Johnny Hwin

About Johnny Hwin

Johnny Hwin is an artist, entrepreneur, and investor/advisor previously featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and SPIN Magazine. He’s currently a partner at Studio Management, a data-driven asset manager investing across public equities and venture capital.He most recently cofounded Thistle—a subscription-based health foods delivery company—as part of the early stage investment & incubation efforts of a private family fund of which he is a partner, and is the singer-songwriter/producer of Cathedrals, an indie-electronic duo The New York Times describes as \"R&B with 1980s rock swagger,\" currently featured in season 1 of Amazon Prime\'s new series \"Jack Ryan\".He was formerly co-founder and CEO of damntheradio, a Facebook marketing platform that powered promotional campaigns for artists such as Lady Gaga and The Black Keys, and brands such as Wrangler Jeans and Gatorade. damntheradio was acquired in January 2011 by email marketing startup FanBridge (investors include SoftTech VC, Lowercase Capital, 500 Startups, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, et al)—6 months after launch. In the spring of 2011 post-acquisition, he opened for Moby at SXSW, playing bass in the live outfit of electronic dream-pop artist Blackbird Blackbird. Prior to damntheradio, he studied social psychology and technology entrepreneurship at Stanford University, where he launched his first company from the Stanford Facebook App Class (profiled in the New York Times), a viral quiz platform that grew to 15M users and was sold in 2009 to SpeedDate (and later acquired by Match.com).A former course instructor in Stanford’s Technical Communications Program, he has lectured at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, University of Montana’s School of Entertainment Management, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music—and was a panelist at Wisdom 2.0 in 2011 on Experiments in Conscious Entrepreneurism. He currently spends his energy investing in and advising value-aligned companies, writing music, and cultivating a community of creators in his Brooklyn-based loft space 57

Experience

1. Partner, Chief Creative Officer

   Studio Management

   Jan 2020 — Present

   Studio Management is a data driven asset manager investing across public equities and venture capital. Our mission is to influence the flow of capital into companies that improve society & push culture forward. As public market investors, we’ve posted top decile returns using our data-driven approach. Prior to Studio we founded Sentieo, an AI driven Bloomberg terminal replacement, as a way to leverage alternative data to gain alpha in the public markets. Sentieo is now used by the world’s top investment funds.As venture investors, we finance value-aligned startups across stages and sectors, leveraging our experience as entrepreneurs. Companies we’ve co-founded have collectively raised over $60m in venture capital and have scaled to over 800 employees. We marry this experience as entrepreneurs with our data driven approach as investors to identify startups advancing societal health, productivity and well-being.Companies we\'ve built include:Thistle - Diet autopilot Thistle raises $5M for health food subscriptionshttps://techcrunch.com/2020/01/27/thistle-healthy-delivery/Sentieo - Sentieo raises $19M to be the AI-powered Bloomberg Terminalhttps://techcrunch.com/2018/10/30/sentieo/

Education

• Stanford University

  BA, Psychology | Focus on Social Psychology

  2003 — 2007

• Stanford University

  MS, Management Science & Engineering | Focus on Technology, User-Experience Design, and Entrepreneurship

  2007 — 2008

Skills

• Marketing Strategy
• UI/UX Design
• Customer Development
• Product Management
• Product Strategy
• Product Design
• Facebook Development
• Social Media Marketing
• Public Speaking
• Business Strategy
• Designs
• Facebook
• Email Marketing
• User-Centered Design
• Market Research
• Entrepreneurship
• Start-Ups
• Social Networking
• Social Media
• Marketing