Interview with Alec Ellin, CEO of Laylo

Alec Ellin’s path is anything but traditional. I first heard about Laylo a few years back and it’s exploded since. Alec and I met a few months ago, and I knew I had to share his story.

Our goal is to showcase non-traditional paths and emerging areas of opportunity for the next generation.

Laylo is a drop CRM” platform that lets 10,000+ artists, creators, and event organizers build fan lists and execute drops (music, merch, tickets, etc.).

They just dropped a huge report that should be required reading for Talent or anyone working with Talent.

Three takeaways from our convo:

🧠 He’s one of the most genuine people I’ve met in the industry without an ego, which has allowed him to make his own luck and build his own success. A common theme for people we interview.

🧠 Pivoting, and knowing when to pivot, can lead to more success than just continuing to grind it out at a table you don’t have a seat at.

🧠 He has some awesome pieces of advice, and I’m going to steal them at some point.

His journey in his own words is below:

AvA: What was your first role in the Industry, and how did you get your foot in the door? 

Ellin: I started a music blog in 11th grade with no business intent; I just wanted to interview my favorite artists and share some great music every day. Two years later, Isaac Heymann, who I previously sat next to during an internship at Leverage Management, reached out to say that he was now the VP of A&R at Epic Records. He’d been following the blog and wanted me to come work under him. That was my first step into the music industry.

AvA: What was the exact moment you realized you wanted to stop chasing other people’s dreams and build your own? 

Ellin: Working at Epic was a really unique experience because I got to see what A&R really meant. Up until that point, I was doing my own “A&R” for the blog, but seeing firsthand what went into finding, signing, and developing artists made me realize that the labels at the time simply weren’t moving at internet speed. They thought of Soundcloud as a niche internet thing. After trying to sign a few up-and-coming artists (Zhu, Logic, and The Chainsmokers, to name a few) and being blocked by higher-ups, I realized I wanted to get into tech to bring the music industry into the startup age. 

AvA: A lot of young people in entertainment feel stuck between “waiting their turn” and taking a risk. What were some things you weighed when taking that leap of faith? 

Ellin: It really is just about taking initiative outside your “scope”. I’ve never seen a success story in entertainment that didn’t involve someone doing something that wasn’t asked of them, whether it be Jimmy Iovine, David Geffen, or Rick Rubin. They never asked for permission; they just made things happen until people realized they put in more hours and learned faster than anyone else.

AvA: You often talk about artists “owning” their audience instead of renting it from platforms. For someone in the trenches (an artist, manager, or agent), why does that distinction actually matter? 

Ellin: Music is the only industry where the standard is that the “brand” (the artist) doesn’t know their own customers. Nobody would accept Gucci or Apple saying they didn’t own their customer relationship, so why do we accept that in music? Artists should know who bought their tickets, who streamed their song, and who wears their merch. 

Renting platforms made more sense in the previous era, where the artist wasn’t the one driving these things - it was radio and promoters - but today, 90% of fan actions are driven by the artist directly connecting with their fans. In the digital age, there’s a lot of power in building an owned audience. 

AvA: If you were starting in entertainment today, what roles or skills would you focus on that didn’t exist five years ago? 

Ellin: I once got an incredible piece of advice from another entrepreneur who told me that any time a new social network launches, he immediately starts posting on it. The idea being, if the network takes off, he built an audience early. If it doesn’t, nobody would even know, so there’s no downside. Starting a blog in the early days of blogging literally changed my life and got me my first job. Anyone in entertainment today needs to be thinking the same way, especially with AI. You should experiment with every tool and figure out how to become one of the earliest adopters. It will set you apart from everyone waiting to see if it takes their job.

AvA: Everyone in the industry is trying to engineer “hype” on social feeds that are completely flooded with content. What are the most creative tactics you’ve seen that actually moved fans beyond just posting a countdown? 

Ellin: Generally, I think the simplest answer here is the right answer. Build an audience around who you are as a person. If you don’t, you’ll either get famous for something you don’t want to do, or you’ll never build an audience because nobody knows if they relate to you. One of my favorite examples of this is Laufey. She was already exploding in popularity for her music, but then she went and launched a book club. I don’t think anyone told her to do that. She just loves reading. Now she has one of the largest book clubs in the world, and it gives her fans another reason to love her.

AvA: What’s one thing about founding a company that no one told you? 

I have yet to find anyone who failed that just kept learning and testing. That doesn’t mean you should do the same thing forever if it’s not working, but if you give up, you’re just another person who “failed”. You cannot fail if you don’t stop learning.

AvA: If you could leave a voicemail to your younger self just starting in the Industry, what would you say? 

Ellin: Asking for help is not a sign of weakness.

More Mail Cart:
Interview with Jade Sherman, Senior Partner @ Head of Digital at Gersh

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