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I’ve always loved music. Not casually, not passively – obsessively. The kind of love where you don’t just listen, you follow. You show up. You tell other people about it because it feels too important to keep to yourself.
The irony is, I have no musical talent of my own. I can’t sing, I can’t play an instrument, and I’m definitely not meant for the stage. But even early on, I knew I didn’t need to be the one creating music to be part of it. I wanted to support the people who did. I wanted to help great music find its audience.
That instinct has shaped almost every decision I’ve made since.
Over time, I’ve realized I operate with a few internal mottos. The one I come back to most is simple: seek discomfort. It sounds counterintuitive, but I’ve learned that discomfort is usually a signal – not that something is wrong, but that something is changing. You’re in the gray zone, where you don’t quite have the skill yet, where you’re figuring it out in real-time. That’s where growth actually happens.
I’ve tried to build my career (and eventually Thematic) with that mindset. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary.
Showing Up Before You’re Ready
Long before Thematic existed, I was already trying to find my way into the music world, however I could. In high school and college, I joined street teams for artists I loved. I wasn’t thinking strategically about it – I just wanted to be involved, to help spread the word.
That same instinct led me to cold email the press department at Geffen Records. Looking back, I had no real reason to believe it would work. But it did. That email turned into an internship, and suddenly I had a window into how major labels actually operate.
At the same time, I was also working with independent artists I admired. Those experiences gave me a dual perspective: the scale and structure of the major label system, and the scrappiness and vulnerability of independent creators trying to build something from the ground up.
Somewhere in that mix, I connected with Marc Schrobilgen. At the time, he and his business partner Peter Barker were running Spin Move Records, working with emerging artists. One of them was Amy Kuney (now known as AMES), whom I had seen perform live.
That connection changed everything.
I joined the project as she was preparing to release her first record, and it became a crash course in how music actually moved through the world at the time. This was the late 2000s – digital distribution was still limited, and YouTube was barely considered a serious promotional channel. But we leaned into it anyway.
A few years later, Marc and I doubled down on YouTube, building out the network side of Spin Move into a boutique MCN. We worked with a curated mix of independent artists, creators, dancers, and lifestyle talent. It wasn’t obvious at the time, but we were starting to see something shift: creators were becoming just as influential as traditional distribution channels.
And that shift came with new problems no one had fully solved.
When the Problem Becomes Personal
We started working with Michelle Phan in 2008, when she was just beginning to emerge as a defining voice on YouTube. Over the years, we collaborated on a range of projects, including helping build her all-women lifestyle network during Google’s early push into original content.
Then, in 2015, something major happened. Michelle found herself in the middle of a copyright infringement lawsuit over music used in her early videos. It was eventually settled, but the impact was much bigger than the outcome. It exposed a fundamental flaw in the system: creators didn’t have a clear, safe way to use music, and artists weren’t consistently benefiting from the exposure. It stopped being theoretical. It became personal.
That moment clarified something for all of us. If creators and artists were both essential to this ecosystem, why was the system working against them?
Thematic was our answer to that question. When we launched in 2018, the idea was intentionally simple: creators get free, licensed access to high-quality music, and artists get meaningful promotion through creator content. No hidden tradeoffs. No gray areas.
But underneath that simplicity was something deeper. We were building from a creator-first, artist-first perspective – not in a performative way, but in a very literal one. We spent time listening, testing, iterating alongside the people we were building for.
That’s something I’ve always felt personally responsible for protecting.
Scaling Without Losing Trust
As Thematic grew, the challenges became less about what we were building and more about how we could continue to deliver on that trust at scale.
And this is where seeking discomfort showed up again.
At one point, we had hundreds of thousands of creators across the globe and a rapidly growing base of artists. What had once been manageable manually (things like YouTube royalty payouts) started to break down under the weight of scale.
We hit a real friction point. Paying artists individually, across countries, currencies, and thresholds, wasn’t just inefficient – it risked undermining the very trust we had worked so hard to build.
The answer was automation.
By moving to an automated payout system and implementing a self-service artist portal, we removed a huge operational burden from our team. But more importantly, we improved the experience for our artists. They could get paid faster, in ways that worked for them, with more transparency and control.
That shift mattered. Not because it made us more efficient (though it did) but because it reinforced something fundamental: doing right by artists isn’t just about intention. It’s about execution. And increasingly, technology and AI have become essential to that execution.
Technology that Pushes What’s Possible
Personally, I’ve leaned into AI tools in my own workflow – especially for tasks that don’t require deep creative thinking but still take time. It’s changed the way I operate. Faster iteration, quicker feedback loops, more space to focus on the work that actually matters.
On the product side, we’ve applied that same thinking.
Creators don’t want friction. They’re trying to make something, share it, connect with their audience. If we can make it easier for them to find the right music, quickly and intuitively, that has a real impact.
So we’ve built AI-powered recommendation systems to help surface the right tracks at the right time. Music is at the heart of the creative process, and the better we can support that moment, the better the outcome.
That’s how I think about technology at Thematic. Not as a replacement for human creativity, but as a way to unlock more of it.
What We Built Was Bigger than We Planned
When we started Thematic, we were focused on solving a specific problem: music clearance. But over time, something else emerged – something we didn’t plan for.
Because we stayed so close to our community, we started to see something bigger take shape through the product. Artists collaborating with each other. Creators showing up to live shows. Relationships forming that extended beyond our original roadmap.
It became clear that what we had built wasn’t just a transactional system. It was a community.
That realization changed our trajectory. It pushed us to think beyond tools and into experiences – how we could help creators and artists not just coexist, but actively support each other.
Today, Thematic includes over a million creators and thousands of independent artists, with millions of song placements. But the numbers aren’t the story. The story is the people behind them.
Choosing Discomfort, Again and Again
Seeking discomfort isn’t something I’ve confined to work. It shows up in my personal life too – whether that’s Spartan races, backpacking trips, or pushing myself into situations that force me to rethink my own limits.
It’s never easy. It’s not supposed to be. But it’s always worth it. Because on the other side of that discomfort is usually clarity. Growth. A better understanding of what you’re actually capable of.
Right now, everything is accelerating. Technology, AI, the creator economy – it can feel overwhelming if you look at it all at once. But I find it energizing. There’s an opportunity here to raise the standard. To make better tools, create more access, and build systems that actually work for the people using them.
Those who lean into this moment thoughtfully – the ones willing to stay in that uncomfortable, in-between space – are the ones who will shape what comes next.
That’s where I want to be building. And more importantly, it’s where I want to keep showing up for the community that trusted us to begin with.
