Douglas Castro, CEO of Neural, Startup of the Year in Finland: "The Quad Cortex Has Everything to Be the Best Vocal Unit in the World"

What started 23 years ago as part of an exchange, the love for heavy metal and Finnish bands, today the dream of Chilean Douglas Castro has been transformed into the Finnish startup Neural DSP. This is the story of this Chilean from Chiloé who breaks it in the music industry.

At the Neural DSP headquarters in the Finnish capital, Douglas Castro spoke with Entreprenerd to delve deeper into how his startup today has become one of the most innovative companies in the Nordic country, being recognized as “entrepreneur of the year 2023”being invited by the -then- president Sauli Niinistö himself (the current president assumed in March 2024 is Alexander Stubb) to receive the award at the Presidential Palace, after creating the Quad Cortexa product that completely consolidated him in the music industry.

How did it all happen?

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The story begins when Douglas arrives in Finland as a result of a school exchange. He is welcomed by a Finnish family, goes to school and has quite an experience.

“People here are a little more introverted, I’m a little more introverted too. One thing I really liked about here is that at my school there were people of all styles, metalheads, who dressed like metalheads because there was no uniform here at school. People who played music from the 70s and dressed like they did from the 70s, there were the athletes who played hockey and everyone got along with everyone. Nobody was bothered by the fact that they dressed differently, there were people who dressed very vaguely, artists, and nobody was bothered,” recalls the CEO of Neural in conversation with Entreprenerd.

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After finishing the exchange, he returns to Chile with only one thing in mind: returning to Finland. For this, he begins to study Industrial Electronics. This, added to his passion for music, electronics and technology, began to combine them to create his first products.

DARKGLASS & NEURAL

After achieving good sales with their first creation: Darkglassmany digital companies such as Line 6, Fractal, Kemper began to model Darkglass sounds and included them in their free products, since the sound cannot be patented, only the brand. can be protected, made Douglas think about going further. This is how after a few years Neural DSP was born.

Today Neural is “Quad Cortex”, which is a pedal that allows you to emulate various sounds, with different configurations and basically carry all that with you without having to have all that hardware.

“You can connect your amp, your pedals to the Quad Cortex and create a digital model of that in 5 minutes and you can save it and share it too. It’s a huge online community with tens of thousands of users and tens of thousands of user-created content that you can explore. For example, I can go to the cloud if I want to play a Metallica song, I can put on Metallica, what is it, Master of Puppets, guitar and I’ll get 100 presets that I’ve made, I can download them, I can try them,” Castro explains.

Although it took more than 7 years – from its conception – to come to market, Quad Cortex is so well made, that since its launch it remains number 1 in its category in the United States.

“It’s been number one since we launched it. And in Europe, at Thomann, which is the largest store in Europe for music products, it is the number one product in the entire store. There is no Shure microphone, Yamaha piano or Fender guitar that sells more units than the Cortex,” says Douglas.

And so we were able to verify it on the Thomann online site.

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In Douglas’ own words, “the Quad Cortex has everything to be the best vocal unit in the world, for example, it has the CPU, it has the analog circuitry for microphones, there is no reason why it shouldn’t possibly be the processor. most successful vocalist in the world, for example, on a software issue. Let them try it and go. And that we also develop the models, the processors for the product.”

CAPITAL RAISING

In the first instance, Douglas financed with his savings the Neural engineering team that was working on Quad Cortex, which unlike the first one created (the analog Darkglass) was completely digital.

“The first year I think I financed it with my savings. And yes, the team was great, there were 5-6 people, but paying 5-6 salaries with your savings is difficult. And the money began to run out and we wanted to manage the Quad Cortex,” he recalls.

“In 2018 we had two plugins out that were selling very well but to develop Quad Cortex we needed to hire many more people than we could finance with our bootstrapping and that was when I decided to take capital for the first time. It was an angel investment. El fondo se llama Tribe Ventures y son dos emprendedores de Estonia”, relata.

“At the same time we had applied for and won an R&D loan, which is a loan from Business Finland, which is like Corfo. In fact, it is the equivalent of Corfo. And we had a loan for the Quad Cortex of 350,000 euros, but I had to finance more than half of that, in some other way. It was a project of half a million euros, something like that. And they could put in 350, but I had to get the rest another way. And the rest was this angel investment. There, in the end, we went from having zero investment to half a million and so on. And that helped us progressively start to have more people and escalate the issue faster,” explains Douglas.

RECOGNITION

Last 2023, Douglas was recognized as the “entrepreneur of the year” in Finland and in his words, it is mainly due to the fact that the product is made in the country.

“A big part of that was that we were making a product in Finland that is number one in its category in the world. And it has been exported and 99% of sales are from abroad. So the Finns are very well known when someone is in the country and generates exports. They bring capital from abroad and leave it in the country because they pay money here and pay taxes here. So that recognition was part of the evolution of sales”.

He adds that when he went to the president’s house to receive the company award, they asked him to give a speech, marking a milestone in the country’s history.

“I actually gave a speech, the president gave four awards to different companies for different reasons that day and the ceremony was with us, with other companies and me. They asked me to say the speech on my behalf but also on the name of the company. And they told me it had to be in English. I experienced it in English and after the speech, nervous anyway, they told me that it was the first speech in English that was made in the presidential palace and in the history of Finland.”

“It’s a good thing they didn’t tell me before, otherwise I would have fainted. And they told me ‘this is how a new era begins in Finnish politics, how to open up more and recognize more.’”