Sam Rudy spent over a decade booking recording studios for major artists worldwide — a job that meant sending numerous emails just to schedule a single session. When his co-founder suggested they build a marketplace to fix it, Sam's first instinct was that it would cost half a million dollars just to get started. (Spoiler: It didn’t.)
In this episode of The New Build, he breaks down what it actually took to build ProStudioTime on Bubble with no coding background, plus why the industry knowledge he spent a decade accumulating turned out to be his biggest asset in the founder seat.
About Sam Rudy
Sam Rudy is the co-founder of ProStudioTime, a marketplace for professional recording studios. He spent over a decade at Miloco Studios as a studio manager and international booking agent, finding and negotiating recording sessions for major artists around the world — and watching the same broken process repeat itself every time.
That firsthand frustration, and the deep industry knowledge behind it, is what eventually convinced him he was the right person to fix it. Now, ProStudioTime is in closed beta with over 130 studios in its network already.
Connect: Sam on LinkedIn | Ricky on LinkedIn
About ProStudioTime
ProStudioTime is a marketplace for professional recording studios that lets artists, producers, label teams, and managers find and connect with the right studio for their session — without the weeks of back-and-forth email that typically precedes a booking. Studios retain control over their availability and rates, while users can filter instantly by session type, location, and facility.
The platform is currently in closed beta with studios across London, New York, LA, and beyond. (ProStudioTime is part of our Launch Lab program for apps preparing to launch publicly.)
Follow ProStudioTime: LinkedIn
What you'll learn in this episode
This conversation is for anyone who has spent years inside an industry and wondered whether they might be the right person to change it. He talks candidly about the fear of showing early-stage, unfinished work to people he'd worked with professionally, and why he thinks most founders wait far too long before sharing what they're building with anyone.
You'll also hear his take on why practical problem-solving has replaced big creative swings in music tech, why finding early adopters matters more than building a polished product, and what the right co-founder relationship actually looks like when one person knows the problem and the other knows how to build a business around it.
Episode timestamps
[00:01:25] Sam introduces himself and ProStudioTime, a marketplace for professional recording studios
[00:02:08] How album-making has changed: Why artists now need to record on the move, anywhere in the world
[00:05:12] The core problem: why studios don't advertise rates or availability — and how one booking can spiral into 50 emails
[00:08:59] How Sam met co-founder Ricky at the pub, and why Ricky convinced him his exhaustion was actually his edge
[00:10:52] Discovering no-code: Why Sam assumed building a marketplace would cost half a million dollars
[00:13:49] The build journey — from a basic prototype to a full marketplace on Bubble over two years
[00:16:36] First real signs of traction: 130 studios in the network and the moment people started to believe in the platform
[00:21:35] Sam's advice for aspiring founders: Start talking about your idea before you have a product
[00:25:34] Overcoming the fear of failure — why "nobody cares as much as you think" is the most liberating thing a founder can learn
[00:33:25] Why ProStudioTime is still in closed beta, and what an Airbnb-acquired marketplace founder told Sam about that decision
[00:43:49] Hot take: "Boring is back" — why practical problem-solving has replaced big creative swings in music tech investing
[00:46:16] AI as a tool, not a replacement — and what the music industry's history with drum machines and synthesizers tells us about where this is heading
[00:47:48] The most memorable career advice Sam has received: Most things fail because people don't stick with them long enough
Key insights from this episode
Industry insiders often make the best founders
Previous attempts to build a studio marketplace had failed. Others who tried it hadn’t spent time in the studio manager's seat, and so they built products that didn't actually work for the studios they needed to onboard. In Sam’s experience, if you're considering building in an industry you know well, the depth of that knowledge is incredibly valuable and more than just a head start.
Don’t let perfectionism keep you from launching
Fear of judgment, especially when you're putting something unfinished in front of people you've worked with professionally, is one of the biggest reasons founders wait too long. In Sam’s perspective, nobody cares as much as you think. If people don't like what they see, they'll forget about it in five minutes. And if you treat that early exposure as a feedback loop rather than a verdict, you'll iterate into something much stronger than you would have built alone.
Persistence is the one skill you can't outsource
The most memorable advice Sam carries from his career is that most things fail because people don't stick with them long enough. Not because the idea was wrong or the product wasn't good enough, but because they stopped before the iterations started to compound into something real. For Sam, that looked like two years of building, a few different product directions, repeated delays, and plenty of moments of self-doubt before the feedback started turning genuinely positive. The founders who see results are usually just the ones who kept going.
Resources mentioned
- ProStudioTime — Marketplace for booking and listing professional recording studios
- Miloco Studios — London-based studio management and booking agency where Sam spent over a decade
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The New Build is a bi-weekly podcast exploring how solo founders and small teams are building products that reach millions of users. New episodes drop every other week.
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