Michael Palmisano, the winner of the Merrick School of Business’s 2014 Rise to the Challenge competition for entrepreneurs in the Existing Business category, has launched Guitargate, an interactive online guitar teaching platform. He was recently profiled in an article on the University of Baltimore website.
Palmisano, who studied in the Merrick School of Business’ Real Estate and Economic Development program, and who is currently conducting business from the offices of UB’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, wanted to find an efficient way to teach people how to play guitar. After struggling to develop and launch a decent web site for teaching guitar, Palmisano launched Guitargate.com — a free, interactive guitar school.
“I made every mistake you can possibly make in building and marketing my own online business,” he said. “For example, I figured out that you can’t teach music in a Skype environment—it just won’t scale up so you can make a profit.”
Guitargate is growing (more than 10,000 students have signed up), the website’s e-commerce platform has a new sign-up every minute of the day and Palmisano’s job as the boss is to develop and deliver first-rate, comprehensive content for students of the guitar.
“There are many things you can teach online, including music,” he said. “It’s not a complete replacement for a one-on-one lesson, but it is definitely a class that satisfies the student’s desire to play the guitar—from the basics and on up.”
As a winner of the Rise to the Challenge competition, Palmisano received a cash prize to fund his business. He also received free office space and equipment in the Merrick School’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.