We are excited to formally announce the addition of six more advisors to the extended Audius team. The breadth and depth of music industry and business expertise in this group, along with our pre-existing advisors, will be extremely valuable as we build out the Audius platform and continue on our mission to empower artists and creators. We couldn’t be happier to have this team on our side!
Justin Kan is an internet entrepreneur and investor. Justin has founded various companies including: Kiko, the first AJAX web calendar; Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform; Socialcam, a mobile video sharing app (acquired for $60mm by Autodesk in 2012); Twitch, a video game streaming platform (acquired by for $970mm by Amazon in 2014); and Exec, an on-demand home cleaning service (acquired by Handybook in 2014). Justin also served as a Partner at Y Combinator from 2011–2017. During his time there, he impacted over 900 companies and funded more than 130. More recently he has founded Whale, a video Q&A app; and Atrium LTS, building technology to revolutionize the legal industry. He has personally angel invested in over 65 companies, including Zenefits, Cruise, and Wave. Justin graduated from Yale University with a degree in Physics and Philosophy.
Robb McDaniels is a media and technology entrepreneur, investor and current CEO of Beatport. Founded in 2004 as the principal source of music for DJs, Beatport today is the worldwide home of music for DJs, producers, and their fans.In early 2016, McDaniels launched Faction Entertainment, a forward-thinking, technology-enabled management services business with a client list that included Thievery Corporation, Bonnie McKee, Paul Oakenfold, Youngblood Hawke, Jamestown Revival, Vassy, and Phantoms. While serving as Beatport CEO, McDaniels continues to serve as Venture Advisor at a Dubai-based investment company — TechInvest, and Executive Chairman at Faction, which has expanded its presence with the dance & electronic community.Previously, McDaniels was the founder and CEO of INgrooves where, since 2002, he built the company into a full-service distribution and artist services operation. Under his leadership, INgrooves managed North American digital distribution for Universal Music Group, as well as more than 4 million songs for thousands of artists and labels.
A visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist, two-time Grammy-nominated Ash Pournouri began his career by reimagining the role of record labels, publishing, tour booking, and management. What began with the lone mission of creating, managing and building the brand of global superstar Avicii (among other major clients) has led to Ash becoming a pioneer in breaking EDM as a mass movement, and a leader in the boundary-free global music business of the 21st century. Through the companies under the UNLTD portfolio, Ash has creatively crafted artist-first partnerships, founded At Night Studios, an independent creative agency in Stockholm with clients such as Ralph Lauren, Coca-Cola, IKEA and H&M, and co-founded a social media management company building and representing some of Sweden’s biggest media profiles. Since he started his career, he has donated the majority of his personal income to various charities fighting world hunger. In addition to that, in June 2014, Ash expanded into the conference world with Spotify founder Daniel Ek, creating the two-day creative thought-leadership summit Brilliant Minds, as a platform to showcase Sweden, Swedish people and Swedish values to the world.
Josh is a venture partner at Greylock and the VP Product at Robinhood, helping the team build powerful tools to broaden access to our financial system. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Josh spent 15 years in product and engineering roles at leading companies in social, commerce, and media. Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform team at Facebook and led the launch of Facebook Connect. Josh was an early employee at LinkedIn and helped establish early models for user growth and launched v1 of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh also held roles leading product management for Zazzle, and product and engineering for RealJukebox and RealPlayer at RealNetworks.In addition, he is a Venture Partner at Greylock Partners where he represents Greylock on the board of Medium, Houseparty, Discord, and Mammoth Media. He also led investments in SmartThings (acquired by Samsung in 2014), Musical.ly (acquired by Toutiao in 2017) and Jelly (acquired by Pinterest in 2017).
Shamal is a VP of Product Management at Pandora responsible for the Pandora Catalog and the tools offered to Creators and Artists to connect directly with their fans and promote what’s most important to them. He leads the product development of Pandora’s Artist Marketing Platform (AMP) and the Content Systems, which include the ingestion, matching, publishing, self-serve promotion, and payment of Pandora’s content. Shamal Cofounded Fluence, a platform that lets artists, film-makers, brands, and anyone with media promote their content directly to curators and tastemakers for feedback and promotion. Shamal also Cofounded Topspin Media, the leading direct-to-fan platform that helped artists promote and sell to their fans. Topspin was acquired by Beats Music. Prior to his recent companies, Shamal headed up product management at Musicmatch (acquired by Yahoo! Music). He also advises multi-channel sound platform Envelop.us and label, Spatial. Shamal graduated from Northwestern University and received a Masters from Stanford University.
Michael has over 20 years of experience in the music industry with a focus on business development and artist relations. He has also been involved in organizing music festivals and events featuring legendary DJs such as Carl Cox, Fedde LeGrand and more.
