Entrepreneur and Musician Announces Opnr app to Bring a Fresh Beat to the Concert Industry
Andrea “Dre” Wallace is equal parts musician and businesswoman. As a musician, she’s been creating for as long as she can remember, participating in as many bands as she could while honing her craft as a producer of her own compositions. In college, she taught herself to DJ and began playing shows across Michigan, pushing for her big break, which happened to come while opening for another act.
“Budding musicians have to wear many hats aside from performing,” Wallace said. “They have to be their own marketer and agent, which often are not skills that come naturally. As a musician myself, with a background in software development, I knew I could bridge that gap.”
Her background gives her a unique perspective into the world of music, allowing her the opportunity to solve two problems many musicians face when entering the industry: understanding their social metrics and securing gigs and she is pulling all this together in a new entrepreneurial venture to launch an app called Opnr.
Opnr evens the playing field by giving artists and concert promoters an opportunity to connect. As Wallace points out, it’s difficult to get gigs as a musical artist, because concert organizers often book artists they already know in their shows, rather than trying out someone new. With Opnr, artists can connect additional social media and distribution accounts to create their own Electronic Press Kit, easily search for appropriate local opportunities and submit themselves for gigs.
The app also allows fans to ‘FAN-CLAIM’ an artist, which is a way for fans to share their support. Concert organizers can use the app to promote their concerts to targeted fan bases through FAN-CLAIM, while creating and managing performance opportunities. In its young life, Opnr has already gained more than 16,000 users on the platform: 7,000+ artists, 400+ concert promoters and 8,000+ fans.
Wallace graduated from Grand Valley State University and Western Michigan University with a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Upon graduation, she secured a full-time position as a project manager and learned how to code on the job while continuing to perform full-time.
Launching in 2019, her first project was building Fourtifeye, a cloud-based data aggregation platform that supplies artists with social media performance, distribution strategy and other metrics, which they often don’t know how to acquire or analyze on their own.
In 2021, Wallace partnered with entrepreneur, Waref Hawasli. Hawasli’s resume is vast: he earned a psychology degree from Wayne State University, secured the opportunity to be CEO and publisher of Rolling Stone Middle East, and lead an annual membership that offers private concerts in the United Arab Emirates called All Access Concept. He is the founder of OPNR, a platform designed to connect musicians with concert organizers. Hawasli decided to step away from the day-to-day on Opnr to pursue additional entrepreneurial opportunities, which gave Wallace the opportunity to assume the role of CEO and bring Fourtifeye into OPNR’s offerings.
In June, Opnr secured $10,000 in funding from the Michigan Business Accelerator Fund (BAF). And most recently, Opnr was added to the Spartan Innovations 2022 Grand Rapids Conquer Accelerator program. The program supports startups by providing $20,000 in seed funding from Red Cedar Ventures, access to mentors, access to follow-on funding and other essential resources.
“Opnr is going to change the way concert organizers and musical artists do their jobs across the country, which is exactly the kind of work we like to be involved in at Spartan Innovations and Red Cedar Ventures,” said Jeff Wesley, executive director of Spartan Innovations and Red Cedar Ventures. “During the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, live performances came to a halt. Opnr opens the door for these businesses to start back up again while providing opportunities for new artists to achieve success.”
“Since first meeting the Spartan Innovations team at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year, we’ve built a strong connection,” said Wallace. “It’s been an incredible partnership thus far and I’ve already been working with the team through Business Accelerator Fund and now the Grand Rapids Conquer Accelerator program.”
At the conclusion of the Conquer Accelerator program, Opnr will become a part of Red Cedar Ventures portfolio, moving more towards scaling and expansion. Wallace’s goals align with this trajectory as she continues to fundraise, attract investors and grow the OPNR team.
Learn more about Opnr.
About Spartan Innovations (SI)
Spartan Innovations is a venture development organization that designs and builds high-tech, high growth companies. As a subsidiary of the Michigan State University Foundation, SI is in the business of starting new businesses and runs a variety of programs such as Entrepreneurs-In-Residence, an extensive mentor network, and the Conquer Accelerator program that help us find, vet, and validate new business ideas that can be launched into venture fundable companies.
About the Michigan State University Foundation
The Michigan State University Foundation is a non-profit research foundation focused on the mission of helping Michigan State University achieve its objectives around economic development through the commercialization of intellectual property created by its faculty, staff, and students. The MSU Foundation manages an endowment built from decades of licensing revenue. In addition to providing over $10 million in research funding to MSU annually, the MSU Foundation operates three wholly owned subsidiary organizations – Spartan Innovations, Red Cedar Ventures, Michigan Rise Pre-Seed III Fund - focused on technology commercialization, new venture creation and economic development.