Building a Music Town: How Juke is Reviving Live Music One City at a Time

Building a Music Town: How Juke is Reviving Live Music One City at a Time

Griff Eaton, founder of Juke, joins Paul Anthony for OpStart's first in-person interview to unpack how a frustrated night at the Livery in Benton Harbor turned into a venture-backed platform now reshaping live music in cities across the country. Griff walks through the three barriers that kill the simple act of tipping a local artist (no cash, awkward walk to the stage, no idea what songs they actually play) and the PowerPoint-and-paper-printouts prototype he ran with the Justin Stoblin band to prove people would pay if those frictions disappeared. From there the conversation moves through a real founder's gauntlet: relaunching after COVID killed his first wedge, winning Notre Dame's McCloskey New Venture Competition for $50K, getting the call from Tim Connors, joining Platform Venture Studio, and going upmarket with Kids Bop's Live Nation tour, Wembley, Red Rocks, and a surreal Zoom with Matchbox Twenty during the Barbie bump. Griff is candid about what didn't work, why chasing huge tours wasn't a sustainable channel for Juke, and how he and the team came back to the original problem with a sharper lens. The result is "Music Town," Juke's city-partnership model where economic development teams, venues, and local artists plug into a single platform, with QR codes routing every show in a city to one place. Griff and Paul close on the lessons every first-time founder needs: when to pivot, when to commit, why fun is a real competitive advantage, and how to keep building when the easy answers are gone. In this episode, you'll learn: ● The three barriers that block live-music tipping and song requests, and why removing them changes the economics for local artists ● How Griff validated the idea with a PowerPoint slideshow, paper song lists, and a TV he carried in from his living room ● What winning the McCloskey New Venture Competition actually unlocked beyond the prize money ● Why joining Platform Venture Studio reshaped Juke's go-to-market and what founders should weigh before going the studio route ● What stadium tours with Kids Bop and conversations with Matchbox Twenty taught Griff about scale, timing, and creative production ● Why Juke pivoted back to local venues and built the "Music Town" city-partnership model ● The case Griff makes for keeping fun at the center of an early-stage company, and why it compounds Connect: ● OpStart: https://www.opstart.co ● Paul Anthony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-anthony-8a256087/ ● Griff Eaton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/griffin-juke/ ● Juke: https://juke.band/search Hashtags: #OpStart #Juke #LiveMusic #StartupPodcast #FounderStory #MusicTown #SouthBend #Elkhart #VentureStudio #SmallBusiness #StartupLife #LocalMusic #Entrepreneurship #MusicTech #FoundersJourney