Symphony
Setting the Scene
In the next decade there will be half a billion artists, creators, and brands competing for attention on social platforms to grow and monetize their audience.
Current marketing tools aren't built for today’s multi-platform online businesses and creators due to:
A lack of integration across various social and digital channels that leads to fragmented marketing data.
Inadequate functionality to execute campaigns, leaving creators and businesses to navigate marketing on their own.
This week’s company provides an all-in-one solution that tracks marketing efforts and automates campaigns for artists, brands, and creators.
In a Sentence
Symphony is an all-in-one platform designed for users to track marketing efforts across various channels and grow their businesses.
Users: The company currently targets musicians and plans to expand to serve creators, newsletter authors, podcasters, startups, and e-commerce platforms.
Track: The platform provides a unified dashboard for tracking marketing performance and analytics across social channels.
Grow: Symphony enhances sales with integrated marketing tools and AI-enhanced ad campaigns, alongside custom landing pages designed for conversion.
Bulleted Version:
- Think of Symphony as a comprehensive marketing agency condensed into a single platform, offering everything from AI-driven analytics to targeted ad campaigns, tailored for today’s digital creator.
The Basics
- Headquarters: New York City & Los Angeles
- Employee Count: 4
- Investors:
21 Savage, GoldHouse Ventures, Spice Capital, Ethiopia Habtemariam, LVRN, Guin, 24kGoldn
- Funding amount: $785k
- Business model: $20 subscription with a future model offering an enterprise plan and taking a percentage of marketing spend
- Early traction: $1m GMV processed, 30% MoM revenue growth, 30k users and 1.3k paid users, used by prominent artists like 21 Savage, BTS, and Summer Walker
Due Dilligence
WHAT WE LIKE
🌎 Market: As half a billion creators aim to target 4.2 billion social media users over the next decade, Symphony's integrated marketing platform becomes crucial for those aiming to stand out and monetize.
This is especially prevalent as social media marketing continues to develop as a pay-to-play model.
✔️ Simplifying marketing: Symphony aims to make marketing accessible for creators, which is especially beneficial for artists who may find the business landscape complex and distracting from creative processes.
📊 Comprehensive Analytics: Symphony provides unparalleled insights by aggregating data across platforms, offering creators and businesses a deep dive into their audience's behavior and campaign performance, a crucial edge in today's fragmented digital ecosystem.
POTENTIAL RISKS
🏁 Competition: While Symphony is differentiated with its all-encompassing platform, navigating a crowded digital marketing space with established players remains a challenge.
📢 Market adoption: Convincing users accustomed to specialized tools to switch to an all-in-one platform may require significant marketing and user education efforts.
↔️ Expansion versatility: As Symphony broadens its reach beyond the music industry to creators and e-commerce, aligning product capabilities with diverse markets will be essential for capturing a larger segment of the digital marketing sphere.
Founder Profile
Megh Vakharia, CEO: Previously founded Integral Studio, a marketing agency working with clients like SZA, Kyler Murray, and Burna Boy.
Chuka Chase, CBO: Co-founded Integral Studio, led creative direction for Mac Miller + Childish Gambino, and also worked at Techstars.
Comps
Otis: Backed by Intuit Prosperity Accelerator, Gaingels, Google for Startups Black Founders Fund, and others.
Un:hurd: Backed by Best Nights VC and other angels.
Laylo: Backed by Y Combinator, Sony Music, Moment Ventures, Third Prime and others.
Komi: Backed by Antler, Sony Music, Live Nation, RTP Global, and more.
Why Symphony
Symphony’s platform combines programmatic ads, first-party data, and link-in-bio features, so it’s no surprise this company is striking the right chord with top-tier musicians.