Jake Udell (born February 21, 1989) is an American

music manager A talent manager (also known as an artist manager, band manager or music manager) is an individual who guides the professional career of entertainer, artists in the entertainment industry. The responsibility of the talent manager is to oversee t ...

, entrepreneur, founder of TH3RD BRAIN (a talent management company), former head of activation at Community.com, and founder of Metalink Labs. At the EDMbiz conference in

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

in June 2014, Udell moderated a panel featuring panelists in the industry under the age of 30. After viewing the panel, music industry analyst

Bob Lefsetz Robert Scott "Bob" Lefsetz (born April 22, 1953) is an American music industry analyst and critic. He is the author of ''The Lefsetz Letter'', an email newsletter and a blog. Background Lefsetz grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut and is a graduate ...

included an excerpt about Udell in his newsletter, "Jake is a new

Shep Gordon Shep E. Gordon (born October 18, 1945) is an American talent manager, Hollywood film agent, and producer. Gordon is featured in a 2013 documentary, '' Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon'', which was directed by Mike Myers. Life and educati ...

, maybe a new Irving or Geffen." Udell was featured in ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

'' 2016 30 Under 30 list in the Music category, and was listed as one of ''Billboard'''s 40 Under 40 in 2017.

Education and early career

At the age of 13, Udell began selling autographed sports memorabilia, most of which he attained by encountering athletes in-person, on

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

. Initially operating out of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, by the time he was 16 Udell had hired a team of people in different cities which allowed him to cover most of the major sporting events in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Udell attended

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

and briefly pursued a career as a performer before getting involved in music management and promotion. In 2011, Udell graduated from the

Kelley School of Business The Kelley School of Business (KSB) is an undergraduate and graduate business school at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana and Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. , approximately 7,500 full-time undergraduate and graduate students are ...

with a degree in entrepreneurship.Two successful IU alumni among those in Forbes' "30 Under 30" lists in tech and music
Indiana University Inc. January 17, 2016 After graduating, he worked for Campus Candy for one year as the company's

chief marketing officer A chief marketing officer (CMO), also called a global marketing officer or marketing director, or chief brand officer, is a corporate executive responsible for managing marketing activities in an organization. Whilst historically these titles may ...

.Schor, Alyss
Managing Success: A Talk with Jake Udell
''Odyssey''. January 17, 2016

TH3RD BRAIN

In early 2012 Udell founded TH3RD BRAIN, a talent management firm, claiming his motivation for becoming a manager was that Krewella was the first act he believed in more than his own performing career. Udell had attended

Glenbrook North High School Glenbrook North High School (also known as GBN) is a public high school in Northbrook, Illinois, a north suburb of Chicago, United States. It was established in 1953 and is part of the Northfield Township High School District 225. In 2022, it ...

in Chicago with Krewella. He vacated his CMO role at Campus Candy and assumed management responsibilities. TH3RD BRAIN has helped launch the careers of the platinum-selling electronic music group

Krewella Krewella is an American electronic dance music band from the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Illinois, United States, that formed in 2007. Their musical style has been mainly described as EDM, dance-rock, and dance-pop. However, Krewella's style ...

Grammy The Grammy Awards (stylized as GRAMMY), or simply known as the Grammys, are awards presented by the Recording Academy of the United States to recognize "outstanding" achievements in the music industry. They are regarded by many as the most pre ...

-nominated musician ZHU, and Spotify Spotlight Artist Gallant.American single certifications – Krewella – Alive
Recording Industry Association of America. ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'' noted Udell's social media strategy for Krewella and chronicled their meteoric rise in 2013, focusing on TH3RD BRAIN's work with blogs, narrative building, and free downloads. Udell's recording artist roster also includes

Pegboard Nerds Pegboard Nerds is a Scandinavian electronic music group, consisting of Norwegian DJ Alexander Odden and Danish DJ Michael Parsberg. The name Pegboard Nerds is an anagram of the duo's surnames, Odden and Parsberg. The duo first met in 2005 and for ...

Stephen Stephen or Steven is a common English first name. It is particularly significant to Christians, as it belonged to Saint Stephen ( grc-gre, Στέφανος ), an early disciple and deacon who, according to the Book of Acts, was stoned to death; ...

, and others.Buli, Li
How Krewella Leveraged Its Social Strategy Into A Career
''Billboard''. January 18, 2016 After a bidding war, Krewella signed to Columbia Records, and released their first album '' Get Wet'' in 2013. The album debuted at number 8 on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart. After selling out all 55 dates of the group's first North American headlining 2013 Get Wet Live tour, Krewella's single "Alive" reached platinum status in 2014. While still managing Krewella, in 2013 Jake Udell began developing TH3RD BRAIN's next client ZHU. In December 2014, "Faded" was nominated for

Best Dance Recording The Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Recording (formerly known as Best Dance Recording) is an award presented at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards, to recording artists f ...

at the

57th Grammy Awards The 57th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 8, 2015, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The show was broadcast live by CBS at 5:00 p.m. PST ( UTC−8). Rapper LL Cool J hosted the show for the fourth consecutive time. ...

, and ZHU continued to perform with a hidden identity and embraced non-traditional advertising methods with street art, flash announcements, and guerrilla

digital marketing Digital marketing is the component of marketing that uses the Internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services. Its development duri ...

. In November 2016, Udell interviewed music manager Shep Gordon. In 2017, Udell signed 2016

America's Got Talent ''America's Got Talent'' (often abbreviated as ''AGT'') is a televised American talent show competition, and is part of the global ''Got Talent'' franchise created by Simon Cowell. The program is produced by Fremantle (as well as distribut ...

winner

Grace VanderWaal Grace Avery VanderWaal (born January 15, 2004) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She is known for her distinctive vocals and has often accompanied herself on the ukulele. VanderWaal began her musical career by posting videos of her ...

to management under TH3RD BRAIN; and led the marketing campaign for her debut album '' Just the Beginning''. VanderWall said of Udell, "Jake doesn't think the way most people in the industry do, that makes him stand out to so many young artists." Udell was named one of ''Billboard'''s 40 Under 40 leading media industry executives in 2017. Udell writes a daily newsletter covering topics for the music industry.

TH3RD BRAIN Accelerator

In 2016, Udell launched TH3RD BRAIN Accelerator, a twelve-week program aimed at helping the development of promising musicians, modeled after tech entrepreneur Paul Graham's

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, Str ...

. The program helps teach artists how to grow their business and maximize their impact on culture and in the marketplace.

Community.com

Udell became head of activation for Community.com, Inc., a

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

company specializing in outreach, after launching a text-messaging campaign to reach musician's fans due to limitations he saw with social media algorithms. "The thing I kept noticing was that the algorithms were making it really challenging for us to reach our audiences," Udell told dot.LA.

Metalink Labs

In July 2021, Udell founde
Metalink Labs
becoming the company's CEO. He later left Community.com in September 2021, going full-time on "The place where NFTs hang out".https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakeudell/

References

External links

TH3RD BRAIN Official SiteJake Udell on Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Udell, Jake 1989 births Living people American talent agents American media executives American entertainment industry businesspeople American music industry executives Talent managers Kelley School of Business alumni