In a world where more than 100,000 songs are uploaded to streaming platforms each day, New Orleans tech entrepreneurs Brent Craige, Marlon Butler and Donovan William founded JammAround to help music makers find an audience.
JammAround’s product, called MusicMax.ai, is an AI-powered virtual music manager and personal assistant that can give feedback on songs, suggest the best gear to buy and come up with album titles. Craige said it’s like having a “manager in your pocket.”
It went live four months ago and has 5,000 users. Craige used the tool himself to help release a hybrid jazz and bounce music album last week under a pseudonym.
“I’m trending on the Bahamas jazz charts,” he said. “I used MusicMax to help come up with the name, the track list and marketing strategies.”
JammAround successfully obtained funding in recent years, winning an Idea Village pitch competition in 2022 that came with a $400,000 cash prize, and in total securing nearly $900,000 from investors.
Now a new initiative from Greater New Orleans Inc. aims to help more Black-led startups do the same.
On Thursday, the regional economic development agency will host a private celebration of its new program, called Startup Noir NOLA, followed by a public, co-sponsored climate tech pitch competition at The Shop co-working space in the Warehouse District. The public event begins at 6 p.m.
“We want to be conveners for the entire startup ecosystem with an emphasis on Black founders,” said Daphine Barnes, who runs the initiative. “We are committed to providing a space for founders to have access to capital and to know there’s a space for them to launch and scale their ventures in Greater New Orleans.”
Venture funding can be hard to secure for U.S. Black-led businesses, which only received about 1% of more than $200 billion in venture capital funding in 2022, according to FastCompany magazine.
To boost the numbers locally, Startup Noir NOLA will offer meetups, classes, networking sessions and other opportunities for Black founders and funders to gather and share experiences. An HBCU startup internship program is already active. Private equity and venture capital tracks are coming soon.
Jasmine Brown-DeRousselle, GNO Inc.’s chief engagement officer, said the organization also wants to gather data about Black-led startups.
“When we’re able to show the impact and the success of what’s already happening here in a quantitative way, we’ll be able to package and sell that,” she said. “So data is king.”
Brown-DeRousselle cites the recent acquisitions of several New Orleans startups — including the $1.1 billion purchase of research tech company Lucid in 2021 — as inspiration for Startup Noir NOLA’s launch.
“We’ve had several years of record-breaking exits, and we have a number of partners that have been building the startup ecosystem here for some time,” she said. “We also want to make sure that we are growing in a way that is also capturing opportunity for Black, Indigenous and People of Color founders and funders.”
She said the program will emulate similar ones nationwide as it strives to build “capital, customers, and connections.”
High-profile founders in the region have been invited to participate in Thursday’s events. These include Sevetri Wilson Taylor, whose tech startup Resilia announced a $35 million fundraising round in 2022; and Trivia Frazier, whose biotech company Obatala Sciences closed a $3 million round that same year.
At 6 p.m. on Thursday, Wilson Taylor will participate in a “fireside chat” with Dr. Rodney Sampson, who is the founder of Opportunity Hub, an Atlanta-based ecosystem-building platform that is active in New Orleans. The event will be hosted by radio personality Wild Wayne.
Brent Craige said he’ll be there.
“Having platforms is important,” he said. “We have so much talent, but it’s not recognized. It’s important to be able to network with founders and investors.”