Noah Dinkin

Bio:

Having worked in radio, record labels, and artist management, Noah has over ten years experience seeing the insanity of the music industry firsthand, yet still has the worst music taste of anyone you know. A few years ago, Noah co-founded FanBridge, which has since grown into the premiere Fan Relationship Management platform with over 100 million fans under management, with clients ranging to indie bands to international superstars. FanBridge helps influencers grow their fan audience, engage that audience via email/mobile/social, and then monetize those fans in a smart way. Noah somehow graduated from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, and has a secret mission of getting people out of boring corporate jobs and into startups.

• Title: Co-Founder and President, FanBridge
• Age: 26
• Location: Chelsea, Stuyvesant Town
• Contact: @imnoah

Okay we want to know how bad your music taste is. Who do you listen to?

Haha. I'll plead the fifth on this one. Let's just say I grew up listening to Z100 more hours than not, and prefer great songs over favorite artists (to me, it doesn't really matter who the artist is if it is a great song).

In your interview with The Music Void, you mention being very proactive about talking to your clients. Who are some of the major artists you partner with and what’s it like working with them?

Our music clients range from someone just starting out to international superstars.  Some of the well-known ones include John Legend, Imogen Heap, Lady Gaga, Widespread Panic, Lil Jon, and many more.  With the artists, the bigger they are, the more we also work with the team around them (labels, management, digital marketers, etc), though it isn't unheard of for a superstar to be involved personally as well.  I won't say things said by specific clients, but we are constantly in dialog with current and potential clients (whether it is the artist themselves or people around them) to hear what ideas they have, share ideas we are thinking about, and also sharing best practices knowledge about things we can see at a meta level across many clients.  The music industry has come a long way in learning about the value of Fan Relationship Management (FRM) in the last few years, and given the unique position we sit in (overseeing many different strategies plus tons of data and results), we continually try to push things forward by acting as a hub of innovation and knowledge for our clients.

One specific example is Imogen Heap. She has actually been a client since the second week we ever existed as a company, and she has always been one of the first to use technology to connect with her fans. With the rise of her solo career over the last few years, you can see that she is reaping the rewards of that focus.

What’s your best strategy for getting people out of “boring corporate jobs” and into startups?

Usually my strategy revolves around a few key tools:

• Talking with people about their idea (everyone has had an idea at some point) and distilling it down to the simplest version they could start with, and then figuring out how to help them get what they need to start that v1
• Pointing them to blogs written by entrepreneurs, investors, and people around the ecosystem to help get them into the right mindset
• Introducing them to friends in the community who can speak from experience about their journey (especially if they are coming from a
• similar work background)
• If someone doesn't want to start something, but rather join a startup team, I try to point them towards companies that might be a good fit, as well as sites where they can look at startups in different areas that might be interesting

It is a really cool moment to see people go from "yeah I had this idea but there's no way I could do it" to the point where they've done a 180 and are now passionate about making it happen.  It might take a little while, but you can definitely tell when the switch gets flipped.