Company: Melon
Headcount: 50
Stage: Seed
Tell us your story
I’ve always been a (probably “over”) believer in myself, but more so in the talented people that I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by. The best ideas for any of the successful businesses that I’ve been a part of have always come from collaboration and partnership. Once I understand it and can see the vision, then I can lock in and start building, operating and creating momentum.
I’ve spent the majority of my career in the music industry, where I’ve sat at the intersection of creativity and culture. I’ve worked closely with talent, built teams and have scaled opportunities across content and IP, partnerships, marketing and distribution.
My entrepreneurial journey started off working at Jamaican record label VP Records and from there I worked at BMG Music Publishing in the A&R dept. I had attended Berklee School Of Music as a bass player (I finished college at NYU) where I played with some incredible musicians, some of which became lifelong friends. I played in a reggae band called John Brown’s Body for years, but it became clear that I was probably better off on the business side of things!
When I was first starting out, my former band mate’s band, American Hi-Fi became the first group that I ever managed, and we came out of the gates with a gold album. That led to me co-founding CRUSH Management with Jonathan Daniel, a brilliant manager who had a unique and fresh perspective on how managers should collaborate with talent. Through our friend Pablo Mathiason, I signed Fall Out Boy: we immersed ourselves in the emerging emo movement, well before those artists were getting signed to major labels. CRUSH is now one of the biggest artist management companies in the world, with a roster that includes Green Day, Miley Cyrus, Panic At the Disco, Lorde and SIA.
Following CRUSH, I co-founded Complete Control Management with luminaries in the dance music world. We signed Tiësto for management and built a significant team around him. He was already the biggest DJ in the world at the time, but both Tiësto and the soon to explode EDM movement were still generally unknown by the mainstream, so there was tremendous opportunity for growth. Over the course of our five plus years of managing him, his cover of Billboard Magazine summed up much of the work we had done together: “The only arena DJ in the world”.
Working across many high-level brand partnerships, we realized that what we were doing was more than management: we were functioning as a creative agency too. We went and built a dedicated business in that space, Recreation Worldwide, which focused on bringing brands together with music artists and their communities. Our first clients were Samsung, Adidas Originals and Red Bull. For the latter, we created a massive partnership with Skrillex to help fund his production of his spaceship stage design for Coachella and made a film about it.
A media platform called THUMP followed, as a joint venture with VICE Media. It was a tremendous learning experience to be in the room with them around the time they were the hottest media company in the world. We saw their valuation skyrocket from $250M to over $4B in the course of a couple years and in 2015, when they acquired us.
Following VICE, my colleague Sean Miyashiro started a music and media platform celebrating global Asian culture, with a focus on raw talent from the underground. I immediately jumped in and we started building what was to become 88rising. Sean is truly a creative genius and I just tried to execute his vision as best as possible. Over the next six years, we built the company up to be one of the most influential culture companies in the world, with a powerful stable of artists, global festivals, film & TV properties, a fashion line and a brand agency.
It was really the pandemic that inspired my pivot into the Metaverse. I spent a lot of time with my kids (two boys, ages 9 and 12), committing myself to doing whatever they were into. Much of that time was spent playing video games. They turned me on to Minecraft, Fortnite, Animal Crossing and Discord for communication, and Roblox. They are all basically gamified social platforms, with different communities and functionality. I was blown away by the connectivity that it was providing for my kids and their friends at a time when they couldn’t be together physically. In parallel, I started to get interested in web3 and what was happening in that space.
Roblox grabbed my attention the most, with a massive community and opportunity for growth. At the time, there were hardly any recognizable IP or brands on the platform, no music experiences and not a lot of scaled studios producing content. I became increasingly interested in the potential of starting a professional development studio that would focus on building original IP game experiences, bringing everything that I had worked on previously into the space, from brands, to music artists, film & TV properties, celebrities, etc. I reached out to Roblox directly to learn more and was put in touch with a development studio called MELON, who coincidentally was producing Roblox’s first major music event with an artist on Atlantic Records. I tracked down the founder, Devon Thome, a twenty-four year-old metaverse native with amazing ideas and a tight guerrilla crew. We hit it off and we rebooted the company at the top of 2021.
