benminal

I am an experienced entrepreneur who has grown my online education company to over 70,000 users in 150 countries. In 2016 my business was chosen by Google as a 'Best of British' startup and I attended their prestigious mentorship program at the Google Campus in London. 

As a musician and content creator, I have also grown my personal brand to over 6m views and have partnered with some of the biggest brands in the music industry. I have also released two albums with a DIY self-managed model which reached #1 and #2 respectively in the iTunes UK Rock Charts at launch.

I discovered my passion for the ever-changing creator economy in 2011 when I started making social media content and launched one of the top Indiegogo music crowdfunding campaigns of that year, raising £17,000 from 1,500 backers to fund my band's first tour. I managed this campaign whilst also studying for a BA Hons in Music Business and working professionally as a touring musician.

In 2012 I wrote my dissertation titled "Harnessing the Crowd". This explored the opportunities for musicians and creators to build new business models within the changing landscape of social media, fan-funded communities and the democratisation of digital distribution. 

After I graduated with a BA Hons 1st Class in Music Business, I continued to grow my personal brand as a content creator. I also managed artists in a startup I co-founded called Pocket Management with a focus on the areas I had begun to specialise in and was invited to lecture at universities and run workshops on these subjects.

Seeing a gap in the music education market, I founded Musicisum in 2013. The challenge of scaling from a bootstrapped company launched in a humble home studio to becoming an established brand in the music education market has allowed me to develop a broad set of skills. I am confident in building a business and brand strategy, forging mutually beneficial partnerships, communicating both B2C and B2B, managing projects and budgets, hiring and managing personnel, managing product development across developers, designers and media creators, advertising across paid, owned, and earned media, copywriting, and, at the core of my business, creating engaging and valuable educational content.