Josh Simons is the CEO and co-founder of Vampr, the world’s largest and most active social-professional network for musicians (often dubbed the “LinkedIn for creatives”). With over half a million users, and active in every country on the planet, the music startup has helped fledgling musicians broker over 5 million connections worldwide. Vampr offers a free solution for young musicians, built by a sympathetic founding team of established musicians with Josh’s co-founder, Baz Palmer, best known as the lead guitarist for seminal hall-of-fame rock band, Hunters & Collectors.
Simons has grown Vampr into a multi-award winning platform, including a most prestigious nod from Apple with an inclusion in their Best of the Year list.
Prior to running Vampr, Josh Simons spent the better part of a decade as a successful artist, songwriter & producer. His artist project Buchanan enjoyed multi-million streams & chart impressions worldwide. They retired from the live circuit following a sold-out arena tour opening for Keith Urban & Carrie Underwood. As a producer and songwriter, Simons has shared credits with Travis Scott, Troye Sivan and Kanye West to name a few.
In April 2020 Simons was named in The Music Network’s 30 Under 30 List in addition to being voted Reader’s Choice. Simons holds a Bachelor of Business from Swinburne University.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Vamprall about?
Vampr is a LinkedIn-style platform for creatives. In the workforce creative roles account for 10-12% of all jobs however on LinkedIn they make up just 4% of the userbase. The reason for this discrepancy is that LinkedIn was not built for and does not meet the needs of creatives. Creatives need to see, hear and get a feel for another person before reaching out and collaborating. We created Vampr to address this massive hole in the market.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
Prior to starting Vampr I was in a band called Buchanan and ran an indie record label out of Australia. We had quite a bit of local success and broke into various charts around the world, but we struggled to build a solid team overseas which hampered our growth. Vampr was really born out of this frustration. It was like, “technology has made it so easy to record music, distribute it, build a large fan base, but why is it still so hard to find a sustainable team?” Turns out I’m not the only creative who has faced that problem so I partnered with my old label boss, Baz Palmer, to build a solution that would be useful both locally and globally.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
We’ve just launched a News Feed which is really exciting. Users can now get their daily fix of global music news, covering all their favorite artists, in addition to staying up-to-date and connected with their Vampr network list. There are also plans afoot to introduce disappearing video content. Everything we’re working on right now is about transforming Vampr from the most useful music networking tool to an essential town hall where important conversations are started and careers start to take shape.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business and how did you overcome it?
Finding our first thousand super users! There is no quick way of doing this. I know Mark Cuban has spoken famously about going door to door. Given we were trying to build a global social network we had to think creatively about how we might do that online without breaking the bank. One of our more successful growth hacks in the early days was visiting different locations on Craigslist and responding to “Looking for X” posts by suggesting people search on Vampr. We’d each hit up about 50 people per day. It was grueling work but really helped to kick start the community.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from them?
When we first arrived in the US from Australia, and prior to firmly establishing ourselves in the Los Angeles startup scene, we spent a bit of money on people and providers that in hindsight probably took advantage of our naivety. PR, tech support, those kinds of things. We learned very quickly about how to vet people, how to fire fast and how to build trust before diving into a business relationship.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
As a social network one of our most critical forms of differentiation and defensibility will always be scale. The size of the userbase. Because no one wants to turn up to any empty party! In the niche where Vampr exists we’ve held a market leading position for quite some time and we’re extending that lead every single day. Aside from scale, or perhaps why we’ve been able to scale, another big differentiator is our approach to product. Things such as our swipe discovery algorithm and our mobile-first approach to social-professional networking.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
On life experiences and travel. Stay with me! The thing I see most often among successful startups and founders is that they’ve come to their idea through a genuine requirement or personal need following some sort of life experience. It’s highly unlikely to stumble upon genius when sat staring at a whiteboard waiting for inspiration. So I would use that $1000 to travel to as many places as possible, absorb as many life experiences as possible, and come back home with inspiration, a fresh mindset and motivation.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
You need to research your market extensively before hastily committing years of your life to an idea! I can’t overstate this enough. A quick Google search to reveal your TAM is simply not enough. You should be compiling and comparing data from various sources and making sure you’re researching the audience that applies to your actual business model, rather than the general size of the industry that you believe you will be operating in. It’s about understanding your viability from the outset.
What is your favorite quote?
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived – that is to have succeeded”
How can we get in touch with you?
You can find our company website www.vampr.me through our various social pages Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In addition, we’re currently running a crowdfunding campaign where prospective investors and interested parties can ask me questions about the company directly and publicly.
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