Overview

Gender

female

Investor Type

Angel

Investor Stage

Seed

Robin Sloan Bechtel is a Grammy-nominated new media executive best known for pioneering the Internet starting in the early '90's at the web's infancy. Robin is widely recognized as a matchmaker of Silicon Valley and Hollywood. She’s credited for discovering, what were then unknown startups like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Spotify and being the first to partner them with entertainment and popular culture. For the past two decades, Robin’s built unprecedented strategic partnerships between the entertainment world and startups, fueling growth and mainstream success for tech companies.

Starting the first new media division in the entertainment industry in 1993, Robin’s concepts created music and tech history for the biggest bands, artists and celebrities in the world. She created one of the first websites on the Internet, for a band which garnered global press coverage and won design awards. In 1997, she sold the music industry’s first digital single, which the Wall Street Journal called “a turning point for an industry.” Her digital strategy for Radiohead included streaming an album online for the first time. Global media coverage credited this as the reason that the band’s album debuted at number one, which helped shift the industry’s fear of sharing music online. At Warner Bros. Records, Robin built the music industry’s first mobile, digital music and merchandising divisions which generated hundreds of millions in revenue to the label. She worked with Apple to launch iTunes and discovered and partnered with YouTube, marking the entertainment industry’s first partnership with the online video platform.

Robin has been instrumental in creating the digital brands of top talent including Madonna, Radiohead, Britney Spears, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Josh Groban, Michael Buble and Coldplay.

Her projects have been featured in The Wall St. Journal, New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg, Time, Wired, Fortune, LA Times, Tech Crunch, Mashable, People and US Weekly. Her career has been profiled in two New York Times Bestsellers: The Long Tail and Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Crash Of The Record Industry. She was named one of the Most Powerful Women in Entertainment by the Hollywood Reporter and one of Music’s Top 100 Most Influential People.

Robin is an investor in Uber, Everlane, Philz Coffee, Path, Beautylish and an advisor to Bow & Drape. The valuations of her portfolio companies combined is over $40B.