Since then, there has been so much growth in the space and the MELON team has expanded from eight to about fifty. We have partnerships with some of the largest global top tier brands including the NFL, Chipotle, Mattel, Pacsun, Clarks and have been leaders in bringing major music experiences to the platform with SONY Music, Warner Music Group, BMG and a number of indie labels. The agency side of our business has become a siloed profit center, allowing us to sit in the laboratory developing our first round of original IP games which release early next year. Music remains a core tenet at our company and we’re developing some ground-breaking partnerships with artists.
The Roblox development community is filled with massive talent and thrives on collaboration. We’re leaning into that UGC developer community by way of partnerships, commissioning original works and acquisitions. This model will allow MELON to scale rapidly and build a large library of original IP that has the potential both to be successful on Roblox, as well as scale vertically into animated content series, physical goods and cross into other Metaverse and gaming platforms. We’re bullish on developing ways in which we can port audiences into the real world to further their experiences and engagement.
We’re learning everyday and this space is truly the Wild West. It takes a lot of innovation and experimentation to get the formula right creating in the Metaverse. It’s a blank canvas and truly a space where if you can think it up, it can probably be built. It really is an exciting time to be building in this space.
Tell us a story that has really resonated with you
We had the honour of working with Manuel and Patricia Oliver, who lost their son Joaquin “Guac” in the Parkland Shooting. They have dedicated their lives to Change The Ref, a movement to change laws on gun safety and are truly an inspiration. They have the spirit to continue living life to the fullest, despite coping with unimaginable loss. Every year they throw a block party to celebrate Joaquin’s birthday and earlier this year, they came to us with the idea of creating the party in Roblox. We spent months collaborating on an experience that included street artist Shepard Fairey and rapper Denzel Curry, which resulted in nearly ten million visits. They also had asked us to create an avatar of “Guac” to host the party so that young people from all over the world could meet him, which was such a powerful moment. As a parent, I couldn’t imagine the strength that they have to continue to spread positivity and joy.
What can't you stop thinking about?
I just came back from a trip to Iceland. The entire country’s population is around 370,000. It’s so sparsely populated, and has extreme natural elements and a brutal weather system. It also has the most dramatic scenery, glaciers, volcanos, waterfalls and a reliance on the ocean as a natural resource.
It’s a slow country, remote and isolated: both as a country and as a way of life, yet still very much living in modern times.
Iceland makes me think a lot about what life would be like living in solitude. In that house out in the country, next to a waterfall, raising a bunch of sheep. How does that type of surrounding affect your mindset, creativity and outlook?
Iceland seems like an amazing place to go for six months and write a brooding novel (or video game). But I’m not sure I could handle the long, dark winter.
It definitely made me pause and think about how we’re are able to reach all corners of the world through the work we are doing.
If I could tell you just one thing...
Community is everything. Foster relationships, from your childhood to your latest encounters. It provides a tremendous source of happiness, support, mental stimulation and as a potential source for new opportunities and ideas.
A little space for shout-outs
I’ve always loved mentoring people and have gotten the most joy and reward from the people who I’ve hired who have allowed me to get to know them and impart whatever knowledge and skill-sets that I have to offer. In turn, they have supported me tremendously and I’ve learned and grown with them. It’s been amazing to see so many young people blossom into becoming leaders, managers, executives and entrepreneurs in their own right.
They know who they are and I have big love for them!
If you could get a warm intro to anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
I mean anyone…and this is a start-up / venture blog?
I guess I’d take Sir Richard Branson and request that the meeting happens on his private island (assuming you can arrange?).
If not, I really like the leaders who are investing in culture such as Aryeh Bourkoff at Liontree, Alexis Ohanian at 776 and Rich Kleiman at Boardroom.
If I can’t meet them, how about Rafael Nadal? I love tennis and his spirit is beyond…