Maxwell & Schweighauser

UCLA, Anderson School of Management

Industry: Music/Business Advisory Services

Founding Student Name(s): Matthew Maxwell and Jack Schweighauser, UCLA Anderson MBA Class of 2025

Brief Description of Solution: Maxwell & Schweighauser is a boutique music advisory firm dedicated to helping artists and songwriters uncover and recover missing royalty revenue. The firm combines deep music industry expertise with data-driven royalty analysis to audit catalogs, correct metadata and ensure clients are fully and fairly compensated. With a personal mission at its core, Maxwell & Schweighauser exists to protect the value of creative work and advocate for those who have helped shape the soundtrack of our lives.

Funding Dollars: Happily bootstrapped!

What led you to launch this venture? The company was born from a personal discovery when one of our co-founders realized his own grandfather had been underpaid for his contributions to iconic records — including the Kool & the Gang catalog. That experience revealed a widespread gap in knowledge and access for many families tied to creative legacies.

What has been your biggest accomplishment so far with this venture? Signing our first client! We saw first-hand how we can use our expertise to help an artist on their journey in the music industry. And then it was signing our second and third clients! We’ve received a lot of validation for our work from artists, songwriters, producers and others throughout the music value chain.

What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced in creating your company and how did you meet it? There’s a clear need for our services, but reaching the right clients has been challenging. We’ve leaned heavily on our existing network, while also building new relationships at industry events and conferences. Along the way, we’ve met so many people who resonate with and support our mission. We’ve stayed committed to the belief that consistent outreach and relationship-building will eventually lead us to the right opportunities. Quoting Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”

How has your MBA program helped you further this startup venture?

* Classroom Knowledge: Learning the foundations of core business concepts in accounting and financial decision-making has helped us better understand how to operate and grow the company. Working through numerous startup case studies gave us a realistic look at the successes and pitfalls new ventures face. These examples taught us how to adjust our business model more quickly and stay responsive to what our customers actually need. Also, the classroom gave us time to learn what type of business we are, what type of business we can become and, most important, the type of business we’d be proud of.

* Network: We met a lot of incredibly supportive people while pursuing our MBA because being in Los Angeles has been perfect for our venture. We’ve been able to be part of the on-campus entrepreneurial community and the city’s music community, so the intersection of these worlds has allowed us to grow tremendously.

* Support Beyond Graduation: Classmates with backgrounds in tech and AI have helped us think more strategically about our vision. Anderson professors have continued to offer guidance and connect us with professionals in the startup space, including legal counsel, advisors, and other founders who’ve faced similar challenges. In many ways, we’ve been able to utilize the UCLA community more tactically since graduating because our sole focus is on the venture.

What founder or entrepreneur inspired you to start your own entrepreneurial journey? How did he or she prove motivational to you? We’ve been inspired by a community of founders, some of whom we know personally and others who we’ve witnessed from afar. Both of us have entrepreneurs in our families across sectors like finance and music. Industry titans like Berry Gordy, Niles Rodgers and Master P have always been fascinating studies to watch, particularly in how they brought future visions into present focus in ways that created opportunities for their families and communities at large. We both tend to be inspired by people who blend creativity with strong business judgement. And, honestly, our peers are huge inspirations for us because many of them are fellow entrepreneurs. So we learn from one another continually, exchange best practices and encourage each other along the way.

Which MBA class has been most valuable in building your startup and what was the biggest lesson you gained from it? Business Plan Development — it was taught by the Anderson Strategy Group’s faculty director, Derek Alderton, and the central focus was understanding what is actually mission critical for any venture. The class helped us strip away the nice-to-haves and get very granular with where we fit in the market, what our value add is and what areas of the business have the most potential to scale.

What professor made a significant contribution to your plans and why? Assistant Professor of Strategy Jane Wu provided the launch pad for our business through the Entrepreneurship Venture Initiation course. This was the course that brought us together in the first place and where we discovered our mutual passion not only for music, but for helping songwriters and artists with holistically caring for their catalogs — whether they need royalty audits, metadata correction or even copyright infringement analysis. Throughout the course, we worked together with our team to develop the foundation for our current venture. Beyond graduation, Professor Wu has responded to all our emails, hopped on Zooms, and continued to make herself available as we navigate the adventures of startup life!

How has your local startup ecosystem contributed to your venture’s development and success? Los Angeles provides a unique collection of cultural, entrepreneurial and artistic capital. Given our work in creative intellectual property, it is the connection point for all things entertainment, especially on the financial side. There are constant events throughout the city to connect creatives, which is great for client discovery. At the same time, there are several events for those on the business side to connect, which is helpful for collaborations. We’ve attended formal events such as LA Tech Week and Music Tectonics. However, the fun part of L.A. is that, even when casually going to the grocery store or grabbing a coffee, there’s a chance of building connections quite serendipitously. Last, we believe L.A. is a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem. Many colleagues on the VC side have spoken to the world of opportunity here for startups compared to other, more developed ecosystems, so it’s fun to be part of that.

What is your long-term goal with your startup? We’d like to support as many legacy estate artists, producers and songwriters as possible, domestically and abroad. Our current client list is quite diverse sonically and geographically, so it’s been quite fun to explore the world of music in this way. Given that our work is in catalog management and strategy, we’d like to provide our clients with opportunities to not only discover missing or unpaid royalties, but also to provide new revenue generating opportunities that could revitalize the value of the catalog and foster more connection from their current fanbase, plus new ones. This might look like partial catalog acquisition, administration or even financing.

Also, because royalties in film and TV aren’t too dissimilar from music, we’d love to help those in that space in a similar way for royalty audits, and we’ve had conversations with a few writers already. Ultimately, we want to build long-term relationships with our clients to ensure that future generations receive the compensation and protection they deserve while helping to add new revenue sources for legacy estates that they might not have considered. We deeply value who’s come before us, and we want to ensure our business continues to take care of those who have built the foundation of music we’ve been able to enjoy.

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