Cipher

Cornell University, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management

Industry: Media, Tech, Music

MBA Founding Student Name(s): Burke Reimann, Faris Bseiso

These students are from the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management and the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program at Cornell Tech, Roosevelt Island, NYC. Both programs come under the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

Brief Description of Solution: Cipher is a marketplace for viral music, and the only legal source of trending sounds for social media. In this era of social media – where over 200 million brands use TikTok, Reels, and Shorts – these platforms have become music-first, and marketing is rapidly shifting to a social-first approach. Their algorithms are driven by trendy songs, rather than trendy creators. However, brands don’t have access to these tracks and have been getting sued for nine-figure sums for using them without permission.

Due to our unique licensing model, we are the sole supplier of the real music, now available to the quarter of a billion brands on social media. Through pre-cleared and affordable licensing – a model gaining rapid approval by the music industry – we democratize access to music and help businesses go viral and stay relevant on all platforms.

Funding Dollars: $395,000

What led you to launch this venture? We’ve been working to start a company since last Fall. Faris and Burke were actively discussing potential ideas in the music-tech space after Burke approached Faris with an initial idea related to tracking provenance and attribution in AI-generated music. In the Fall ’23, Cornell’s Startup Studio teaming began, and Faris and Burke found a technical member, Lucas, who shared the passion for creative solutions in creative industries. We met several times to discuss our timelines, workload expectations, and drive to win the Cornell Startup Awards. The three of us collectively saw the potential in our group, and began to work early that Fall, ahead of the start of the actual Spring course on customer discovery and market research. This early work allowed the team to pivot early and start on a strong foot ahead of the Startup Awards.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with venture? It was onboarding some of the biggest record labels around the world. We are working with marketers in all industries, from prestigious agencies to F&B conglomerates, along with professional sports teams from the big four leagues in the US.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you solve it? There is an ironic balance between founders needing to have great experience or origins from the problem space they are diving into and being removed from the industry so that they can see the problem from an objective perspective. The most significant challenge we’ve faced is convincing investors that we are the right team for this venture, given that we’re still young and don’t have a lot of music industry experience. In early meetings with investors, our outsider status felt like a big risk and made some associates reluctant to pull the trigger. However, the relationships that we’ve built over the last few months, and the pilot contracts that we’ve signed, have completely changed the conversation. Now, investors don’t ask any questions about our backgrounds, and are solely concentrated on our traction, how fast we can launch, and when we’ll be able to reach scale.

How has your MBA program helped you further this startup venture? The Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program, based at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in NYC, was uniquely helpful to us because of its flagship Startup Studio course. The sessions were led by former founders and current VCs, which made the lessons we learned extremely practical and specific to our work. The months we spent doing mandatory customer discovery interviews, ideating, and building MVPs gave us a tremendous head start with feedback that most founders could only dream of. Our earliest pilot customers were companies we interviewed as students – our homework became our network. There’s nothing that can prepare you to successfully be a founder other than simply doing it, and the Startup Studio gave us the chance to build products and develop relationships in a structured environment that left us fully prepared after winning Cornell’s startup award.

What founder or entrepreneur inspired you to start your own entrepreneurial journey? How did he or she prove motivational to you?  Khaled Kteily, the founder and CEO of Legacy (YC S19), was incredibly inspirational to our entrepreneurial journey. Faris met Khaled when he was only just beginning the Startup Studio course, and the notion of being an entrepreneur seemed like a far-fetched idea for someone from the Middle East. However, learning about Khaled’s story, and seeing a founder with a similar background achieve such great success, made the startup path feel like a real possibility. The mentorship Khaled’s offered the team in the months since has been more than invaluable. We can confidently say that we’ve avoided many of the early pitfalls that startups can face thanks to the lessons he learned on his journey.

Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? Outside of the Startup Studio, Entrepreneurial Finance was the most impactful class. This class was taught by a Wall Street veteran who worked predominantly in startup financing. The main takeaways from this class were how to communicate effectively in the world of early-stage investing. Sure, there are terms and concepts that every founder must know and can learn, and we did just that. However, how to communicate a vision and show confidence in financial negotiations is hard to teach effectively – and that was the forefront of the class.

What professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? Mukti Khaire, the Faculty Director of the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA, was a pivotal player in the early stages of our venture. Especially in the early days, it’s easy for founders to lose the scope of their work and Mukti helped us stay on track by asking us the right questions, making us look inward and stay focused. She provided constant feedback and advice on our milestones and was a genuine supporter of our vision. As an instructor for the intensive Media & Culture course, she also gave us a unique look into the business of media and creative industries, a field that is often overlooked in business schools.

How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Being based in New York City has allowed us to conduct market research and talk to our customers, most of the time in person. There aren’t many cities that have the pool of industries, demographics, and perspectives that a startup can tap into. From diversity-focused ad agencies to the world’s major music labels and production companies, we’ve been able to learn from the best of every vertical we’re tackling. This doesn’t only apply to customers too. Throughout the program, Burke conducted weekly Tech Talks with industry leaders and founders. Countless speakers were more than willing to volunteer their time and give back to aspiring founders. Many think New York City is hyper-competitive, but we’ve found the people here to be extremely supportive and willing to help the ambitious.

What is your long-term goal with your startup? Our long-term goal is to make Cipher the infrastructure for all licensing deals in the music and media industries.

Looking back, what is the biggest lesson you wished you’d known before launching and scaling your venture? In startups, you are either building something or selling it. As the non-technical founders in the team, we wish we had taken advantage of the Business Development courses available at Cornell Tech. However, we’ve been learning all the tips and tricks in sales along the way and are mastering the art of closing deals.

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