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Welcome back to the Collective. Events are on our mind these days. After all, in the past week we’ve launched an absolute storm of a lineup for New York Tech Week, including aperitivo night, a midday yoga session, a conversation at the intersection of AI and branding, and our Coeus Collective Pitch Showcase Presented by Seedlegals with support from J.P. Morgan Innovation Economy. RSVP to attend or apply to speak at all events here! We’ll see you the first week of June in NYC.

So, in the context of events being top-of-mind these days, we wanted to publish an interview and newsletter this week surrounding a style event that tends to bring us all together around the globe: live music.

Because whether it is through our work with Rolling Loud or the work of Andrew Ousley’s Death of Classical (our interview with Andrew is live now on our YouTube channel), the time for disruption in live music experiences is now.

As Andrew told us: “we put 50 people in a crypt.” And at the end, people come out bawling.

Let’s enter the catacombs. (Trust us, you’ll see what we mean.)

— By Antonio DiMeglio and Leon Li

Into the Crypt

Enter Andrew Ousley, Founder of Unison Media and Death of Classical.

Ousley asks himself: "How can I get people to want to come to a show so much that they are just knocking down the door?"

His answer wasn't simply booking better performances. It was completely reimagining the context in which classical music is experienced.

Ousley has built a successful business model around staging performances in crypts, catacombs, and cemeteries, creating immersive, multisensory experiences that connect deeply with audiences. "We surrounded it with a broader experience. We do whiskey tastings, cocktails, mezcal, food, snacks, and stuff like that, charcuterie. People come and gather before, and they break bread, they drink, we do tastings."

This approach offers a striking contrast to major festivals like Coachella, where the financial burden on attendees continues to grow despite a lack of experience upgrades.

As festivals become increasingly expensive experiences, with Coachella passes up from $375 in 2015 to $649 in 2025, many attendees find themselves financing not just tickets but their entire festival experience, spreading costs over months.

Ousley's model suggests an alternative path: instead of simply raising prices and relying on financing plans, create experiences of such distinctive value that they become must-attend events, even at premium price points. The key is delivering substance that justifies the cost.

"There is this profound hunger for authentic shared experience of something that matters," Ousley notes. "So much of what is flung at us today is inconsequential, or is meant to manipulate us, or meant to kind of trigger our basest emotions."

While major festivals offer spectacular scale and star power, Ousley focuses on creating intimate moments of profound emotional impact. As he observes, "We put 50 people in a crypt, and by the end of the show, everybody is just crying their eyes out. And that sort of vulnerability and catharsis, that to me is what I'm much, much more interested in."

This approach taps into the same underlying desire driving the popularity of financing plans: the pursuit of meaningful experiences that break through the noise of everyday life. The difference lies in how that desire is addressed: through financial engineering that makes experiences more accessible, or through experience design that makes them more powerful.

Beyond Instagram

The success of both massive festivals and boutique experiences reveals an important insight about today's audiences. While creating visually compelling, shareable moments remains important, the most successful events deliver substance beyond aesthetic appeal.

Ousley articulates this brilliantly when discussing the experience economy: "One of the issues with the experience economy and the way that people meet that need is the focus is purely on is it Instagrammable, is it tiktokable? And that alone is not enough."

He continues, "Our spaces, they're this, you know, when you go into this beautiful catacomb or this incredible crypt, they are wildly Instagrammable and really like visually compelling and sort of experience-focused... But to me, that is only the sort of the top layer. There has to be a deep substance."

This perspective offers a crucial lesson for festival organizers. Creating an Instagram backdrop isn't sufficient. Today's consumers increasingly demand experiences that deliver emotional resonance and authentic connection, even as they're willing to pay for these experiences in installments through BNPL services.

Enter The Wellness Revolution

An unexpected trend reshaping the festival landscape is the integration of wellness alongside high-quality performances. Traditionally associated with excess and indulgence, music festivals are now embracing a more balanced approach that recognizes attendees' desire for meaningful experiences without physical depletion.

Last year’s Stagecoach festival also featured wellness-focused offerings like Plunge's "Recovery Rodeo.”

This shift reflects Generation Z's broader attitudes toward health and well-being, but it also addresses a fundamental insight about quality experiences that Andrew recognized by creating Death of Classical, as the wellness movement doesn't compromise quality: it elevates it.

Ousley's careful curation of both music selections and complementary experiences shows how the surrounding context can enhance appreciation of the core content. The success of Death of Classical proves that audiences respond enthusiastically when exceptional performances are presented within a thoughtfully designed holistic experience.

