Protégé One Ups MasterClass
With Celebrity Mentorship
Jackson Jhin (left) and Michael Cruz (right) cofounded Protégé less than a year ago when they faced the common problem of lack of access into closed circles in the entertainment and startup world.
A new platform in the celebrity EdTech space promises
amateur performers the opportunity to demonstrate their talent and receive
feedback from industry experts. Protégé is the latest iteration of VIP
monetization from Jackson Jhin, who also served as the vice president of
strategy at Cameo, where fans pay for personalized messages from the platform’s
marketplace of artists, athletes, creators and more.
Protégé is Jhin’s answer to MasterClass and its impressive
A-list instructors. MasterClass subscribers pay $15 per month to watch
high-quality videos of Serena Williams talking tennis or Helen Mirren
expounding on acting. 27-year-old entrepreneur Jhin noted the lack of
one-on-one tailored mentorship and saw a market among aspiring artists willing
to pay for guaranteed access to (and advice from) professionals such as record
producer DJ Khaled, singer-songwriter Bebe Rexha and Seinfeld actor Jason
Alexander.
“Unfortunately, no matter how talented you are, if you
don't know the right person, especially in entertainment, good luck trying to
break into the industry,” Jhin says.
Customers are more likely to be connected to relatively
lesser-known music producer Conrad Robinson, the vocal coach of Alicia Keys,
than the likes of Lionel Richie. But the startup is backed by the 72-year-old
pop star, as well as Will Smith, DJ Khaled, Ben Simmons, Jason Alexander, and
Scooter Braun, all of whom are angel investors in an $8.5 million seed funding
round that was led by Sequoia Capital.
“This gives everyone a chance to kind of narrow in on
their interest,” Richie tells Forbes. “There are writers and
producers who are not getting their proper salaries. With this you can monetize
your brain, you can monetize your talent and make the fans accessible to you as
well.”
Protégé currently has 30,000 users and charges between $10
and $200, based on the expert’s level of fame. Applicants receive feedback on a
60-second audition video and get a chance to produce with an artist. Protégé
takes a 25% commission for the connection while the rest goes to the expert.
While the company is in its early stages compared with the
$27 million that MasterClass earned in revenue in 2021, the hope is that the
possibility of cracking a deal with an expert and getting a foot in the door
will be more valuable to aspiring stars than a generalized class. A lucky few
of 3,000 Protégé applicants have already signed deals with music artists
including H.E.R, Breland, Brian Kelley, and Bebe Rexha.
As an investor in startups that enable creators with
specific skills and expertise, Li Jin, says that Protégé’s apprenticeship model
is aligned with the broader trend of the fan-based economy. “Many things fall
into this trend, like Patreon, Substack, and NFTs. Protégé is giving creators
this entirely new way to monetize that relationship through exposing
knowledge,” Jhin tells Forbes.
Jhin and cofounder Michael Cruz are hoping to tap into the
trend across multiple disciplines. Growing up in an Asian immigrant household
in Houston, Jhin wanted to be a musician but was never able to gain access to
the music industry. That’s when he realized that “talent is everywhere,
opportunity is not.”
He met his cofounder in Chicago. Cruz faced a roadblock
similar to Jhin, but in the startup world. “For some reason, I couldn't get
callbacks. I wasn't getting noticed. Looking back on it, the wall that I hit
was less around a skill gap and was more around an access gap,” Cruz says.
Jason Alexander, who came on board as an expert and an
investor says that not all celebrities make good mentors but that “everybody
who cares about an art or art in general, has the right to participate in it to
whatever degree they can.”
“I was so impressed with how they had taken Cameo from a
startup to a really highly successful organization. in very little time,”
Alexander tells Forbes. Chicago-based Cameo, where Jhin was the CFO
at age 23, reached a $1 billion valuation in March 2021 and generated $100
million in revenue in 2021.
For the future of his next stint, Jhin plans to add more
experts in other verticals such as Youtubers, TikTokers, athletes, artists, and
dancers. Eventually, he aims for the company to go public or be acquired by a
larger ed-tech company
Cracking the code on how to hit success has long eluded
the vast majority of aspiring entertainers, the vast majority of whom never
attract enough attention to even make a living at their craft. For every
household name known the world over — Lizzo, Kanye, Seinfeld, The Rock – there
are millions of artists the world will never hear about.