RAW AND UNPLUGGED
Matty Gray
Gigco
Matt Gray, co-founder of live music platform GIGCO, breaks refreshingly from convention in his shunning of business bravado. Opening up about the highs and lows of his journey from family business to tech start-up, Matt shares his long-standing appreciation for music and his relentless pursuit of genuine growth, curiosity, enjoyment and connection.
Interview by Jane Imrie
Photographs by Christopher Owens
“I try not to use the word founder,” Matt said, suppressing a slight shudder. I nodded knowingly, feeling my own shoulders relax. I totally get it.
As someone who has met and interviewed countless entrepreneurs over the years, I am well-versed with the peacocking that often goes hand-in-hand with enterprise and ambition.
At the risk of ruffling a few feathers, I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t acknowledge the founder culture of tech fraternity and ‘the hustle’ that often pervades the business world.
That’s why chatting to Matt Gray, co-founder (sorry!) of live music app GIGCO, was very much a breath of fresh air.
“I thought about it every waking hour, and because I was at such a level of distress I wasn’t sleeping”
Instead of getting the hard sell, I was moved by Matt’s honesty about his journey and his willingness to share some of the more difficult times in his career, including the untimely collapse of his family’s flooring business.
“Just before lockdown, my family business went under. It was a very traumatic time,” he said, his candour striking me as refreshingly authentic.
“The focus of my life was on making that business a success. I thought about it every waking hour, and because I was at such a level of distress I wasn’t sleeping. I'm not saying that was wrong - at the time, it felt incredibly right.
“But now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see it was wasted energy. There are some things that you can't fix no matter how much time and effort and willpower you pour in, and all you do is cause yourself unbelievable amounts of stress and heartbreak.”
It is no surprise though, that someone with the courage to open up about such a painful experience has reserves of strength that they might not even be aware of - and this was indeed true for Matt: “Most people are more resilient than you think… I definitely found that I was more resilient than I thought.”
“In most cases, you can transfer skills. You might think that running a flooring business sounds nothing like running a tech business, or an app business, or a live music discovery platform business. But actually, there are way more similarities than there are differences.
“Starting a business is about meeting people, it’s about solving problems. It's about delivering on what you said you're going to do.”
With this in mind, Matt began the next stage of his career, drawing on his lifelong love of music and a long-standing friendship to realise a new dream.
Serendipity and circumstance brought Matt and his old friend Ben Kindlan back together: “I'd known Ben for many years, but he'd been out of the country, working in Laos running venues and being a musician over there.”
Through a series of socially distant walks and outdoor coffees, the pair began to develop what became GIGCO: “We had the basics of an idea, then we went to friends and family to raise a bit of money to get the prototype built…and it went from there.”
“Starting a business is about meeting people, it’s about solving problems. It's about delivering on what you said you're going to do.”
GIGCO is an interactive app which shows all live music events happening locally. As well as enabling users to tailor their searches with location services and genre filters, GIGCO allows users to plan nights out, let friends know where they’re going to see bands and directly links to ticket providers.
Matt is cautious of identifying too heavily as an entrepreneur. “I feel the same way about the word ‘founder’ as I did about ‘entrepreneur’ because I feel there's a certain deification of the concept,” he explained.
“I have definitely heard people in the corporate world misuse the term ‘entrepreneur’. I thought, you haven't got an effing clue what an entrepreneur does, you’re using it as a lazy bullshitty word for ‘businessman’.”
For Matt, real entrepreneurs focus less on posturing and more on progress, nurturing and maintaining a genuinely curious mindset: “I've been surrounded by people with real entrepreneurial spirit all my working life, and I’m grateful for that.”
“I have definitely heard people in the corporate world misuse the term ‘entrepreneur’. I thought, you haven't got an effing clue what an entrepreneur does”
When it comes to GIGCO’s mission, he is equally unwavering in his message. “We are passionate about the business, and we’re passionate about the music scene.”
This passion for music is evident in the stories Matt tells about his own experiences, from seeing the Everly Brothers at the age of 14, to DJing sporadically across Newcastle in early adulthood, and a once-in-a-lifetime night driving The Sugar Hill Gang from Bestival on the Isle of Wight to Gatwick - singing Isaac Hayes songs along the way in memoriam for the recently deceased soul legend.
No story gives a better glimpse into his commitment to the power of music to empower and connect people more than an auspicious blast from the past in the early days of the GIGCO journey.
“When we went to San Francisco, we were getting pressured all the time: ‘you’re a music business, you've got to talk about music.’ We realised we needed to articulate the music side of things, and why it's important.”
“It’s about fun, it’s about enjoyment, it’s about community, it’s about connection.”
It turned out that for Matt, this motivation was already an embedded part of his heritage, and he was about to unlock it.
“By pure coincidence, around that time I discovered a video on BBC Archive of my gran, who was a professional pub pianist. We'd known she'd been interviewed by the BBC, but none of us in the family had ever seen its original release, because it was back when Look North didn't do repeats and no one had a VHS video recorder.
“I watched it and all these memories came flooding back of her saying to us ‘You'll never feel what it feels like to be at a party where you're the person playing’. That realisation of what she got out of playing in the pubs and working men’s clubs of Newcastle was absolutely immense.”
For Matt, supporting both the experience of music fans and artists is a fundamental driver for him. “This understanding is absolutely part of why I’m doing this. It’s about fun, it’s about enjoyment, it’s about community, it’s about connection.”
At this, I am confident that I’m not just being fed buzzwords or an elevator pitch. I know it comes right from the heart.
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