The question for live music organizers is no longer simply about booking the biggest acts, but rather creating environments where attendees can fully engage with exceptional performances, on an emotional, physical, and spiritual level.

Perhaps the key to hedonism is being at balance with mind, body, and spirit.

Takeaways for Founders & VCs

Time to bring it all together!

1. Find the underlying need beneath the surface demand: Ousley recognized that a lack of interest in the core offering (classical music) wasn't the problem - it was the delivery mechanism. "There is this profound hunger for authentic shared experience of something that matters," he explains. For founders, this means looking past obvious product improvements to identify deeper emotional needs your offering could satisfy.

2. Create differentiation through context, not just content: Death of Classical's success comes from reimagining where performances happen, not just who performs. "We found spaces, the first of which was this crypt up in Harlem, this extraordinary gothic chapel," Ousley notes. For startups, this suggests that competitive advantage can come from transforming how users experience your product rather than just improving features.

3. Balance innovation with substance: While wellness brands at Coachella created Instagram-worthy experiences, they made sure to deliver genuine recovery benefits. As Ousley warns, "One of the issues with the experience economy is the focus is purely on 'is it Instagrammable?' And that alone is not enough." Successful startups must ensure their innovations solve real problems rather than just generating buzz.

4. Use complementary offerings to expand your TAM: Plunge didn't compete with the festival experience - they enhanced it by serving adjacent needs. Founders should identify complementary services that can broaden their market without diluting their core offering.

5. Identify counterintuitive market signals: While conventional wisdom suggests Gen Z avoids excess, the BNPL data reveals they're willing to stretch financially for valued experiences. Similarly, the success of wellness options at typically indulgent festivals indicates changing consumer priorities. Founders should look for these counterintuitive signals that may indicate untapped market opportunities.

6. Create community through shared rituals: Both Ousley's pre-concert gatherings and Plunge's Recovery Rodeo created communal moments that deepened the overall experience. "People come and gather before, and they break bread, they drink, we do tastings," Ousley explains. Startups should design community touchpoints that transform typically transactional relationships into emotional connections.

7. Find venture opportunity in cultural shifts: The explosive growth of wellness offerings in not just music festivals but DTC products, mobile apps, and throughout culture signals a market in early expansion. For VCs, identifying these emerging consumer behavior shifts before they reach mainstream adoption can be key to finding the emerging companies that will lead these generational shifts.

In Conclusion

The musical festival landscape continues to evolve, with successful innovators recognizing that today's audiences seek more than just Instagram moments or simple entertainment. They want meaning, connection, and increasingly, balance.

Our own experience with Rolling Loud demonstrates how adding a sustainability initiative (Rolling Green) created additional value by aligning the festival with attendees' values. Startups that similarly align their offerings with deeper cultural and generational values can build stronger emotional connections with customers while addressing previously overlooked needs.

The festival market, once dominated by a few established players, now supports numerous specialized innovations that enhance rather than replace the core experience. This suggests a similar opportunity exists in many mature markets: not to displace incumbents entirely, but to carve out valuable niches by addressing complementary needs the incumbents have overlooked.

Whether you're staging classical music in crypts or developing the customer journey for your B2B SaaS startup, the key is recognizing that beneath the desire for memorable experiences lies something more fundamental: the human need for meaningful connection in an increasingly disconnected world.

Welcome to the Collective

If you’re new here: welcome! Coeus Collective is a founder-powered media and community platform elevating the most curious minds in entrepreneurship, technology, and venture capital. Through podcasts, events, and digital media storytelling, we help founders and VCs develop their audience of builders and innovators. Past events have featured Daniel Lubetzky (KIND Snacks, Shark Tank), Michael Baum (Splunk), and Siya Raj Purohit (OpenAI).

Typically, this newsletter revolves around an idea we can’t stop thinking about (like The Dopamine Economy), a behind-the-scenes look into what our team is working on (like this article about our live podcast recording with Siya Raj Purohit of OpenAI), or even a deep-dive into an iconic company or individual in our industry (as we did in our Icons Series: IBM article).

Our goal is to provide a unique perspective for a community of Founders & VCs who read in between the headlines. We hope to see you stay tuned to our newsletter, podcast (out now on YouTube and all podcast platforms), and IRL events!

See you next week,

The Collective

Notebooks in the crypt! 👀

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