Riffle
The Insight
A lot of music is trapped, dying in a graveyard of voice notes and WeTransfer links because today's music software isn't built for how creative people actually think. The founders believe this isn't a discipline problem, it's a tools problem. Traditional DAWs like Logic and Ableton are built for engineers, not musicians: rigid, linear, and daunting. Riffle's bet is that the next generation of music creators needs a canvas, not a grid.
The Product
Riffle offers an infinite canvas where users can throw ideas in the form of pictures, lyrics, or sounds. Users can plug in physical instruments, record their own samples, or choose from a library of licensed sounds and even play virtual instruments via their computer keyboard. At the centre is Sous Chef, an AI co-producer that generates samples from natural language descriptions without taking over the creative process. The founders describe themselves as "anti-slop": it's a music company that uses AI, not an AI company that does music.
The Journey
Anurag grew up in Kolkata, started coding at 10, graduated from UIUC, and spent six years at Microsoft before doing an MBA at UChicago's Booth School. He returned to India on his 30th birthday to build from scratch. Deo grew up in Mumbai and has been making music since before he could form sentences, he taught himself drums, piano, guitar, and bass, ran a label that helped launch artists like Hanumankind, produced festivals, and ran a creative agency before moving to Goa to build a studio and take a sabbatical. A mutual connection brought them together; three conversations later, Riffle was born.
The Belief
Music was multiplayer long before software made it a single-player game. Fix the tools, and the music will follow.