He founded the Atom Factory talent agency. He manages Lady Gaga, and when she wanted her very own social network for her millions of “little monsters”, he co-founded Backplane. And he doesn’t do weekly team meetings. Troy Carter is a general badass, and will be at Disrupt NY.
Carter’s Atom Factory embodies the essence of a lean startup: With its small team, the company is making waves in the entertainment world by constantly reinventing itself and creating products based on interactions with fans.
“We want to increase their income and their profile by building their relationship with fans. Fans are looking to be more part of their world,” Carter once told Fast Company.
Enter Backplane, Carter’s next step for Lady Gaga’s massive online presence. The startup is funded by Google Ventures, Tomorrow Ventures, SV Angel, and Menlo Ventures and aims to serve fans by bringing together all of an artist’s online profiles into one source. The platform, which just expanded to 10 more artists, powers LittleMonsters.com, a site that more than 1 million of Gaga’s rabid fans call home.
Oh and Atom Factory’s tagline happens to be “Discover. Develop. Disrupt.” Perfect.
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Troy Carter
Chairman CEO, Atom Factory
Co-Founder Backplane
Troy Carter is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Atom Factory, an entertainment management company defining popular culture globally. As a digital and social entrepreneur, Carter has defined the careers of numerous recording artists, including multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winner Lady Gaga. Carter began his career in Philadelphia working for Will Smith and James Lassiter’s Overbrook Entertainment, and joined Bad Boy Entertainment in 1995 where he worked with disruptors such as Notorious B.I.G. In 1999, Carter formed the boutique talent management company, Erving Wonder. Erving Wonder quickly became one of the preeminent artist management firms and was acquired by the Sanctuary Group in 2004.
After founding Atom Factory in 2010, Carter and his Atom Factory artists began scaling the web’s largest social media audiences on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. In 2011, to focus the potential of these distributed networks, Carter co-founded Backplane, a Silicon Valley startup that unites people around affinities, interests and movements. The following year, Carter incorporated A \ IDEA, a product development and branding agency, as well as AF Square, an angel fund and technology consultancy.
Today, the AF Square portfolio holds interest in more than 40 technology companies at various stages of growth. A \ IDEA will launch Pop Water, a new beverage category product, later this year.
[photo by Adam Fedderly/Fast Company]