J. Anthony Allen’s longtime interest in music naturally led to his latest venture – an educational platform that has already earned some local recognition.
Minneapolis-based Punkademic, an online-education platform that offers music courses, recently took home a $25,000 prize as the winner in the education and training division of the Minnesota Cup, the University of Minnesota’s startup competition. With those funds, as well as a round of seed funding that is currently ongoing, Allen said he intends to boost marketing, add some new hires and do content development.
“I've studied music my whole life, I've never studied business. … But getting acknowledged in the business world is a super new thing and it’s nice," Allen said.
Each of the division winners now go onto to compete for a $50,000 grand prize, which will be awarded during a showcase event later this month.
With a background in musical composition, Allen has stayed busy in the local music industry, most recently as the founder and CEO of Slam Academy, a largely in-person education program for electronic music and art, and as an assistant professor of music, media and management at Augsburg University.
While working at MacPhail Center For Music in Minneapolis several years ago, Allen taught music lessons online and was intrigued by being able to reach students from different areas of the world. "It was just mind blowing in how I could just communicate music to these people that had such different music traditions and backgrounds," he said.
He founded Punkademic in 2019 as a digital platform with which to offer music courses created by professional music educators who are mostly those who have or used to have faculty positions at universities, or as the website calls them, the "punkademics." The platform has about 20 teachers now with plans for a total of 35 by the end of this year, Allen said.
Since its founding, the company has brought in $2.2 million in revenue, Allen said. This year, the company intends to make $650,000 in gross revenue, which it's on target to hit. By 2026, Allen said he projects the company will hit $3 million in annual revenue.
About million students have taken a Punkademic course either on its proprietary site or on a licensed site, Allen said, though he wants to increase the number of customers using the Punkademic site specifically. The three main class categories are music theory, music production and music business, he said.
With two employees, including himself, Allen said he is looking to hire someone for operations and another for marketing in the future, both of which would be based in the greater Twin Cities metro.
