September 5, 2012

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Many young professionals have been faced with unexpected layoffs.

A rising number of unemployed professionals contribute to an over-qualified workforce struggling to cope with a new economic landscape.

The United States unemployment rate is still more than 8 percent; which creates a highly competitive job market. Global youth unemployment echoes the trend and is expected to rise globally to 12.9 percent by 2017 as more young people leave the workforce and the euro crisis spreads to emerging economies.

Faced with staggeringly high unemployment rates and dwindling conventional work options, many young professionals turn to entrepreneurship. Former VP of Marketing for a national urban retail chain, turned entrepreneur, Dae Bogan is one of them.

After being laid off, Dae Bogan decided to take a promising business concept he’d been working on while employed and sell it back to his former boss.

“I was laid off in April, after nearly 4 years with the company, as a  part of several middle management cutbacks prior to fully developing the concept (a new in-store music video platform) and implementing it,” says Bogan.

After being laid off, he launched the first free cloud-based music video, digital signage solution for retail businesses — including music video distribution and promotional platforms for artists.

Realizing that his newly created business model would solve problems for his former employer and other companies he launched his entrepreneurial venture — sooner than expected. “I turned my idea, as an employee of the retailer, into a music tech startup. My former employer became our first customer, giving ChazBo Music the rights to 150 locations nationwide.”

Learn how Dae Bogan launched his tech music startup and why you should never burn bridges.

How I Got Started:

I was the VP of Marketing at a leading urban contemporary clothing retail chain where we serviced a “hip-hop inspired” customer base. In our stores, we played music videos to support our store environment and enhance the shopping experience for our target customers.

The problem I faced (as the person solely responsible for providing our 100+ US locations with music videos) was that the owner of the company was not willing to pay for a traditional music video service.

So, I built relationships with artists and record labels who would send me music videos for free. However, we grew tired collecting video files and compiling, duplicating, and sending DVDs to store managers across the country. Our stores would go months with the same old DVD’s and therefore, we would receive hundreds of complaints from store employees and customers.

So, I developed a concept to build a cloud-based music video delivery and digital signage platform so artists and music labels wouldn’t have to send DVDs to stores.

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