The Best Music Tech Founders Might Not Come From Music

Svitlana Pozniakova studied economics in Ukraine, moved to Norway for a finance master's, and had zero music industry experience when she co-founded Nexro. Two years later, she's building an AI platform that predicts artist careers -- with conversations going at Sony and Universal.

Her outsider perspective isn't a weakness. It's the reason she saw what insiders missed.

Follow the Energy, Not the Plan

Nexro started as a blockchain-based royalty exchange. Every meeting they took, people ignored the exchange and zeroed in on one small feature: a prediction model that estimated future song value based on social data and streaming.

"After a while, 95% of our meetings were about that small thing we didn't really think about."

They killed the royalty exchange and went all-in on prediction. The pivot wasn't painful -- it was obvious. The lesson: listen to what people react to, not what you planned.

The Outsider Advantage

No music industry baggage meant Svitlana could see problems that veterans had normalized. Her diagnosis is sharp: "It's 2023. We're working on AI. But we still can't understand how to use Excel to figure out how much any artist or producer owns. That's insane to me."

What she brought instead: startup rigor from incubators, plus a finance lens that makes her fluent in investor language. Outsider clarity plus business fundamentals is rare in music tech.

Pitching in a Tough Market

Her practical advice for anyone raising money:

Simplify ruthlessly. Nexro's early pitches spent half the time explaining the music industry. Investors glazed over. The breakthrough came when they distilled the problem to something anyone could grasp in seconds.

Never make investors feel stupid. Educate them, don't overwhelm them.

Lean is an advantage. European founders learn to spend on what matters, not on parties or vanity metrics. Less capital means sharper decisions.

Key Takeaways

• Listen to what people react to, not what you planned. Let the market tell you what matters.
• Outsider perspectives find insider blind spots. Fresh eyes are an asset, not a handicap.
• Simplify your pitch until it hurts. If investors need a crash course to understand your problem, you haven't simplified enough.