of that. That matters and there's a dopamine hit for building something and putting it out there that millions of people use.

David Weiszfeld [14:10]: Yeah I was gonna say it's not putting it out there for a few hundreds hopefully, it's putting it out there. from that first day you have to limit the push of the feature to point the 0,1 percent of the people you just don't push a feature. If you were a smart startup, you put a feature you're really proud, you just push it. When you're Twitter you push it to like 0,001% and you see how it actually goes. The scale is massive that it's kind of scary and it could freeze you before actually launching.

Bob Moz [14:47]: So that was a great lesson, but it also taught me that i like value creation. I'm not much of an administrator. I'm not the guy you hired to run a team of 300 people. I'm not an administrator or someone who runs a business. I'm the person who creates businesses and creates concepts and creates value and I could never be eloquent about that or understand that's who I was until I've had all those experiences and I realized like helping at the creation of value is where I'm most useful and happiest to.

David Weiszfeld [15:10]: Actually some very large companies have those amazing operators. They also keep always amazing creative minds that can maybe change a little bit the internal thoughts process. Well while you need to operate this is in a very large scale company you need to have some sparkle, some internal disruptor. You need those internal minds, people that speak their mind, people that can create value try to create new products within products. And it's the marriage of those two that actually really works and execute large companies. Let’s fast forward a little bit. Right now you're running TechStars, it's the third class of TechStars music. For the people who don't know overall what is TechStars regardless of the music program. Can you just kind of sum it up in a second?

Bob Moz [16:04]: Yeah sure. So we talk about TechStars as a global network to help entrepreneurs succeed. Practically, I think we are now officially the world's largest seed stage investor. We run 45 accelerator programs around the world: TechStars music, TechStars mobility, TechStars L.A., Boulder, Chicago, Seattle Singapore, London, Paris. We've got programs that are focused on locations and we have programs that are focused on topics. And so I run TechStars Music and we do that in partnership with a bunch of global music business companies.

So our LP is if you think about them that way as people who are who help support and fund the program and also provide mentorship and access and like help for the companies who are in the program: those are the Warner Music Group, Sony globally (Sony U.S. Music, Sony Innovation Fund, Sony Music Japan), Avex (the largest record label and management company in Japan) Recochoku (large DSP in Japan).

Peloton, the fitness company, they are new members this year, they make the exercise bike and a treadmill and tons of content around music and streaming video. Concord, the world's largest independent label. Silva Artist Management, which manage the Foo Fighters, Beastie Boys Estate,  Queens of the Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails and Norah Jones. Q Prime, who manage Metallica and the Black Keys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eric Church and Muse: that's a giant management companies. And then here in L.A. Bill Silva Entertainment (Bill manages Linkin Park, is one of the exclusive Rock and Roll promoter at the Hollywood Bowl). And then in Denver a company called Royalty Exchange run by this guy named Matt Smith who's a super forward thinking entrepreneur around like "how do you monetize and build sort of investment vehicles around copyrights and royalty streams".

So all those companies come together to work as a team to help us identify, nurture, capitalize, and then give platform to the 10 most interesting startups in music every year. And it's a form of like a job career perspective, I feel I've kind of committed the perfect crime. I've created my dream job which is every year I get to work with like the smartest most interesting entrepreneurs who are trying from the very earliest stages to build big global companies that are solving problems for music.

So I couldn't be happier. You are an alumni of our program: Soundcharts is one of our portfolio companies. We've got portfolio companies in Australia, in England, in France, in Germany, in Spain, in Japan, in Canada and all across the US, in Sweden. 30 companies through our portfolio. Our Intentions are to do this on into the future in an evergreen way. And what we're trying to do is attract more venture capital to the music ecosystem and we're trying to help these companies do a year's worth of work in three months and really like reshape the way music and live entertainment, media consumption works for the future.

David Weiszfeld [19:30]: I thought about asking you to name a couple of verticals that you focused on or a few startups and I thought it's kind of naming your favorite child, and you can really do that. Do you want to speak maybe just a little bit about the few verticals that you've had in the programs. I know there is music making with AI. And that's a very hot topic. There's a company this year that is Music Fund which is creating algorithms to predict the value of songs.

Bob Moz [19:59]:  The programmatic hedge fund for purchasing music copyrights. Pretty cool stuff.

David Weiszfeld [20:04]: What are the few verticals? Last year, I think it was ticketing and blockchain company. Do you want to kind of elaborate on this?

