It's kind of like Guitar Hero and your guitar teacher in one. It's a tool that utilizes millions of dollars in technology research and the mind of a classical music scholar: The Rock Prodigy App. This app is aimed at guitar players of all skill levels and teaches future rock prodigies skills by using polyphonic pitch-recognition. It all sounds very technical and boring until you meet the teachers: songs from Metallica, the Grateful Dead and Fall Out Boy. Players get real-time feedback from the app, which allows for teaching without interrupting the playing.
Credits: Harold Lee, Co-Founder, CEO
Harold is the target market for Rock Prodigy. A guitarist of 25 years, he’s studied jazz at Berklee College of Music, classical guitar at UCSB, and has toured professionally as an acoustic guitar artist and punk rock lead guitarist. He currently owns 10 guitars and has spent tens of thousands of dollars on guitar-related music equipment.
Harold’s background includes Marketing Director at Guitar Center, Inc. where he ran a $50 million operating budget. He joined Guitar Center when it had 18 stores and $100 million in revenues, and left at 214 stores and over $1.5 billion in revenues. He has sold to the guitarist market on a day-in, day-out basis since February 1995. In addition, he has achievements in graphic design, sound design, radio copy writing and music composition. He has launched a 30,000-member customer research panel and drove the implementation of a marketing campaign and customer relationship management platform driven by hundreds of millions of rows of transactions data and customer records. He holds a black belt in Krav Maga fighting system, and taught at the Krav Maga National Training Center in West Los Angeles. Harold is the “most obsessed customer” of Rock Prodigy and lead the team to create a commercially successful brand that lays a foundation for continued growth for the next two decades. Harold holds a B.A. in Musicology from UCLA and an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson.
Tyson Butler, Co-Founder, CFO
Tyson’s background includes cross-industry, Fortune 500 experience, specializing in the development and execution of business strategies, financial analyses and operational improvement plans. His experience spans industries such as legal services, manufacturing, banking, credit card services, diversified electronics, medical equipment, health care, telecommunications, and more. He was formerly a Finance Director at O’Melveny & Myers LLP and a Consulting Manager at KPMG Consulting. Tyson holds a B.A. in Accounting and Finance from the University of Arizona and an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson.
Thomas Ringer, Director, Board of Directors.
Tom has operating management experience in small and large companies offering products and/or services. His experience includes Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Recognition Equipment Inc. (NYSE), President and Chief Executive Officer of The TRW-Fujitsu Company (A joint venture between TRW and Fujitsu Electronics), President and Chief Executive Officer of Fujitsu Systems of America, Inc., President and Chief Executive Officer of Computer Machinery Corporation, Vice President, Marketing of Xerox Computer Services, a Division of Xerox. With a former employee, he co-founded a software company that was sold to Encyclopedia Britannica. His Board of Directors experiences range from an NYSE company to start-ups, and include the manufacturing, information processing and securities industries. Having been Chairman for a number of years, he is currently Vice-Chairman of Wedbush Morgan Securities, a medium-sized registered broker/dealer headquartered in Southern California. He has been Chairman of Wedbush Inc. and Wedbush Capital Corporation, the Corporate General Partner of the firm's LBO/venture capital fund. He is also Chairman of the Boards of MS Aerospace, Inc. and the Center for Corporate Innovation (CCI).
George Abe, Member, Board of Advisors
George is a lecturer and Faculty Director of the Applied Management Research (AMR) Program at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His teaching responsibilities include entrepreneurship, business plan development and field study program advisories.
He was Business Development Manager for the UCLA Office of Intellectual Property, which is responsible for patent protection and commercialization of UCLA research. Previously, he was a venture partner with Palomar Ventures, a VC firm in Santa Monica, California. Before Palomar, he was with Cisco Systems in the office of the chief technical officer. Prior to that he was with Infonet Services Corporation (NYSE:IN, now BT) where he designed Infonet’s IP data service and helped spinout the company from its parent, Computer Sciences Corp (NYSE: CSC). George holds a B.A. in Mathematics and a M.S. in Business, Quantitative Methods, both from UCLA.
Patrick Bennett, Member, Board of Advisors
Patrick was recognized by IT Today magazine as one of “IT World’s Top 100 People”. Patrick is an award-winning film-maker and was previously an executive in Deloitte Consulting’s Media Practice and an executive director with E! Entertainment. While at E!, he launched their new massively multimedia website. Recently, he was an independent consultant at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where he launched a community website featuring the firm’s sports celebrity clients. Patrick holds a B.A. in Literature from Cornell University and an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson.
Gary Borman, Member, Board of Advisors
A manager and marketer of musical artist's careers, Gary, over the course of 34 years, has guided the career of a wide variety of artists including James Taylor, The Violent Femmes, Alison Krauss and The Bee Gees. Gary has also developed many artists from the ground up such as Faith Hill, Keith Urban and Lady Antebellum. Currently under Gary's company's direction are My Morning Jacket, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Keith Urban, Alison Krauss and Lady Antebellum.
