The Cards You Collect: How Experience Shapes What You Build

What if the experiences that seem completely unrelated are actually preparing you for what comes next? Ben Ikwuagwu’s path to entrepreneurship has been anything but linear. He spent nearly a decade in global supply chain at Dell and Apple and then pursued a very different path as a performer—leading Sweet Matcha Band and playing stages including Carnegie Hall, ACL Live, and FOX. Today, he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Soundcheck Live. Those chapters weren’t a branding story. They were the training and each experience gave Ben a different set of skills—or “cards”—that he eventually learned to play together. At this Friday Coffee Meetup, Ben will share how seemingly unrelated experiences, failures, and career pivots can become unexpected advantages when you’re building something new. He’ll take us inside his first year building Soundcheck and talk candidly about the pivots, the misses, what actually stuck, and what he’s learned about earning people’s trust and getting customers, investors, and teammates to believe in what you’re building. ### About Ben Ben Ikwuagwu is Co-Founder and CEO of Soundcheck Live, an operations platform for pro duction companies, agencies, and talent teams. Soundcheck helps live-event operators move beyond spreadsheets, group texts, and memory to manage and scale their businesses. Ben brings together experience across corporate operations, live entertainment, and technology to build tools for an industry he knows firsthand.