Bob Moz [20:10]:  Yeah sure. I mean there's a couple of companies that are in our portfolio that the people know and that the people who follow Music Tech have probably seen. In our AI Music front we have Popgun that is in our portfolio in Australia, Amper music is in New York: the two global leaders in making music with AI. They're both the most highly capitalized, have most talented entrepreneurs: the biggest businesses going in that space. So we're super lucky to have them.

We've got another sort of the blockchain rights management side. We have JAAK in the UK also from the first class of the program, a company you will probably recognize. We also have Tracer in Madrid Spain doing Blockchain based service layer for tickets (not on the front end but on the backend), making tickets portable so you can sell them on any front end or distribute them around to other sellers. So those are AI music making and that sort of service layer on ticketing and companies that touch the blockchain around that has been in the past like notable companies from our portfolio.

But we also have Endel who sat next to you last year in the program. They're based in Berlin. They're opening an US entity here. They're currently the number one app in Japan at the moment. Like in the whole country.

David Weiszfeld [21:35]: That is literally all apps: like Facebook Whatsapp...

Bob Moz [21:40]: Totally crazy, right? Which is pretty cool as an investor. Like it's fun when you're the product guy you get to the biggest thing that millions of people touch. It's also cool and they get the same dopamine hit when you're the investor and your thing goes to the top. It's pretty easy to get hooked on that too.

They take your personal data and your biometrics and they create customized sound environments to help you relax or focus or go to sleep. And that's how they've gone to market. That's their first attack point. But the company is really a controller for the environment. What's the brain of your smart home: if you say Alexa help me go to sleep, she needs to know what your heart rate is, she needs to know how busy your day was or how stressful your drive was. And it becomes a thing that can collect all of these inputs and then the outputs of it help you have a better life and change your atmosphere.

So the outputs of the tech could be temperature or lighting or sound or video or just like "hey like put my phone in the Do Not Disturb modes" "like push my alarm out 15 minutes" "give me some clothes" you know "turn the lights down" "cool off the air" "let me go to sleep" : the things that a smart home would do or a smart car cockpit could do come out of there of their tech. That's a company that people would probably see more and more this year but that's a company from last year.

You guys just re-launched your platform, a V2, your guys are doing great, you got some of the most important people in music using you using your tech for business intelligence. We're super excited about that. That's an area of interest for us, in portfolio and thesis-wise: business intelligence around music and media we're really into that. You mentioned the Music Fund, that's part of it on the hedge fund side.

And Blink Identity is the other one I think people would probably like associate with us from last year: facial recognition and Iris scanning at high speeds. They raise some money from us and a really smart venture company called Sinai Ventures and then Live Nation. They're experimenting with the guys at Ticketmaster around like "in the future can your face be your ticket". How does identity work backup house. How does it work front of house. Can we make these secure environments more secure and safer and also can we just create a better experience for people when they're when they're in venues or buildings.

Ultimately that company might be a door company or maybe a commercial real estate company. But like music and live entertainment and venues are like a good place to test the tech.

David Weiszfeld [24:03]: Yeah, you start by shortening the line general admission for Coachella, you go to shortening heightening and increasing security for VIP access and artists passes and so forth, and then you go into controlling hospitals. When people have to go with gloves to doors and they don't want to be that stuff. I think Endel is the same. They always start with music as the jobs to be done is "hey I want to relax play some music" but actually I want to relax could be "turned down the volume" "change the temperature" "slay some audio" that does not have to be music and so forth.

Cool I see that we've passed the 25th minute mark and I wanted to keep my twenty five minutes myself. I'll jump in the last two things. It's also for you to make it digestible for everybody. But I know you've had a crazy long day so one very open question that you could literally go anywhere.

What excites you in the music industry right now? People are talking about the artists producer, everybody being self produced, getting lead funding without long term contracts, the rise of streaming and how catalog music is actually exploding and helping a lot of the repertoire owners that own a lot of catalog, the new ticketing and how blockchain can change ticketing, A.I. and music making...

There's so many topics right now, it's going to help us also maybe select some people to do interviews and choose our topics wisely. You're literally selecting 10 companies who could be doing 10 completely different things. The thread is music. So I'm interested, what is the most exciting thing for you. OK, maybe the two most exciting if you can't decide?

Bob Moz [25:45]: One is just like the implication of how we manage media. Like my son's 9. He talks to Alexa non-stop all day. He has no concept of albums. He has no concept of of media brands. He has no concept of playlist thing or groups of songs. His relationships are with Alexa and with the artist or the song name. And he gets to crazy things: he's playing crazy stuff in his room. I'm not sure how he's doing it: whether it's like a combination of what other kids are listening to and word of mouth plus him asking questions and how he navigates it, but he is actually like weirdly discovering things in the voice environment. And there's a whole thread in music right. How we prepare for voice? What's the metadata looks like? What's the tagging look like? How do we read emotions there? We've made a couple of investments this year in companies that are relevant here.

