Tunelark: (www.tunelark.com)

HQ: San Francisco, CA

Co-Founders: Aaron Clayton-Dunn, Desmond Sadler

The problem: Learning music has been proven to lead to improved memory, verbal intelligence, improved discipline — and most importantly, increased happiness. Yet, despite awareness of the positives of music lessons, connecting potential students with the right instructors can be a challenge. Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and fellow parents can yield mixed results, like personality mismatches or scheduling conflicts. And even if students connect, they don’t always keep up with their lessons for a myriad of reasons. On the instructor side, they can’t exactly outsource the business side of a private lesson practice (i.e., lesson scheduling, payment collection, marketing, lesson reminders).

Meet Tunelark: Tunelark is a marketplace for music lessons that aims to make music education more fun, efficient, and accessible for all — both the students, parents of students, and teachers. After a short online questionnaire, Tunelark identifies the best match for both student and instructor. This “best match” feature removes any potential ‘choice paralysis’ that may come up, and leads to happier students, and fulfilled instructors.

Why we’re betting on it:  Americans spend $50 billion per year on music lessons and the music learning market is highly fragmented (93% of lessons are conducted 1:1 privately) and outdated.

Tunelark’s music instruction-only offering and their instructor-first focus translates to a better learning experience. We believe their best in class platform tools and games for instructors and students reinvents a process into one that families can look forward to.

1. Tunelark makes it easier for students and parents to get connected to the best teachers for their unique needs. With just a quick survey, Tunelark sifts through a curated catalog to match students with highly qualified, pre-vetted instructors to help achieve their goals, on their schedule.

2. Tunelark provides proprietary learning software that improves learning speed and retention. With an offering of 150+ games (for any device or browser), the platform adapts to students’ skill levels as they progress through their music learning journey. Serving as both a teaching aid and/or study tool, the gamified lesson plans help teachers monitor progress and help students stay engaged by making learning more fun.

3. Tunelark handles the logistics to save more time for actual teaching and learning. Back-end headaches are eliminated with seamless discovery, booking, schedule upkeep, payments, and easy switching — all in one platform. 

The founders know music and tech equally. Aaron Clayton-Dunn (CEO), an award-winning pianist with a BA in music from Brown University, was a founding product team member at Figma. Desmond Sadler (CTO), who plays drums, guitar and knows music production, led engineering at MavenLink and Hover.to. These founders understand both sides of the marketplace and are deeply passionate about changing the way people learn music.

Our take: Having just scratched the surface of society’s unmet interest in music learning, we believe Tunelark is off to an electrifying start. From expert music instructors to the proprietary game-based teaching software to the streamlined platform, the structure is set for Tunelark to become a market leader in making music lessons more accessible and fun.

If you are part of the 69% of adults eager to learn and play an instrument now or if you have a child who would benefit, sign up on Tunelark.com before the end of November and receive a free music lesson by mentioning promo code “OVERTON”!