Kristen Daniel, from starting her 1st company in middle school to founding a consulting business and game company making waves

Kristen Daniel grew up loving entrepreneurship and aspired to be her own boss. She loves tinkering with ideas and working with family and friends who have managed businesses.

Daniel created her first business while in middle school and established two more—KnowSkill and Pentorship—during her professional career. Her third company is a game company called Heard It All Before, which was influenced by her DJing experiences with family and friends. She created the company during the pandemic when everyone was literally indoors.

Today, she combines her game company with helping brands with product strategy, business model design, and executive coaching, according to Scheller College of Business. 

Heard It All Before, touted as the first game of its kind, combines Daniel’s passion for entrepreneurship and music. According to her, the vision for Head It All Before is to drive new paths toward music discovery through gameplay centered around music sampling.

The game allows users to “listen to song snippets via a QR code and race against the clock to name music originals and samples,” she told Scheller College of Business.

“The games are hybrid physical and digital playing experiences designed to bring players of different generations, backgrounds, and music tastes together. Players compete to see who has the best ear for music samples,” she said.

“Ultimately, the game is about sharing stories and discovering more about the sounds they love. We want the art of sampling to be a source of curiosity and joy beyond someone being a music enthusiast. We’re excited for our players to explore back catalogues of artists whose digital footprints have been minimal in the past and to develop insights around it,” Scheller MBA alumna Daniel explained.

Daniel said she came up with the idea for the game when seated on the couch during the quarantine period and glancing at her amateur DJ set in her living room. 

“The turntables were broken, but my mind wandered to times when I played originals and samples of music for friends and family. That daydream turned into a game idea, which I then prototyped in Canva and started to play with friends and family virtually,” she said.