In 2001 Pim Betist finished his business administration study in Groningen. This summer he followed a financial contract for Heineken in New York. In his spare time, he visited many live performances of unknown artists what inspired him to invent the SellaBand concept: a website where music lovers can invest in artists so they can produce an album.

He felt that the market was not yet ready for his concept. Personally, he also wanted to build some more management experience. He decided to get started first as a sales manager at Shell. He was responsible for 50 petrol stations. After 3 years he gave up his job to finally realise his dream: the consumer gets the power in the music industry.

Johan Vosmeijer (director at Sony Music) wanted to be the Director of the yet-to-raise SellaBand. Johan opened its network and soon SellaBand developed itself to a great success. Since its launch in August 2006 11 artists raised the magic amount of $ 50,000. There was a total of more than 1.3 million dollars invested in unknown artists.

While Johan kept focusing on the ins and outs of the business side of the company, Pim was the evangelist of SellaBand. He explained the concept in sevral Dutch TV-shows, but also on BBC World and Fox news. As the creator of SellaBand he is weekly invited to speak at conferences.

Topics

    Web 2.0

    Crowdsourcing

    Co-creation

    Music and internet

    Entrepreneurship: from idea to business, how to do it?

Business, Innovation, Creativity, Entrepreneurship