Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:00:00 · Mikey Shulman
[00:00:00] S0: Imagine your favorite artist is releasing an album next week. Maybe you had to pay $19.99 for the interactive version of that album, and you got a few samples that you could make music with or a few verses that you could make your own versions out of and effectively make a lot of fan fiction around this artist's work. And this is a new feeling for you to feel like you are cocreating with the artist. It will build a lot of hype around the album. Now imagine that artist comes to New York and they're playing MSG and they really, really love one of the remixes that got made by one of the fans in New York. And actually, they just play that version of the song. And how incredible of a moment that would be, where you have the entire audience connecting through the fact that they're all in New York, connecting with that artist, connecting with one another. It is just a different height of musical experience that has not happened before.
00:00:52 · Alexa von Tobel, S2
[00:00:52] S1: Welcome to Inspired. I'm Alexa von Tobel. What if you make music as easily as you could take a photo? Mikey Schulman is making that future real. He is the founder and CEO of Suno. And as a friend and someone who's invested in him from the early days, watching his journey has been nothing short of incredible. Suno just raised $250,000,000 in a series c at almost $2,500,000,000 evaluation. In under three years, Suno has exploded from zero users to a 100,000,000. They are now creating 7,000,000 tracks every single day. We are now even seeing Suno AI artists debuting on the billboard charts. In this conversation, we're gonna explore why Mikey ran toward audio when everyone else was chasing text, how he balances speed with craft when leading, and his vision for the future of music and AI. We will also dig into the big question of what happens when billions of people can suddenly create, not just consume, and how that is reshaping the entire music industry live before our eyes. We will redefine what it means to be an artist and changing how we will connect with one another. This is gonna be a good one. Let's dive right in. [00:01:50] S2: If you're running a startup, we know things like managing equity and communicating with investors are always top of mind. Carta has built a connected suite of tools that over 40,000 companies use to do just that. Their platform of software and services helps you lay the groundwork so you can focus on building. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com.
00:01:50 · S2, Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:01:50] S2: If you're running a startup, we know things like managing equity and communicating with investors are always top of mind. Carta has built a connected suite of tools that over 40,000 companies use to do just that. Their platform of software and services helps you lay the groundwork so you can focus on building. To learn more or get started, visit carta.com. [00:02:09] S1: And with that, I'm so excited to welcome Mikey. First of all, Mikey, I'm so excited to have you. I'm more excited to be a friend, a teammate, a tiny investor, and just wow, I can't wait to talk about what you're building at Suno. But just welcome. Happy to have you. [00:02:25] S0: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk. [00:02:27] S1: Awesome. So Mikey, I wanna start from the beginning just really quickly between Kensho and now Suno. I wanna just start from your childhood. You grew up in New York. Is there anything that stands out? I always like to ask the question just sitting here as a parent with three kids of, is there anything that stands out in your childhood that you feel like has set you up for kind of where you are today?
00:02:27 · Alexa von Tobel, Mikey Shulman
[00:02:27] S1: Awesome. So Mikey, I wanna start from the beginning just really quickly between Kensho and now Suno. I wanna just start from your childhood. You grew up in New York. Is there anything that stands out? I always like to ask the question just sitting here as a parent with three kids of, is there anything that stands out in your childhood that you feel like has set you up for kind of where you are today? [00:02:49] S0: You know, I think about this a lot. I think I had just such an incredibly lucky upbringing. And, honestly, you know, the more I do it, just realizing that coming from a a loving, stable environment is, the best leg up you can have. And, you know, I think if you force me to pick one thing, what was modeled for me is, like, going after what you love to do. And maybe that changes as you grow up, but I I, you know, I can tell you, like, probably the earliest tangible or important one that I remember is just... I remember when I was... When I realized that I really liked physics and just having my parents encourage me, like, go do that. That's cool. If you like it, just go do it. Doesn't doesn't matter what's gonna come after, just go do it. And I think that's something that I've taken with me, like, through everything. I don't know if there's ever, like, a big master plan. It's just you like it, keep go doing it, you know, just go tackle the next thing that's in front of you.
00:02:49 · Mikey Shulman, Alexa von Tobel
[00:02:49] S0: You know, I think about this a lot. I think I had just such an incredibly lucky upbringing. And, honestly, you know, the more I do it, just realizing that coming from a a loving, stable environment is, the best leg up you can have. And, you know, I think if you force me to pick one thing, what was modeled for me is, like, going after what you love to do. And maybe that changes as you grow up, but I I, you know, I can tell you, like, probably the earliest tangible or important one that I remember is just... I remember when I was... When I realized that I really liked physics and just having my parents encourage me, like, go do that. That's cool. If you like it, just go do it. Doesn't doesn't matter what's gonna come after, just go do it. And I think that's something that I've taken with me, like, through everything. I don't know if there's ever, like, a big master plan. It's just you like it, keep go doing it, you know, just go tackle the next thing that's in front of you. [00:03:54] S1: A loving, stable environment is a real gift. That's beautifully said. Mikey, you and I overlapped briefly at Harvard. I wish I knew you a lot better when you were there. We would have had fun together. But you earned your physics degree at Columbia, then you completed a six year PhD at Harvard, which was 2009 through 2015, focused on experimental quantum computing. So you're a real dumb dumb. How did you decide to go down the PhD path? Just tell us a little bit about how you sort of thought about your academic career.
00:04:26 · Mikey Shulman, Alexa von Tobel
[00:04:26] S0: It's really it's really interesting. I always loved physics. I knew I loved it in in high school even. And I was trying to decide as an undergrad what I should do after. And it's like one of these, like, seems little at the time, but very serendipitous moments where there was a professor that I wanted to work for the summer after my junior year of college, and he said, I'm retiring. You can't really work for me. I'm gonna be closing down my lab. And then I went and I applied for an internship at Goldman Sachs. And then two months later, he said, you know, I'm actually gonna do one more year. Why don't you come work for me? And that was, like, this little thing that sent me down an entirely different career path where I was like, I really loved working for him, and I really loved the work, and it made me wanna do that. And then after that summer, said, okay. I'm gonna apply to grad school. Like, I I wanna do more of that. And I I suspect that if that hadn't happened, if I hadn't worked for him that summer, it would have been a very different path for me. And, yeah, you know, the rest is history. Actually, my PhD adviser is a former student of that undergrad advisor, and he told me just go work for your PhD advisor. He's the best student I ever had. [00:05:41] S1: That's amazing. You then went from... Instead of staying in academia, you jumped right into Kensho where you led machine learning for financial systems. And Kensho was really your first major step into applied AI. How'd you... How how how'd that happen? And also tell us what Kensho was.