Playing to the right audience key to Singspiel’s success

This series follows the Winter 2013 cohort of JOLT, an earlystage accelerator program at MaRS Discovery District dedicated to building high-growth web and mobile startups that promise to transform the way consumers and businesses interact with technology. This week, Singspiel shares its thoughts on finding the right market fit for a unique concept. Singspiel co-founders Arian Rahbari and Ivan Cheung knew they had a great idea when the prototype for a music education app they developed at the University of Waterloo won the best entrepreneur award for the systems engineering department and audience members attending the demo offered to buy it right away.

“It wasn’t even a product; it was just a proof of concept,” Mr. Rahbari says.

The two had worked on the algorithm for eight months as part of a fourth year project. “We were so encouraged to pursue the concept further and commercialize it, we decided to work on developing it until we had something presentable.”

Now they’re at JOLT, focusing on what they need to do to get Singspiel into the right people’s hands.

Singspiel is a web-based program that detects what a student is playing while practising and provides real-time feedback so they can adjust their performance and review their progress. Users simply login to an account to access a sheet-music library and start practising. “As long as you have a browser you can use it,” Mr. Rahbari says.

The team is putting the finishing touches on an audio module that doesn’t require a physical connection to a computer. “All you will need to do is put a tablet, PC or laptop beside an instrument, use the calibration mode to adjust the sound, and start playing using a microphone to capture the audio input,” he explains.

While they are refining the algorithm, the pair are also working with the business development team at JOLT to figure out the best entry point and market for Singspiel.

It can address multiple needs, it hasn’t been easy to figure out where to start, Mr. Rahbari admits. “We originally had the idea of going directly to music schools as a B2B play. After meetings with the people at JOLT, they convinced us the B2C market might be a better way to go. We’re still working with the marketing intelligence team to come up with quantitative data to figure out if that is in fact the best starting point.”

Lead mentor Krista Jones says product fit will be the biggest challenge for Singspiel in the next little while. “They have a rather unique technology that they have to wrap around a really exciting user experience. What they need to work on right now is finding that sweet spot in the market where it fits best.”

After much discussion it tentatively boiled down to a younger demographic, with a specific focus on the keyboard. “The first instrument is definitely the piano,” Mr. Rahbari notes. “Digital keyboards will be first. The next step is acoustic piano. If we can win that market, then we can jump on to others.”

Singspiel is going through beta testing at selected music schools, and hopes are it will be ready for prime time when the program finishes in May, he adds. “We’ve selected our target market and are collecting our data. We’re almost there.”