JammAround, a New Orleans-based music software firm, has made it to the final round of Black Ambition, an "American Idol"-styled competition fronted by music impresario Pharrell Williams and carrying a $1 million grand prize.
The company, which was founded in 2020 by Brent Craige, Marlon Butler and Donovan Williams, has made it from about 2,000 initial competitors in the spring to the group of 250 semi-finalists last month and now the final crop of 50 contestants competing for the grand prize in November.
Making the cut at each stage carries with it benefits. Each finalist gets $15,000 of Amazon cloud computing services, which Craige said will cover about a year of server space requirements for their firm. JammAround also becomes eligible to be one of 30 companies that will get an as-yet-to-be-determined cash award over the next couple of months, as well as professional pitch coaching. They are also entered to win a possible $25,000 in a public vote competition the Black Ambition organizers are holding.
Making the cut
"This is really powerful for me and my partners," Craige said in a telephone interview Monday. "This is national exposure for a company that is from New Orleans, which is known for its performative side of music but not so much on the business side of music."
The company's app is designed to bring musicians together with writers, producers and others producing commercially available music in a way that has previously been too cumbersome or impossible because of distance or other barriers.
The company won the $400,000 top prize at the New Orleans Entrepreneur Week event in March and they have subsequently been mentored and backed financially by New Orleans entrepreneur Scott Wolfe and others from his company, Levelset, which sold last year for $500 million.
JammAround is being touted as part of a potential next wave of New Orleans tech start-up successes. The "beta" version of their app reached its target capacity number of users earlier this year and has been closed as they have tested its functionality. Craige said they are targeting the release of the first fully commercially-available version of the app for the first quarter of next year.
Scaling up
The Black Ambition contest is designed to fast-track selected companies by connecting them with top mentors in their industry and opening up opportunities to network with potential investors and partners they might not otherwise have access to.
Now in its second year, Black Ambition has two main tracks and prize pots for start-up companies that have at least one Black or Hispanic founder. One focuses on companies with founders at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and has a total prize pot of $250,000. The other picks fast-growing companies from a general pool and has total prizes of $1 million.
JammAround was picked from the general pool and was one of just a handful of finalists competing in the media and entertainment sub-category.