From Vinyl to Venture: What Running a Label Taught Me About Launching a Startup

Before I launched Revelator, I spent 20+ years immersed in music—from spinning records on KCRW to running Quango Music Group with Chris Blackwell. We signed artists like Bomb the Bass and Kruder & Dorfmeister, curated music for iconic hotels, and landed film syncs. But the deeper I got, the more I realized I wasn’t just building a label—I was unknowingly training to launch a startup.

Running a label and launching a startup have a lot in common:

• You build from belief. Whether it’s a debut album or a prototype, you’re investing in a vision that hasn’t proven itself yet.
• You develop creative talent—or technical talent—and help them thrive.
• You navigate chaos. Uncertain timelines, shifting markets, fragmented rights or fragmented roadmaps.
• You obsess over ownership. In music, it’s rights and royalties. In startups, it’s equity and IP. Either way, you’re trying to build value from raw material.
• You wear every hat. A&R or UX, licensing or legal, tour logistics or team hiring—you learn to juggle it all.

For me, the turning point came after years of fighting with outdated tools to manage rights, royalties, and data. I had to build a better system. That’s how Revelator was born: a platform designed to empower the independent music economy with infrastructure as powerful as the majors.

Startups and record labels both begin with the search—for sound, for product-market fit, for an audience that truly connects.

And if you’re doing it right, both require you to take the leap before the rest of the world hears what you already know.

When I launched my label, I thought I was entering the music business. Turns out, I was unknowingly founding a startup.

Both roles require you to:

• Spot talent before others do—whether it’s a breakout artist or a product-market opportunity.
• Bet on the unseen—investing time, money, and emotion into something that hasn’t proven itself yet.
• Build teams around belief—producers, engineers, marketers… or devs, designers, and early hires.
• Navigate risk constantly—burn rate or tour budgets, runway or album cycles… the stakes feel personal.
• Tell a story that moves people—raising a seed round or dropping a debut album both require narrative and conviction.

And the real kicker: in both, you're not just selling a product or sound. You're selling a future that doesn't exist yet.