"Well that's great… but, you can't really make any money out of it".

‍

These were the words of my father when I told him I'm thinking about leaving my career as an accountant in order to follow my passion for music. I clearly remember this moment - it triggered something in me:

‍

It was the beginning of 2014, I was 30, after 6 years of military service in the Israeli Navy and after completing 4 years of bachelor’s degree in Accounting & Business Administration. At that time, I was about a year from completing my internship and it was pretty clear to me that I don't want to engage with numbers all my life. I wanted to create something.

At that time, music was my getaway from the numbers. I would literally come home from the office every night, toss my bag on the couch, and start playing my guitar for hours. I was writing songs and recording them with friends over the weekends - I loved it. 

Back then, I was working at PwC and I clearly remember how I was sitting everyday in a room full of people, numbers and endless excel spreadsheets that were open in every screen. I did realize the economic role we were playing in the financial ecosystem, but just couldn’t see how all of this is going to bring any meaning into my life. 

‍

‍

With each passing day I felt more and more that my artistic creative side was pretty much melting away; on the one hand, I wanted to acquire financial knowledge in order to solve big problems in the evolving technological-business world, but on the other, music has been such a significant part of my life and I wanted it to be more than just a hobby. 

Throughout almost all of my adult life, it always felt like I had to choose between the business world and the music; between the money and the art; between the mind and the heart; it felt like I can only have one of them, and if I would choose to follow the creative artistic path I would constantly have to struggle financially. 

‍

Well...as you can probably imagine, I didn’t start a career as a musician nor have I continued to work as an accountant after this conversation with my dad, but I did realize how the paths of my life intersect and merge into one way; a way that combines these two opposite poles and creates something new. I wanted to build great products that will positively change the financial future of individuals and businesses, and given my passion for music I decided to start with creating a new way for content creators to monetize and distribute their content. I realized that the value of inspiration and knowledge is very much underrated and extremely underpaid; I decided to change that. 

‍

Back in those days, the Internet was already an integral part of consuming and distributing content; Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Apple Music, Spotify and many other platforms have sprung up everywhere and we were basically surrounded by an ocean of content that was available everywhere and just getting wider and deeper every day. As much as digital content was becoming increasingly accessible and easily distributed, the ability to monetize it was only possible by generating huge traction and attracting a lot of traffic around it. The reason for this is the fact that it was (and still) mainly monetized by advertisements and through revenue share models of subscription-based services; uploading content online without marketing it, was (and still is) like throwing a bottled message into the ocean and hoping someone would see it. 

‍

When it comes to marketing, I’ve always had a huge problem; I have never felt comfortable marketing myself by sharing content through social media, and basically It always felt like entering a vicious cycle in which I need a lot of money in order to generate content traction but also need a lot of traction in order to make money.

I believed that the only way to break this vicious cycle is by creating a direct-economic connection between the people who produce the content and the people who consume it; a way for content creators to generate income directly from the people who consume their content. Not a way in which consumers support creators, but an economic incentive that revolves around the value consumers can generate from content.

‍

Well, what's that value? What is the product? How to create this connection?

So many open questions to which I didn't know the answers, but I started.