Some of the founders of the MTH Accelerator portfolio are connected to music. With their start-ups, they bring music and tech together. That’s why April is all about the founders of Klangchat, Henning Grambow, Philip Kurt Kressin, Julian Laping and Piotr Śnieżek. Read for yourself.
MTH Accelerator: What did you do before Klangchat?
Henning: I composed and produced music for films and artists and consulted companies by connecting high performance management culture to jazz music communication rituals.
Philip: I was an indie rock star in Argentina and founded an underground culture magazine which progressed to become a social network in Argentina. All that happened in the early days of Facebook in the wild west days of startups. After that, I lived in New York with my band Neon Legion and became an amateur (angel) investor until I moved to Berlin and met the Klangchat crew.
Julian: I have been working as a composer and music producer next to my job as a sound and product designer for Berlin music software company Native Instruments.
Piotr: I was an independent web and mobile applications designer and developer and have been helping startups plan and create their software architecture solutions.
MTH Accelerator: What do you do now outside of Klangchat?
Henning: I am learning to code!
Philip: Klangchat is taking up all our time but. When possible, I produce German hip hop and songs for my band Neon Legion as a hobby.
Julian: I used to be a techno producer and did live acts and am still doing that as a past time.
Piotr: I spend my time with family and cultivate hobbies like mountain biking, skiing and gardening. I like to play the guitar and drums too.
MTH Accelerator: What is Klangchat?
Klangchat: Klangchat is an app that allows anyone to create and send emotional and entertaining voice messages. How does it work? First, you record your message. Immediately after this, music will appear over your message and an animated sticker will lip sync to your voice. The whole thing can be sent as a video file on any messenger. If you have an iPhone, you can even use Klangchat directly in iMessenger.
MTH Accelerator: Why MTH Accelerator?
Klangchat: We are a social media, music, video, and gamified messaging app. We are basically the embodiment of media tech. So it was natural for us to apply to the MediaTech Hub Accelerator in Potsdam and take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that it offers.
MTH Accelerator: Why Klangchat?
Klangchat: The word Klangchat is quite self-explanatory in German. For English speakers “clang” is an onomatopoeia. And because it is spelled with “k” instead of “c”, people can make out that it is a German word. And the Made in Germany label is good!
MTH Accelerator: What‘s your mission?
Klangchat: Some of the founders have backgrounds in music. We believe in the power of music and voice as means of communication. We would like to make that available to as many people as possible, even those without any musical background. Younger people communicate with lots of voice messages, but right now there is no way to make these messages more emotional or to enrich them with further meaning. We want to support this kind of communication with new tools.
About MTH Unboxing
The MTH Accelerator portfolio is growing and growing. But what exactly do the teams do and, above all, what did they do before they became entrepreneurs? In MTH Unboxing, our new interview series, we shed some light on the subject and introduce the teams in more detail. MTH Accelerator Babelsberg is the program for startups and founding teams from the metropolitan region who are looking to explore technologies and digital business models and take their companies to the next level.
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