What a Music CDO Learned About Building for Students

A year ago, I was solely focused on my role as Chief Digital Officer at Universal Audio, building products for professional musicians. Today, I'm juggling that responsibility while co-founding a startup with a 22-year-old Twitch streamer, building an AI-powered campus assistant for college students. Here's what surprised me most about this journey.

The Unexpected Research Project

It started as market research over a year ago. I was working full-time in venture capital between my time at Fender and joining Universal Audio, diving deep into the gaming sector to understand emerging opportunities for a firm with significant gaming investments. That's how I found myself watching Riley's Twitch stream, not for entertainment, but for insights into how gaming communities operate.

Riley had just impulsively bought 1,600 7-inch LCD displays and was asking his chat what to do with them. I jokingly typed in: "What about smart mirrors for dorm rooms?"

That single chat message started a conversation that would eventually lead us to kick off this in earnest product last October—while I was settling into my new role at Universal Audio.

Musicians vs. Students: Same Problem, Different Context

For thirty years, I've built digital products for musicians—scaling Fender Digital from zero to $60M, building Live Nation's mobile app, running Warner Bros. Record's digital presence and famously: all the R.E.M. stuff, and now overseeing digital strategy at Universal Audio. Musicians face a particular challenge: they have powerful creative tools, but these tools are often disconnected, creating friction in the creative process.

Students, I discovered, face an eerily similar problem. They have access to more information and tools than any generation before them—Canvas, Google Calendar, university email, group chats, campus apps—but these tools exist in isolation. The cognitive overhead of managing scattered information sources creates the same kind of friction that musicians experience with disconnected gear.

The difference is scale and stakes. When a musician's workflow breaks down, they might miss a creative moment. When a student's information management breaks down, they might miss a deadline, fail a class, or feel overwhelmed enough to consider dropping out.

What I Learned About Product Intuition

Working with Riley has challenged everything I thought I knew about product development. Here's someone who has never formally designed a product, never worked at a tech company, never even held a traditional job—yet he speaks Product-Led Growth as a native language.

Riley is one of the best product designers I've ever worked with, and he's never done it before.

This shouldn't be possible, but it is, and here's why: Riley spent years building and managing online communities, and manipulating the products that come along with that. He understands user behavior at an intuitive level because he lived it. When he talks about how students interact with technology, he's not hypothesizing—he's describing his recent reality.

The Smart Mirror Detour

Before we pivoted to a mobile app, Riley and I spent weeks deep in the hardware rabbit hole. We researched displays, explored manufacturing partnerships, designed interfaces for dorm room mirrors that would show students their schedules while they got ready.

The hardware exploration wasn't wasted time—it forced us to think deeply about the context in which students actually live. Dorm rooms are small, shared, chaotic spaces. Students are constantly moving between locations. They don't need another device; they need their existing device to be smarter about their specific context.

That realization led to our pivot moment: the call where we decided this should be an app, that this could be a company, and that we should be co-founders.

Building with AI as a Force Multiplier

Traditional startups hire specialists—engineers, product managers, designers, data scientists. Riley and I are building what he calls "the brain"—a self-documenting AI system that augments our capabilities rather than replacing human expertise.

This AI-enabled workflow lets us go from ideation on a call to working prototype in hours, not weeks. We're essentially doing the work of 15 people with a team of two, not through superhuman effort, but through thoughtful application of AI to amplify our existing skills.

The key insight: AI works best when it enhances human intuition rather than replacing it. Riley's product intuition combined with AI-powered execution creates a development velocity I've never experienced, even with fully-staffed teams.

Juggling Two Full-Time Jobs

I'm still the Chief Digital Officer at Universal Audio, which means I'm currently juggling two demanding roles. It's exhausting, but it's also given me a unique perspective on how different industries approach similar problems.

At Universal Audio, we're constantly thinking about how to make complex audio technology accessible to creators. With DormWay, we're thinking about how to make complex campus life manageable for students. The principles are similar: reduce cognitive load, provide contextual intelligence, and get out of the user's way.

The time constraint has actually been beneficial—it forces us to be incredibly focused on what matters most.

Students Are Different Users

Building for students has taught me that demographic assumptions in tech are often wrong. Students aren't just "young consumers"—they're people navigating a unique life stage with specific constraints and opportunities.

Time horizons are different. Students think in semesters, not quarters or years. Their entire world reorganizes every few months.

Social dynamics are different. Students are simultaneously independent and dependent, private and social, confident and insecure—often within the same day.

Technology adoption is different. Students will try anything once, but they'll abandon it immediately if it doesn't provide obvious, immediate value. We call this "creation of Holy Shit moments."

Context switching is constant. A student might go from studying chemistry to attending a club meeting to working a campus job to socializing—all within a few hours. Their tools need to adapt to these rapid context changes.

The Validation That Surprised Me

We haven't started formal user testing yet, but the early validation signals are stronger than anything I've seen in traditional enterprise software. Riley uses the product daily as his primary campus management tool. We're seeing self-reinforcement patterns in the AI system. Students who've seen early demos immediately understand the value proposition.

Most telling: when Riley cold-pitched our concept to a group of seasoned investors, their response was "Where did you find him?" They weren't just impressed by the product—they were impressed by the depth of understanding of a market they thought they knew.

What's Next

We're approaching our launch at the University of Michigan. Our goal isn't just to build another productivity app—it's to create the contextual intelligence layer that makes college less chaotic and more navigable.

For me, this represents a shift from building products for people who've already figured out their creative process (musicians) to building products for people who are still figuring out everything (students). It's a harder problem, but potentially a more important one.

The music industry taught me how to scale creative tools. Building for students is teaching me how to scale human potential—while somehow finding time to sleep.

Ethan Kaplan is Chief Digital Officer at Universal Audio and co-founder of DormWay. Follow the journey at making.dormway.app or @dormway.