Last Spring, the Amsterdam Dance Event and venture capital firm Antler asked the industry for their forward-thinking ideas in music tech. This week, two winning concepts were crowned, with each receiving six figures of investment.
The ADE & Antler Startup Competition received more than 100 entries, but after a rigorous interview and pitch process, the pool was ultimately narrowed down to just a handful of finalists who made their final pitch at Felix Meritis during ADE.
Un:hurd is an artist-facing platform which helps creators better leverage their data and promotional insights through the help of artificial intelligence. The company was founded in 2019 by Alex Brees.
The second winner, SYNKii, developed a clear use case as a result of the pandemic. Calling itself “the professional alternative to Zoom for online music lessons” the educational platform seeks to revolutionize the way musicians train and learn instruments in a remote environment. The online platform was created in 2020 by cofounders Boram Choi and Lawrence Jenner.
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Youri Doeleman, Partner at Antler, shared his key takeaways from the competition.
“The music and entertainment industry is undergoing a prolonged wave of disruption due to the opportunities provided by new technologies,” Doeleman said in a press release shared with EDM.com. “This competition has been a unique opportunity for us to deep dive into the current state of technology in this market and what is coming next, in partnership with a top industry player like the Amsterdam Dance Event.”
“While in the applicants we saw some startups with technologies like NFT and Web3, from the finalists you can see that AI is currently leading the pack as the most promising technology across the music tech scene,” he continued. “All of today’s finalists are driving leaps forward in their respective domains.”
Both Un:hurd and SYNKii will receive an investment of €100,000 for winning the competition.
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