The SoundCloud Mafia

SoundCloud was founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss. The platform was originally built for professional musicians, but the founders quickly realized the value of opening it to all content creators.
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Ljung and Wahlforss met at university and bonded over their love of music. They established SoundCloud in Berlin in August 2007, and the website was launched in October 2008.
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As an artist-first platform it empowers independent artists with the tools, services, and resources they need to help them build and grow their careers.

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The SoundCloud Mafia

Below we highlight the top 14 companies from the SoundCloud Mafia, but a total of 25 companies have been founded and the alumni group has collectively raised $108 million as per Crunchbase data. AI, SaaS and Web3 are the industries that the most startups have been founded in by former employees.
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PS: Are you a SoundCloud employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community? 😉
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Learn more about us and sign up for the waitlist here.

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Most money raised: Hyperscience‍

Founded by Peter Brodsky, Vladimir Tzankov, Krasimir Marinov, Hyperscience is a cloud-based platform that automates document-based workflows. It uses machine learning to extract data from physical and digital documents for analysis. Hyperscience supports structured, semi-structured, and additional documents.
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Hyperscience helps users to:

• Route extracted data through workflows
• Apply validation, enrichment, case collation, keyword search, or more advanced Natural Language Processing
• Drive business outcomes
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The company has received $290M in funding so far.

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Favorite rising star: Orgspace

Founded by Brian Guthrie, Orgspace is a management platform for software teams. It helps in scaling teams by:

• Planning teams
• Reorganizing
• Tracking staff
• Understanding hires and budgets
• Planning org structure
• Hiring plans
• Headcount allocation
• Cost projection
• Career ladders

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Our favorite rising star is based in Brooklyn, New York. It has 5 employees and $2.5 million in total funding.
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A list of all the incredible companies from the SoundCloud Mafia:

• Dance
• Ben
• Hyperscience
• Nelly
• Unstoppable Finance
• The Climate Choice
• Synthesized
• Beams
• Radicle
• Orgspace
• 3DEN
• Midnight
• Otterspace

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Dance

Founder: Alexander Ljung, Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss
SoundCloud Role: Founder & Chairman, Founder & Advisor
Capital Raised: €67.5M
Investors:
Stage: Series B

Dance is an e-bike subscription service where users pay a monthly fee that covers their bikes and provides an all-inclusive support package.

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Ben

Founder: David Duckworth
SoundCloud Role: New Markets
Capital Raised: $18.5M
Investors: Seedcamp
Stage: Series A

The Ben platform enables employee choice for any existing benefits programme while adding thousands of additional options, all while saving time and money.

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Hyperscience

Founder: Peter Brodsky, Vladimir Tzankov, Krasimir Marinov
SoundCloud Role: Director, Backend Engineers
Capital Raised: $288.9M
Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners
Stage: Series E

Hyperscience is an intelligent document-processing platform for enterprises.

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Nelly

Founder: Dr. Tobias Heuer
SoundCloud Role: Financial Analyst
Capital Raised: €19M
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Stage: Series A

Nelly provides a tool for medical practices that simplifies patient onboarding and payments.

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Unstoppable Finance

Founder: ‎Omid Aladini
SoundCloud Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: €17M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series A

Unstoppable Finance is building a next-gen crypto wallet to bring DeFi to retail investors globally.

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Rising Stars

‍The Climate Choice

Founder: Dr. Rey Farhan
SoundCloud Role: Data Scientist
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: WestTech Ventures
Stage: Seed

The Climate Choice is a climate intelligence platform for climate management, supplier engagement, and supply chain decarbonization.

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Synthesized

Founder: Denis Borovikov
SoundCloud Role: Search Engineer
Capital Raised: $2.8M
Investors: Seedcamp
Stage: Seed

Synthesized is a data platform for machine learning, application development, and testing.

Denis Borovikov, founder of Synthesized, brings 13 years of software development experience, specializing in High-load services, Big Data, and Fintech.

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Beams

Founder: Matej Balantič
SoundCloud Role: Engineering Manager, Core Mobile
Capital Raised: $6M
Investors: Redalpine
Stage: Seed

Beams is an AI insights platform for regulated industries.

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Radicle

Founder: Eleftherios Diakomichalis
SoundCloud Role: VP Data Science & Engineering
Capital Raised: $12M
Investors: NFX
Stage: Seed

Radicle is a fully decentralized code repository.

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Orgspace

Founder: Brian Guthrie
SoundCloud Role: Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $2.5M
Investors: Bloomberg Beta
Stage: Pre-Seed

Orgspace provides a people management platform for software organizations to meet the needs of operational leaders.

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3DEN

Founder: Chris Hassan
SoundCloud Role: Head of Marketing
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: CP Ventures
Stage: Seed

The 3DEN platform empowers consumers to access a network of spaces with an easy to use app.

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Midnight

Founder: Steven Spagnolo
SoundCloud Role: CTO / CPO
Capital Raised: $7.5M
Investors: FJ Labs
Stage: Seed

Midnight is on a mission to build Web3 games with “eternal stories” and never-ending experiences that keep players coming back. Steven Spagnolo, founder of Midnight, is a serial entrepreneur with 30 years in the games industry.

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Otterspace

Founder: Rahul Rumalla, Emily Furlong
SoundCloud Role: Director of Integrations, Senior Product Manager
Capital Raised: $3.7M
Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners
Stage: Pre-Seed

Otterspace’s protocol and application allows networked products to build a badging system utilizing non-transferable & expirable NFTs for better engagement, retention and trust.

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