One of the biggest challenges faced by music instructors is keeping students engaged outside of the classroom. An entrepreneurial team of musicians and instructors is attempting to solve this problem with Collabra, an innovative music education and collaboration platform.

Founder and CEO Ron Karroll developed Collabra in 2012 with the initial intention of providing a place for band members and other musicians to share music and collaborate online. Early in the platform’s development, he realized that it had potential far beyond this original purpose, namely in the field of performing arts and music education. In an effort to tap into this field, Karroll reached out to now Chief Marketing Officer Leora Nosko.

While Nosko’s background in sales was a sure benefit to the company, her biggest strength came from the fact that she has always been a performer and instructor first. Having students of her own, Nosko saw firsthand how difficult it could be to keep kids engaged with and excited about their art. This helped to target specific needs within the music education community and take Collabra to a whole new level. 

In the short time that Karroll and Nosko have been working together, they have added three members to their team and taken Collabra from a single-task application to a complete learning management system for the arts. In its current state, provides students and instructors with a suite of tools that allow for the recording of lessons with the instructor, submission of student practice videos and completion of online assessments. All videos exchanged between the student and instructor are automatically archived so that they can be reviewed at any time. In addition, time-stamped comments can be made on the videos, allowing instructors to point out important points of the lesson and helping students to seek further clarification on what they are learning.

On top of the impressive progress the Collabra team has already made, last month they were chosen as one of six companies chosen to participate in Capital Innovators’ fall accelerator program. Based in St. Louis, Capital Innovators provides seed funding and mentorship to tech startups and has consistently ranked as one of the top-ten accelerators in the United States. In the few weeks since the program has begun, Nosko and her team have already seen major improvements with the platform and are excited about where Capital Innovators will take Collabra in the future.

Want to set up a demo with Collabra? Visit collabramusic.com/contact-us/schedule-a-demo/