Matt Thorne (GB)

Known in the industry as “Sketchy” Matt’s a Brandtrepreneur, designer and digital creative, creating design focused media platforms and products that empower creators to connect to audiences and monetise their content. “My vision is to bring Youth Culture to the mainstream, and to empower the next generation of creators and entertainers through design, technology and social interaction" Following years of experience working in London’s top digital creative agencies, developing brands for the countries top talent, Matt has co-foundered a group of creative media companies. Starting with The UK’s leading urban culture platform GRM Daily www.grmdaily.com which has generated over 100+ million engagements across its platform and content. Building a cultural niche, Matt previously set up a Youth communications agency BiG! responsible for delivering hundreds of thousands of pounds in increased revenue for an impressive client list such as Currys, Red Bull and Puma as well as brokering music brand endorsement deals for global drinks brands such as AG Barr. In 2014, Matt repositioned the business offering, setting up Disrupt, a innovative Youth focussed Media group working with brands and now launching DSRPT music, a music distribution platform which first achieved commercial success signing and marketing Ghetts, his favourite artist, charting independently his first Studio album “Rebel with a Cause” at #23 in the Official Top 40 Album charts. Disrupt is focussed on a mission is to build brands that influence and inspire a New Generation, with emphasis on ownership of content and products. Matt added “Getting clients to take risks is difficult, so you end up following conventional routes to the audience, this restricts what content we can create and ends up limiting our reach, as platforms like Facebook then control our audience, we want to build our own, and empower other influencers to do the same. We call these people Brandtrepreneurs”