Rob Cavallo, Member, Board of Advisors
Rob currently serves as the Chairman of Warner Bros. Records. One of the top-selling producers in the world, Cavallo has produced or had creative involvement in albums that have sold more than 125 million units over the past 16 years, nearly 30 million of those units in the last five years alone. In 1998, Cavallo was awarded the “Producer of the Year” Grammy and was nominated for the same award in 1999 and 2004. Cavallo has also won Grammys for his producing work with Green Day, including “Best Rock Album” for American Idiot in 2004 and, in 2005, “Record of the Year” for Boulevard of Broken Dreams. His work has amassed six Grammy awards, an Oscar, a Golden Globe and numerous nominations.
Cavallo first joined Warner Bros. Records in 1987 as an A&R representative where he was originally assigned to work with Black Sabbath. In 1989, he signed the multi-Platinum band, Goo Goo Dolls, to Warner Bros./Reprise Records and, in 1993, signed Green Day to the label. He produced Green Day’s major label debut, Dookie, his second-ever full album production, which sold 15 million units worldwide. Since then, he’s produced or executive produced six of the band’s albums which have now sold more than 45 million worldwide units combined. In 1994, he was promoted to Senior Vice President of A&R for Warner Bros./Reprise, where he oversaw the label’s A&R department and served as an in-house producer.
In 1997, Cavallo was an instrumental force in reuniting the members of Fleetwood Mac at Warner Bros. for the band’s reunion album, DVD video and TV special, The Dance, which combined have sold more than six million units, and was a producer on the band’s following album Say You Will. In 1998, Cavallo joined Hollywood Records as senior vice-president of A&R, where he signed, developed and produced a number of artists including a Gold-certified album from BBMak. That same year Cavallo produced two No. 1 singles for Warner Bros. on the City of Angels soundtrack, Alanis Morissette’s, “Uninvited,” which went on to win two Grammy Awards, and Goo Goo Dolls’, “Iris,” which was nominated for three Grammys. The soundtrack has sold more than eight million album units worldwide, the second-best-selling soundtrack in WMG history.
In 1999, Cavallo worked with Phil Collins on the Disney feature animated movie, Tarzan. The lead single, “You’ll Be in My Heart,” won an Oscar, a Grammy and a Golden Globe award for best original song from a motion picture. The song stayed at No. 1 for 19 weeks on the Billboard Hot AC chart. This was Collins’ longest running hit at that format.
In 2002, Cavallo returned to Warner Bros. Records where he produced Green Day’s American Idiot, as well as Green Day’s DVD/CD set, Bullet in a Bible, which features a live performance of the band. These two titles have now sold in excess of 15 million units worldwide. In addition, Cavallo has worked on recordings for Eric Clapton, David Cook, Chris Isaak, Jewel, My Chemical Romance, The Dave Mathews Band, Kid Rock, Less Than Jake, Avril Lavigne, Shinedown and Sixpence None The Richer. In 2009, Cavallo was appointed to the position of Chief Creative Officer for WMG.
Cavallo graduated from the University of Southern California where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Composition, Communications and Sociology. After graduating, he earned a certificate from the Dick Grove School of Music in Los Angeles where his studies focused on recording engineering, orchestral arranging and guitar.
Roger Dannenberg, Ph. D, Member, Board of Advisors
Roger is an Associate Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and an early pioneer in the field of computer music. Roger is an accomplished researcher having been published in numerous books, articles, technical journals and also holds several patents in the field of music technology. He currently leads the Computer Music Project at CMU which develops computer music and interactive performance technology to enhance human musical experience and creativity. Roger serves as an advisor on technology development and patent protection.
Steve Moir, Member, Board of Advisors
Steve is an entertainment executive with over 30 years experience. He is the founder of Moir Entertainment and co-founder of Moir Borman Entertainment. He has co-managed, with his partner Gary Borman, top artists such as The Rolling Stones, Garbage and Kenny Loggins, as well as Grammy winning record producers and mixing engineers like Brendan O’Brien. A number of Steve’s clients are nominated for this year’s Grammy Awards.
Mike Vizvary, Member, Board of Advisors
Mike possesses over 20 years experience in advertising, marketing, promotions and customer acquisition, with his own company as well as a two billion dollar public company. Mike has placed over $500 million in media. He is currently is President and CEO of Revolution Media boutique agency specializing in marketing strategy, media buying and advertising analytics. Revolution Media works with local, regional and national clients to use offline and online media to drive demand. Mike previously served as Vice President, Marketing Communications for Guitar Center, Inc. and handled various aspects of P.R., promotions and media relations for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mike holds a B.A. in Business Economics from U.C. Santa Barbara and attended Ohio University for their graduate program in Sports Administration.
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