COMPANY

Name: Cosynd

Legal Name: Cosynd, Inc.

Location: New York City, New York

Founded: 2016

Founder(s): Cassidy Williams, Jennifer Newman Sharpe, Jessica Sobhraj, Leo Larkpor

Website: https://www.cosynd.com/

Social Media: 63 followers on LinkedIn, 2381 followers on Twitter, 28 likes on Facebook

Industry: Global Recorded Music Industry

Size: $19.1B in 2018 (Source: IFPI)

Introduction

New York-based Cosynd (“co-signed”) provides affordable, automated and easy access to legal support to manage ownership of creative content such as music, video, visual arts, and literature. 

This not only reduces conflicts between collaborators but also does away with exorbitant lawyer fees, while ensuring that your creative inputs are legally protected.

The platform verifies critical legal details such as ownership percentage of individual contributors and their exclusive copyright rights. It also makes it simple for collaborators to register their content with the U.S. Copyright Office. 

Cosynd founder Jessica Sobhraj told Magnetic Magazine that, in the near future, Cosynd will allow creators to register their content with other agencies such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

The Product

Did you know that, by default, all content collaborators have an equal claim of ownership and rights under U.S. Copyright law? It doesn’t matter how small their contribution is. 

Think this is unfair? Content creators can prevent such an unmerited split of ownership and sale proceeds by using Cosynd’s standard suite of copyright-related agreement templates. 

Cosynd automates the creation of split sheets that documents ownership by percentage, a more detailed premium ownership agreement that outlines the licensing rights, and work for hire agreements. 

Trimming down on the legalese, Cosynd’s intuitive platform leads creators through the process of building their customized agreement by asking simple questions. By automatically filling in certain basic collaborator details, the app reduces effort and time that goes into typing the same data into multiple fields. 

Users can create, negotiate, and execute content ownership with their partners on this platform. It even allows creators to share the legal document with their attorneys to review, if required. 

Interestingly, unlike other platforms, Cosynd requires real e-signatures which makes the contract easy to verify for platforms such as YouTube. This app also doesn’t let collaborators change their mind about the agreement once it is signed.

Cosynd works on a freemium model. The basic tier offers unlimited split sheets for free. If users wish to have access to more agreement types and copyright registrations, they need to pay-up a one-time fee of $29.99 per application. They could alternatively, opt for a $10 per month to $150 per year membership for unlimited access to these services. 

Origin and Founding Team

Founders of Cosynd were regularly hearing about instances of piracy, theft and income loss faced by the community of creative content creators. Soon, they figured that the issue lay with the fact that most creators were not ready (financially or time-wise) to legally sort out content ownership details, right at the start. 

It is estimated that $2.5B+ in royalties are yet to be unclaimed due to the unavailability of conclusive ownership data. Therefore, Sobhraj and her team decided to set up Cosynd in 2016. 

“There is more content being created and more opportunities to monetize that content than ever before, which makes documenting ownership of that content a crucial step from the onset ” said Sobhraj in a press note. “Without these agreements in place, liability increases, income goes unclaimed, disputes arise, lawsuits ensue, and we all suffer the losses. We built Cosynd to give creators a simple, affordable, and easy way to establish ownership and avoid those pitfalls.”

Sobhraj, who is also President of the non-profit Women in Music, is one of the main spokespersons for Cosynd. And the startup has built a very inclusive team that comprises of 80% female, 60% minority, and 20% veterans .

Performance and Trends

Cosynd received seed funding of $100k in March 2017, according to Crunchbase. Consynd was accepted into Monarq Incubator (2018) and Pipeline Angels, an organization of angel investors. It was also a participant in the 2019 Multicultural Innovation Lab Cohort, an accelerator program for technology and technology-enabled startups.