Employee Spotlight: Steve, co-founder and COO
Been with Music Health since 11/2020
Tell us about yourself and your journey to Music Health
I’m Steve, co-founder and COO meaning I’ve been working with Nicc (our CEO) to bring his original vision to life since the beginning and I’m so excited to see how we’ve grown since then.
Music Health is my 4th startup journey and I’m pleased to say the other 3 were successes (2 exits and one still runs today). I’m doing what I can to make sure we deliver on our mission and create an incredible company that makes a significant impact.
What made me go into operations ?
My career path has been a non-linear journey to say the least. I started out as an actor then a touring musician and performer before running a small art festival in Sydney (called Chalk The Walk) while I co-founded my first company called YEAH (Youth Empowerment Against HIV/AIDS) which still runs today as RedAware. But when it came time to pick a career of sorts, I was very deliberate in moving to the media industry with the goal of leading a team. My Dad taught the MBA program at Macquarie University and his main advice for my career was to become the Managing Director of something as quick as possible on the assumption that the skills of operations are universally applicable.
I was trained to lead for the first time at News Limited before diving into online ad sales when many prominent people were suggesting that the internet was just a fad. The training was amazing, the people I worked with have become a life-long network of friends that have gone onto do amazing things and looking back, it was really the big accelerator in my progression to leadership.
During my time at News (and Moshtix within it where I ended up), I recognised that online video would replace TV in time and focused my attention there. That led me to Adconion Media Group where I established a new business unit to commercialise online video that was rebranded a few times (Adconion TV / The Joost Video Network / SmartClip). We had to work it out as we went but the company grew fast and was my first experience in a hyper-growth startup team. I was hooked!
But the Adconion business model was very manual and I could see that emerging technology and the use of data in advertising would relegate that model quickly so I took a big leap of faith to open up Australia as a new market for TubeMogul Inc. (a US technology company that automated video advertising). We grew like crazy and before long I had opened offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore. I was finally a Managing Director with a team of 20+ people that was growing fast. Success at home led to an opportunity to move to New York where we took TubeMogul public on NASDAQ before moving to LA to run the West Coast operation where it was sold to Adobe for $540m USD.
After the acquisition by Adobe, I returned home to follow my passion for music and was appointed Managing Director of Emerging Technology, Media and Content at Universal Music Group before founding Australia’s first startup incubator dedicated to music startups - The AIM iHub. It was during my time at Universal that I met Nicc and we became good friends.
What does your regular day at Music Health look like?
What I love most about my job is that I don’t have a regular day. I’m largely reactive to the needs of my team and our customers on one hand while proactively looking for opportunities on the other. Across each week and quarter I run a cycle of activities such as 1:1 checkins, financial reporting, team meetings, quarterly planning and retrospectives that form some sort of cadence in the madness.
Since we are live in 5 countries, I travel overseas quite regularly to make sure our international teams are being supported and our international clients are feeling the love.
I am constantly trying to find more scalable and automated ways for our team to do things so that the business can run as efficiently as possible.
If you could take one album, and one thing with you on a deserted island, what would it be ?
That’s an impossible question. Where do I begin? I’d probably take the album ‘Further’ by the Chemical Brothers since there’s no way to recreate a sound like that and the album is flawless end to end. The one thing I would take is my guitar since I can play a decent amount of the albums I’d have left behind. Can I take something to play the album on too? Please??
What are you most proud of so far while working at Music Health?
The team we’ve built. Every time I get the opportunity to build a new team, I get excited. There’s no way to know what the culture will be like in the end or who you will hire. It’s kind of like pandora’s box but I love watching it come together and of course I do my best to direct and curate it by hiring consciously and defining our practices with those who are already in the team. But at the end of the day, I can’t dictate it and it really blows my mind to see what is born as we grow. We have the dream team who will continue to do great things!
What do you find most challenging about your role?
Being available to everyone. I’m a do-er which is great in many ways. I roll up my sleeves at every opportunity to help pitch in whether it’s writing copy, onboarding a customer, pitching on a sales call or being there when a team mate is having a hard time. I’m an open book that is available to all. The consequence of this is that I can get pretty slammed from time to time but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
What is your best memory while working at Music Health?
We have this cool tradition of doing an ‘Amazing Race’ at our offsites that is curated by the team for the team. I curated the first one with Tom and while it was a huge amount of walking all over the city while catching ferries (and taxis….shhhh), we all had a crazy amount of fun. I love getting the team away from their day to day and into random situations where they have to problem solve together.
What is your favourite Music Health ‘practice’?
‘Radical Candor’
It sounds simple and easy to do but it’s not. At first everyone is happy to speak their mind, but over time as relationships deepen tongues get tied and the important feedback isn’t surfaced enough. It has to flow 2-way though so while we can all get good at giving the feedback, we also need to be open to receiving it. If we continue to foster this practice, we will operate with openness, transparency and respect.
Lastly, what would you say for someone who is thinking about applying to Music Health?
If you’re on your A-Game and are confident you can contribute meaningfully to the mission then, you should hit us up. The funny thing about startups is that hiring comes in waves. We might land a big client or close some funding and start hiring like crazy. Or we might be in a flat stage consolidating and not be looking. The best thing you can do is open a conversation so we know each other and then when the right time and/or opportunity comes, you’ll be the first person we call. I won’t sugar-coat it - it’s hard work and it’s often very uncertain but it’s incredibly rewarding. If you’re up for a career defining role, we’d love to hear from you.
