The Product

Nostrajamus was a platform for people-powered music discovery. We all know (or are) that person who discovers a new song and is certain it's going to blow up. Nostrajamus was the platform for these discoveries. Each week, we ran a few song-picking contests. Users submitted up-and-coming tracks, and we calculated the track's Jam Points to rank the hottest tunes. Our algorithm especially liked it when the track was from an undiscovered artist. We rewarded the contest winners and the contest rankings transformed into a curated playlist for more casual music fans.

We built and grew Nostrajamus for 6 months in Charlottesville, Virginia before graduation and "real life" broke up the band. Shoot us a line if you want to get in touch.

Jam on,
The Nostrajamus Team

The Team

We were five friends at the University of Virginia. We all loved music and we all wanted to make things. We're still five friends, but we've cast a pretty wide net professionally and geographically. We still love music and making things.

  • Collin Waldoch (), Head of Product
  • Tony Olmert, Head of Marketing
  • Vincent Ning (), Frontend Engineer
  • Michael Paris (), Backend Engineer
  • Robby Koch (), Head of Design

The Archives

We like transparency and learning from our mistakes (and occasional successes). Here's the evolution of Nostrajamus through four pitch decks.

  • October 2014: Initial idea proposal for UVA's Entrepreneurship Cup.
  • November 2014: Pitch deck for the E-Cup final round. We got 2nd place.
  • March 2015: Pitch deck when we chatted with SoundCloud about a partnership.
  • May 2015: Presentation deck for the Collision conference and our investor meetings.

The Songs

At the end of the day, we really just wanted to surface great tunes, regardless of artist popularity or marketing budget. We were thrilled when Nostrajamus was identifying future chart-toppers a few days before the Hype Machine. Here's a few of the tracks that soundtracked our journey.