We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stephen DeGrazia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stephen below.

Hi Stephen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I was always in to music. The walls in my bedroom were covered with posters and collages of Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, Aerosmith, Guns N Roses. In the summers between college, I got a job at Jones Beach Amphitheater where I was part of the “Boat Crew” that patrolled Zacks Bay on Long Island to make sure boats didn’t trespass while concerts were going on. I had already been going to a bunch of concerts and this sealed my love for live music. When I came out of college, I took the “real” job and worked in finance to “make money.” Little did I know I would be part of the biggest financial collapse since the great depression. I watched hedge funds pull money from us (Morgan Stanley) and short our stock – good times. I had listened to a bunch of country music in college and it started to take off in NYC. I would go to songwriter rounds and the songwriters would say they wrote songs by well known artists and I thought they were lying. They also complained about not getting paid and waiting 9 months. I just witnessed moving money very quickly in the financial markets and I couldn’t understand why they struggled to be paid on time. I went down the rabbit hole and learned about consent decrees and how antiquated the technology and processes were in the music industry. I also found that the royalties collected from live shows (my fave) to songwriters were called performance royalties so I focused on that and SangCash was born.

Stephen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As mentioned before, working at a concert venue when I was in college was my introduction to working in the industry. What a job to be paid and watch legends just past their prime playing their songs at an outdoor amphitheater in the summer. I saw Rush, Aerosmith, David Bowie, Page/Plant of Led Zeppelin, Ozzy, Blink 182, Sting, James Taylor – the list goes on.

SangCash is a marketplace between music users (Bars, Restaurants, Live Music Venues) and Songwriters. We help the music users manage unnecessary licensing fees and we help songwriters by actually paying them on time and what they deserve.

We are most proud of tackling this outdated process that have plagued both sides of the market for decades. When I started reading about how it all worked, I couldn’t believe it was the actual system for collecting and distributing licensing fees and performance royalties.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When I first entered Wall Street, I thought I would learn the business, make some money and then get out and go coach sports and work on a music project. I had no idea what I was about to get into. In 2008, Morgan Stanley, like a lot of other banks were on the brink of collapsing. I had witnessed 4 rounds of layoffs – many who were close colleagues. I later learned that the 20 so of us who were analysts were the cheap labor and kept to do much of the clean up. The market took its toll on the housing market as many know and it was the last straw of my parents marriage. I spent the wake of the financial crisis breaking them apart and selling my childhood home. It was tough to do that while trying to get my own career/life off the ground. My time, energy and stress from that took its toll on my own relationships both friends and romantically. While I still had desire to start a music company, I had to recharge and also begin working another job to support myself while I began moonlighting SangCash. Just when I had gotten some momentum with my retail job and with SangCash which focused on live music, Covid wiped both out and I was left with picking up the pieces again and knew that if I could just persevere, I knew startups were needed in the wake of crises, especially one that would help the music industry get back on their feet. So I hustled for the 30 months to make it happen and now am going to market and have raised some early capital.

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

I had been working remotely in NY in the summer of 2018 with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center through their preflight digital program and in the fall 2018, I finally made Nashville my permanent home. In January of 2019, PreFlight Digital hosted a pitch night and pitched in front of a big crowd. It was crazy to be working on an idea behind the scenes to then be pitching in front of everyone. After my pitch, I was approached by a gentleman who said that they played golf with someone I should meet – a former BMI executive named George Schuh. We met several times for coffee, paused during Covid and reconnected once things started to return to normal. We’ve been working on a GTM strategy for the last 9 months.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sangcash.com
• Instagram: sangcash.inc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spd12/
• Twitter: @steviedefimusic

Image Credits
Madeleine Queen for images in white t-shirt with Tan Blazer Launch House for Guns N Roses Shirt pic Nashville Entrepreneur Center for headshop with grey blazer and Cash is King shirt.