Are American consumers ready for a social radio app that creates a personalized music station based on what your friends have shared and listened to? EQuala cofounder, Lior Aharoni, is on a mission to prove the answer is yes. Created by a team of Israeli technical wizards, who honed their programming chops building security systems in the Israeli army, the platform mines your friends’ social media pages to generate a unique music DNA for each listener. Maybe you’re not feeling your bestie’s black metal playlist one morning. No problem. EQuala allows users to equalize (nod to the company’s name) their station so there’s less of one friend’s jams and more of another’s.
Yet the music industry is a notoriously tricky landscape to navigate and EQuala is facing tough competition from current market leaders like Spotify and SoundCloud. Will EQuala’s decision to partner with the music industry rather than disrupt it be enough of a differentiator to persuade SoftBank Capital’s Nikhil Kalghtagi and Lerer Ventures’ Steve Schlafman that there is indeed room in the US market for EQuala? See if Mr. Aharoni’s pitch can sway our judges to get into the groove with EQuala.
Watch the latest installment of the Pitch Season 2.