David Weiszfeld [26:35]: You heard about the play some Christmas music story?

Bob Moz [26:40]:  No I was going to say I played a sad song and those kind of questions.

David Weiszfeld [26:45]: So that's funny. I think it's Sony. I think it's Sony. They released a Christmas album that is called some Christmas music because the number one request in Alexa is "Alexa place some Christmas music" and because the album tag is exactly that it would show up. So if you say "play me some heavy metal". You can have a compilation that is called some heavy metal and usually Alexa would push it. I think the Amazon people cut that and they've changed a little bit.

Bob Moz [27:15]:  The window is manipulating that stuff is closing right. That window's over.

David Weiszfeld [27:20]: Yeah, it's like when people were reloading on iTunes the same artists all over again because it was all ranked by date of publication. But I think the way you query Alexa and how if you say "play something to relax me". Does it go for a chill song? Does it go for a chill playlist? Or is it go for a song that has the word relax in it?

Bob Moz [27:37]:  Here's what I like better: in my house there's my voice, my wife's voice, my son's voice, my daughter's voice. We have one Alexa account. We all have different preferences. And so what I'm excited about are the company that we're going to put - not to like help us manipulate that "play some Christmas music" thing -but more like when I say "Alexa play a sad song", I get something out like "Blood and Chocolate". The saddest record ever made and my son says Alexa play a sad song and he gets you know "When will I see you again" right. Then my daughter says "Play me a sad song" and she gets the Abba song because she is in love with that at the moment and my wife gets a different song right. My wife would get Mazzy Star. That world is coming and it's like a totally different relationship with content. I am super excited about that.

David Weiszfeld [28:27]: That's not even device personalization based on who you are with your device that is one device to multiple peoples so voice recognition, context. That's one of the most interesting thing.

Bob Moz [28:39]:  The other thing I'm super into is that I think every kid in the world in the next two or three years will have all the tools they need to become a global pop star.

David Weiszfeld [28:47]: Make music, distribute music, analyze your data...

Bob Moz [28:54]:  Yeah. All of it. From anywhere on the planet: you won’t have to be in New York. You won’t have to be in L.A. You won’t have to be in London. You could be in Ghana and you could be a global superstar. I think it's like two years away.

David Weiszfeld [29:05]: Yeah and it's starting. You can see things bubbling up. The huge U.S. Label signing a lot of non U.S., non UK act. What the majors called non UK/ non US is becoming bigger than UK/US.

Bob Moz [29:17]:  The entire market. By thesis, we invest 50 percent of our capital every year outside the United States because we think that's where most of the growth and the opportunity lies. Across TechStars we have sort of a thesis and a statement that we push ourselves on all the time, which is talent is distributed evenly: opportunity is not. And I think we're in a world where opportunity is starting to be more and more and more evenly distributed and music and media creation and that sort of Entertainment is one of the first places where we'll actually realize it. I mean you can see it already right. The Colombians destroyed the music streaming charts over the last two years. They've just totally dominated: the hottest video in the world was in Colombia. I Think that's not an outlier, that's a sign of things to come. It's the rise of the rest. It's coming.

David Weiszfeld [30:10]: There are amazing companies who are completely full remote now. That was very hard before. It kind of circles back to you at 19. Not being in L.A. Building websites remotely was harder. Today you can hire an amazing designer and work remote. I was talking to a couple of tech behind totally. One is in Spain and I don't really care or mind that he's in Spain, I want to hire the best. That will apply little by little to music. You can have for the management client that we still have. Our digital strategy is in L.A. and we are based out of Paris and that really works just fine.

Bob Moz [30:47]: Yeah you're right. You're good talk show hosts like frame that full circle right.

David Weiszfeld [30:52]: You did. I didn't.

Bob Moz [30:56]:  You noticed. I just did it accidentally. That was good. That's the thing.

David Weiszfeld [30:59]: Well thank you Bob! Last question. It's I think 6:50 pm right now in L.A. What are you gonna do after this interview?

Bob Moz [31:06]: I'm going to close my laptop lid. I'm gonna run up my laptop in my bag. Get in my car. Sit in traffic and have dinner with a portfolio founder.

David Weiszfeld [31:15]: That sounds cool. Well thanks for your time man. Really Thanks so lot

Bob Moz [31:20]: Dude, any time: this is a cool idea! I hope you get a whole bunch of really smart and good people in here. I'm very honored to be the first person.