Panos Panay

Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship

Panos is the founder and current Managing Director of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (BerkleeICE) as well as a passionate entrepreneur, educator and startup mentor. As the founder of Sonicbids, he created the leading platform for bands to book gigs and market themselves online, building a subscriber network of 550,000 bands and 35,000 promoters from over 100 countries. He led the company as CEO for 13 years, from its inception until after its successful acquisition in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners. Panos is also the co-founder of the Open Music Initiative, which has brought together over 140 leading music, media, technology industry organizations and academic institutions to create a blockchain-based open protocol for uniform identification of musical rights owners and creators. At Berklee, his work and approach to entrepreneurial and innovation pedagogy builds heavily on the concepts of music thinking, and in particular jazz, as a catalyst for creative breakthroughs in business, life and art; and has spearheaded multi-disciplinary collaborations between Berklee and MIT; the design firm IDEO; and Brown University. He writes frequently about startups and entrepreneurship for blogs and publications such as Forbes, WSJ Accelerators and Fast Company; and guest lectures and speaks at many universities and events around the world. Awards include: Fast Company's "Fast 50" honor; Inc Magazine's "Inc 500”; Mass Hi-Tech All Stars; Berklee College’s Distinguished Alumnus Award; and Boston Business Journal’s “40 under 40” and BostInno's 50 on Fire. Sonicbids and Panos were also profiled in a chapter in the Financial Times-published book "Outsmart" by best-selling author Jim Champy. Passion point: reaffirming the value of contemporary music education in a fast-paced, globalized technology driven world.