In this article we interview the CEO and co-founder of Singdaptive, an EdTech start-up and online educational singing platform.  

Kevin please can you introduce yourself, your background and your role at Singdaptive?

I’m Kevin Alexander, co-founder and CEO at Singdaptive, an online education start-up for singers. The four founders all have shared backgrounds that brought us into an opportunity to help singers. I’m quite close to one of the founders – Kathy Alexander. She and I dated in high school! She was a singer and I was a sound engineer. That connection not only led to a family, but also a life of constantly being connected with singers. My connections led me to create and lead TC-Helicon, the world’s first dedicated vocal processor brand for singers. Through this I learned that there are hundreds of thousands of singers out there with challenges and opportunities, but so few brands focused on helping singers move forward.

What inspired you to launch Singdaptive?

Since high school I have always been involved in two things: the music technology business and sound engineering. On a regular basis I was presented with evidence of singers not having their needs met. So often the assumption was a singer should only sing – other people can do the writing, producing, recording, promotion, guitar playing, etc. However, many singers are trying to do all of those things without any support or acknowledgement. The vision for Singdaptive came from wanting to put together a team-based approach to helping a singer move forward in all parts of their singing life. Singing is not a small market. There are over 45 million adults in the United States that sing in choirs. So, we wanted to build a scalable platform that allows as many singers as possible to get access to coaching from their homes, at their time and pace. And we’re really proud that our platform gives innovative ways for singers to connect with both 1-on-1 guidance, as well as hundreds of on-demand lessons from leading professionals.

How did COVID impact your plans?

We launched our on-demand platform just as lock downs hit North America. So, in some ways, we never got to get a taste of our business pre COVID. On one hand, the focus on online learning was so big our credibility jumped up for just being online. But let’s face it, COVID also crippled choirs and singers who perform live. Plus, it limited consumer spending for many musicians. Perhaps the biggest gain was that singers were more willing than ever to think outside the box on how to develop their voice. We heard that flexibility, personalization and confidence were values and challenges that, if addressed, would really help singers. This led to the development of our novel, asynchronous team based vocal coaching feature called Exchangely, which facilitates personal video exchanges between a learner and our team. That’s the other thing that COVID affected positively – we were able to do an investment round based on the user test success of Exchangely. We were successful in raising our funds quickly and with exactly the kind of investors we wanted – like the past CEO of Blue Microphones and the creator of the gaming company behind Guitar Hero. COVID helped make edtech and music education exciting areas for consumer-focused investors.

Do you need to be a good singer to use the singing platform? 

“Yes” to being a singer, “no” to being whatever a “good singer” means. Being great, good or even bad is something that is so subjective – we educators don’t even think in those terms. I know of incredible singers who are making a career out of singing who often feel they’re not good enough. I also know singers who struggle to reach their singing goals, but feel deep down they are fantastic vocalists. Recognizing where we are in our learning process is important, but it is equally important to grasp that we can take huge leaps ahead regardless of our judgement on our voices. That being said, we are focused on people who have decided they are a singer. You might be starting out, coming back to singing or at a professional level – if you are ready to call yourself a singer you have the right mindset to benefit from our coaching.

You can learn more about Singdaptive here: https://singdaptive.com/