Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Patrick Boylan. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Patrick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I took eight years of piano lessons and hated every minute of it. I  didn’t like having to practice the same song over and over. I got too  bored with that process, like so many other music students. My  teacher retired, and I started sifting through my parents sheet music  on my own time, grabbing phrases I enjoyed and improvising  around them, putting them into different music contexts. I then  repeated that process over and over with other phrases and realized  that, by doing this, I ended up learning the building blocks of what  makes up the musical theater genre. I can now sight read pretty  much any musical theater piece. I now have three residencies here in  LA, one at a piano bar called Tramp Stamp Granny’s, and two at  restaurants playing for dinner services. 

MuseFlow teaches similarly to how I taught myself. Students play  levels that teach specific skills – a new note, new rhythm, new time  signature, new concepts – and it generates music they’ve never seen  before and never repeats, is at their level of ability, exercises that  new concept in isolation at first, then slowly brings in the rest of  what they already know. It keeps them playing until they’ve played  four phrases in a row at 95% accuracy. With that, they’ve  successfully mastered the new skill that level is exercising.

Awesome! Can you tell us the story behind  how you met your business partner?

I brought this idea to Steven Gizzi, a longtime composer/piano  teacher friend here in LA, and he said that he had a very similar  idea, but with generative AI creating the sheet music. We then  brought this idea to Tucker Dean, a childhood friend of Steven’s,  who has experience building AI models for a myriad of fintech  companies. We then started looking for engineers. 

We ended up going on a hike with a good friend of ours, Steven  Staley, who we expected would never be interested in joining; he  had a very cushy job at Oscar Health working as a backend engineer  doing what he loves. But he was fascinated by the idea, so he ended  up pitching himself to us!

I then went into my regular gig on Sunday’s, Maggianos’s at The  Grove, getting ready to play, when I saw that there was someone on  the piano. And he was really good! He was playing Beethoven and  Chopin really well. So I asked the regulars who this guy was and  they said that he comes in often to just play sometimes. I didn’t kick  him off. Instead, I went over to him and asked if he wanted to go  back and forth trading songs, and he said yes. We got to talking.  Turns out he was a full-stack engineer at an app called MetPro! I  showed him our pitch deck, bought him dinner, and he fell in love  with the idea then and there. He joined the following week. 

We’ve all been working on this app together for the past two years  now. All of us, matches made in heaven :).

Any advice for managing a team?

Be excited about your idea. Even if you’re not. Fake it until you are.  Really be genuine about your faking it too, cause there will be days  that are trying, but you’ve gotta put on a good face for your team,  and get them excited. 

Help out. Ask your team what you can do for them. You’re not a  dictator. You’re a facilitator. If they need something, get it for them.  If they need extra hands, hire someone else, or lower the work load.  It’s your job to get them what they need and inspire them to do the  best work they can do for you and your company. 

Share the wins! Even the small ones. They love to hear it. A single  new customer, a new blog post, whatever. Keep the wins coming  and share loud and often with them. 

Congratulate them on the process of working, not the outcome.  Don’t say “You did it! Well done!” Instead say “it looks like you  really put in the time and worked long and hard on this. Fantastic  job!” The process of working hard is what’s admirable, the outcome  is secondary. 

You’ve gotta set the tone and share the wins with the team. You all  did the work, and even if you don’t think it, it was probably lowest  person on the totem pole that worked the hardest. Congratulate them  on working hard, inspire them with the wins, and a fake happiness  even if you’re not. With those three things, you’ll manage a  successful team. And yes, it’s that easy :).

Contact Info:

• Website: http://MuseFlow.ai
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pboylan_official/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick boylan-6b133248/

Image Credits

@jill.petracek