An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Trust your gut. Data is important but sometimes your instincts are everything you need to make the right decision.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Neal Sarin.
Sona Founder, Neal Sarin is an entrepreneur, music executive, record producer and screenwriter. He is currently the Founder and CEO of sona labs, music-based digital therapeutics company that uses research-backed restorative music to relieve anxiety naturally and efficiently.
Previously, he served as Head of A&R at JioSaavn — South Asia’s leading music streaming platform (100+ million MAUs). He co-founded the company’s in-house record label and led creative strategy towards ‘artist-friendly’ deals, while producing cross-continental hit records with artists like Nas and Marshmello. After developing the careers of independent South Asian artists, JioSaavn was selected as India’s Most Innovative Company by Fast Company in 2019.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”?
I’m an entrepreneur, A&R executive, and music producer from the Bay Area, California. When I was sixteen, I knew I wanted to develop artists as a profession after interning at Universal Music Group in London. Before founding Sona Labs, I was the Head of A&R at JioSaavn — a South Asian music streaming service based out of New York City. I joined the team to start the company’s in-house record label, which focused on signing South Asian artists. I oversaw the production of cross-continental records with established acts like Nas and Marshmello and signed Prateek Kuhad, Sid Sriram and Zack Knight’s ‘Bom Diggy’.
What led you to this particular career path?
I started learning focused-based meditation back in 2010. It helped reduce my stress, but it also took time, practice, and money to see results. I became inspired to create music that could generate benefits similar to meditation and began composing demos in my home studio in 2015. Over the course of four years, I developed a few songs using a series of composing and sound mixing techniques. I would listen to the music for 10 minutes and it felt like I just had a meditation session. It was also having a similar effect on my friends and family. That was the moment I decided to leave my job and start the company in 2019. I started signing composers in the restorative music space, gave them the composition process as guidelines and worked with them to create their own music.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
At sona, our music is designed to facilitate neural entrainment, which shifts the listener’s brainwaves from an active beta (waking) to alpha (relaxed). We’ve conducted research with leading institutions like UC Berkeley and Nielsen Neuroscience, highlighting our music’s efficacy. We are now working towards becoming the first FDA-approved music-based therapy solution for anxiety, so that sona can be prescribed as treatment by a doctor or psychiatrist.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting?
Our sona co-founder Dennis Hauser was completing an MBA at UC Berkeley and we didn’t have an app yet. Instead of browsing the internet to find developers, we put up flyers around campus to build an MVP. We paid and recruited a young undergrad who quickly developed a working prototype, but none of the code he used was proprietary so we had to rebuild the entire app from scratch.
Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Do your due diligence before hiring someone.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors?
I’ve been fortunate to have learned from inspiring friends, co-workers and family throughout my life.
Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
In 2017, a well-known producer introduced me to his son who was working at Snapchat at the time. I had just signed a record called ‘Bom Diggy’. We worked together to create the first Snap music lens for South Asia, which helped the song go viral and generate over a billion streams.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’?
Being disruptive should be a positive thing to ensure that it benefits society. In our case, we’re creating science-backed music for anxiety as an alternative or supplement to current solutions like prescription medication, CBT, and holistic alternatives like exercise and meditation.
Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’?
It depends on the lens you’re viewing it from. There’s always an audience that resists change. But if you’re helping people with the intention of positively impacting culture, I think it’s worth pursuing.
Can you share some examples of what you mean?
We are working with neuroscientists and GRAMMY-winning producers at the cross-section of music, health and tech. Our solution is a therapeutic app that plays science-backed music that’s been shown to reduce stress and anxiety. We aim to provide a natural, efficient and affordable solution that’s passive and intuitive.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey?
- Enjoy what you do. When you’re passionate about something, it helps you get through the inevitable hard times you face as a founder.
- Take your time. I view life as a marathon, not a sprint. It’s important to take time for reflection and making important decisions.
- Freedom is currency. At sona, we are a fully remote team and part of our culture is to empower one another to maximize the time we have to achieve a balanced lifestyle.
- Selling is storytelling. I learned this lesson while raising money. People really do ‘buy’ for emotional reasons.
- Trust your gut. Data is important but sometimes your instincts are everything you need to make the right decision.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
At sona, we are conducting research to better understand how sona’s music affects the brain and develop new music-based therapy solutions.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
I recommend Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about creativity and divergent thinking. The link below is an example brought to life through animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHMUXFdBzik
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”?
“Simplicity is the key to brilliance.” — Bruce Lee
Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’s a helpful reminder when things get complex.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
At sona, we are incubating a new genre called restorative music, which we believe can help people improve their mental health efficiently, intuitively and affordably.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Neal Sarin of sona Labs On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
