News
CitizenGroove Announces DecisionDesk™
December 2, 2011
The best in online academic video applications is now even better!
CitizenGroove is excited to announce the launch of our second-generation platform, “DecisionDesk™”, which is currently handling the application and audition processes for over 35 University performing arts programs this year, including:
- The Academy at Carnegie Hall
- Aspen Music Festival and School
- Cleveland Institute of Music
- Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester
- Northwestern University
- Oberlin Conservatory
- University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, & Dance
- And many more!
As you may know, CitizenGroove began hosting online video applications for performing arts programs in 2010, and we thank our early users for taking a leap of faith and believing in our mission to better the audition and admissions experience for both students and performing arts program staff. We know there are potential risks in trusting a program’s application process to a new company (reliability, scalability, service, security, etc) so we are thankful for the support of these ten early clients.
And, we are very pleased to report that 100% of our first year clients have committed to partner with us again this year. In addition to industry leading performance and reliability, DecisionDesk™ incorporates the most requested features of our first year users:
- NEW Enhanced Drop Box—Without prior programming experience, our clients can now build a robust application process with completely customizable forms, filters, and upload steps.
- NEW Reviewer and Admin Dashboards—Admissions staff can manage reviewers, assign complex permissions, and monitor the entire application process from a common dashboard. We’ve added more filtering, search, and export capabilities making the administration panel a breeze to operate and a true time saver.
- Even More Robust Video Storage— There are no file size or storage restrictions (over 10 Terabytes of video and 20,000 applicants have been processed this year!). Our system is built on a secure, elastically scalable framework to handle December 1st deadlines like it’s any other day of the year.
- Straight Forward Pricing— Five simple pricing levels based on a program’s number of applications. No extra charges per program, per upload, or per drop box. Best of all, each client receives a dedicated account representative that provides around the clock admin, reviewer, and applicant support.
We invite you to explore our new website and schedule a personal demo of the software. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or would like to discuss getting started with DecisionDesk™.
Best,
John Knific
CEO, CitizenGroove
IT Martini Interview with CEO John Knific. Getting ready for a big launch.
August 3, 2011
We recently had an opportunity to demo the new CitizenGroove platform at an IT Entrepreneur event called IT Martini. Kevin Hiser, the organizer shot this quick interview during the demo. It's a nice snapshot of our pitch and progress.
CitizenGroove featured in CWRU Alumni Report with snazzy video
February 7, 2011
Source: http://case.edu/biggerpicture/videos/citizen-groove.html
Musical Chairs (IBmag feature)
December 24, 2010
By Rebecca Meisser
Source: http://www.inside-business.com/Main/Archive/Musical_Chairs_11812.aspx
CitizenGroove’s initial venture, a social network for professional musicians, fell flat. Then the Case Western Reserve University entrepreneurs got in tune with their customers and launched a platform to streamline the music school admissions process.
The duo, both music majors, saw a huge hole in the number of quality online social networking opportunities for aspiring professional musicians. There were no LinkedIn-type sites for performing artists to share portfolios and audition tapes with potential employers. “Everything out there was geared toward garage bands, not professional violinists,” Knific says.
In 2008, Knific and Plotkin enlisted their computer-savvy buddies, Eric Neuman and Kyle Napierkowski, to create an online portfolio-sharing site for musicians. They presented their idea at dozens of local entrepreneurial competitions and spoke with potential investors — even getting the Cleveland Institute of Music to sign on as beta testers. Finally, after more than a year of consultations and tinkering, they proudly unveiled their product.
Then they sat back and waited for the site to catch on.
Only one problem: No one seemed to find the site quite as useful as Knific and his partners. Months after debuting the site, they realized that very few people had any desire to pay for a service like theirs.
“It was a pretty big colossal failure to be quite honest,” Knific says.
Rather than accept the failure and give up on the idea altogether, Knific and his partners re-examined their process and realized they had approached the project in the entirely wrong way. They’d never asked potential customers what they were lacking. Instead, the partners had presumed a need and continued to work off of their own premonitions. “It was a huge lesson for us,” Knific says.
Contritely and humbly, Knific and his partners approached the Cleveland Institute of Music with a new set of questions. “We asked them: What are you lacking? What do you want as a customer? What are you willing to pay for?”
This time, Knific and his partners came away with an actual, quantifiable problem to solve — and when they eventually figured it out, the system went on to net them more than $50,000 in early sales and land them among BusinessWeek’s top 25 entrepreneurs under age 25… Continue Reading Here
CitizenGroove in BusinessWeek! Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25
September 27, 2010
What it does: Software for digitizing music school applications
Founders: John Knific, 23; Marc Plotkin, 24; Eric Neuman, 24; Kyle Napierkowski, 24
Website: citizengroove.com
Based: Cleveland
Music schools and university music departments typically receive hundreds or thousands of recorded auditions on CD or DVD from candidates. These have to be manually labeled and sent to reviewers who can’t come in to hear them. Four friends from Case Western University—John Knific, a pianist, Marc Plotkin, a saxophonist, Eric Neuman, a computer science major, and Kyle Napierkowski, a finance major—want to streamline the process. In March 2010, after raising $350,000 from angel investors and a state innovation grant, they designed a tool that music schools and applicants can access through each school’s application website. There, candidates upload and label their own auditions for administrators to access and review, eliminating the need for equipment, physical storage, and personnel. Schools pay fees based on the size of their applicant pools: Prices range from a few thousand dollars to over $10,000 per year. CitizenGroove launched the tool this fall and so far has seven clients, including the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music. Knific expects revenue to reach $100,000 by December. —VW
Source: http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/09/0923_young_entrepreneurs/5.htm
Innovation Fund Announces Investments in Six Technology Start-Up Companies
July 23, 2009
In the latest round of awards, the Innovation Fund, administered by the Lorain County Community College Foundation, is investing $300,000 in six Northeast Ohio based technology start-up companies. Funds from Ohio’s Third Frontier Program combined with matching local support and contributions from a variety of partners are used to make the Innovation Fund awards. These partners and collaborators include: the Ohio Department of Development, the University of Akron, Youngstown State University, the Youngstown Business Incubator, the Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE), JumpStart, Techlift and the Lorain County Commissioners.
The Innovation Fund advances the strategy to grow our own businesses and jobs in the region. “In this our seventh round of funding, we continued to be impressed with depth and quality of entrepreneurial ideas that are emerging from our region,” noted Lorain County Community College President Dr. Roy A. Church. “Including this round, the Fund has invested more than $2 million in 30 companies located in NE Ohio”
The Fund is seeding the development of new technology-based industries in Northeast Ohio that represent the jobs of the future. The fund supports Ohio’s overall strategy for technology-based economic development as evidenced by the Ohio Department of Development strategic plan. These Innovation Fund awards help to fill the funding need for businesses that are at the earliest stage of development, the difficult point in a business’s growth before they are mature enough to attract angel investors and venture capitalists.
There are two types of awards within the Innovation Fund: the first is a grant of up to $25,000 to help validate the technology; and the second is a pre-seed grant of up to $100,000, which requires a one-to-one match, and is designed to help validate the business concept.
CitizenGroove – Cleveland, Ohio – $25,000
CitizenGroove is developing an innovative, patent-pending, digital music organization system to first enhance all artists networking capabilities, second, to create an easy-to-use music discovery engine for music listeners, and third, to enable the aggregation and supply of critical music market data to industry professionals.
