Payam Music, a small piano school in Washington built around an ABCs-and-123s style notation method and kids’ choice of songs, is expanding with seed funding from Mark Cuban and Hans Zimmer’s Bleeding Fingers. Backers say the approach keeps students engaged—wh
By the time Darius Partovi stepped away from classical piano lessons at age 7, the interest was already gone. He wasn’t forced out by pressure—he simply grew restless and quit.
Years later, the coronavirus shut down schools, and boredom brought him back to the keyboard. He heard about a local teacher, Payam Khastkhodaei, offering lessons out of his home in Bothell, Washington. One session was enough. Partovi practiced several hours a day without any cajoling. mastered favorite works such as Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack to the 2001 French film “Amélie. ” and later placed third in a national piano competition. Now, at 19, he is a freshman at NYU who teaches piano and composes his own music for fun.
The story didn’t just transform his relationship with music. It pushed his father. Hadi Partovi—a Harvard-educated technology entrepreneur who sold his startup to Microsoft for $800 million and invested early on in Facebook and Airbnb—to see a familiar pattern: if you make learning easier and more appealing. children stick with it.
Hadi Partovi’s son is also part of the reason Payam Music is moving beyond its origins. Darius Partovi sees the school’s method—music taught before reading it, using a notation system built around the ABCs and 123s kids already know—as a practical fix to a real problem: fewer students quitting.
Payam Music grows from a teaching tweak into a national bet
Khastkhodaei, the founder, is the one who changed the lesson plan. His students learn to play first. then learn to read using an alphanumeric notation system based on languages they already know. Instead of starting with the standard repertoire of Bach and Brahms. students choose their favorite songs. a concept Partovi compares to how he once found ways into computer science through Minecraft and Angry Birds.
The school sits behind those decisions. Payam Music is a tiny operation—just five music rooms—with a long waiting list and enthusiastic reviews from parents.
The method’s results are central to the pitch. Khastkhodaei says Payam Music students learn more easily and “no longer dreaded lessons,” leading to higher retention. He also provided specific figures: he says 97% of Payam Music students continue beyond the first year of lessons. compared to 15% to 20% for those studying piano using traditional methods. He further says 96% of Payam Music students achieve a diploma in four years, three times faster than most.
For Khastkhodaei, it’s not an abstract theory. The approach grew out of his own relationship to music. He began playing piano when he was 3 and by age 6 could play just about anything. But as he got older, his interest waned. He returned to music at 11, teaching himself with inspiration from his Nintendo Game Boy—learning the Super Mario Bros. theme first, then playing songs he heard on the radio or at the movies.
When he began teaching at 16, he found his students were turned off by the same elements that had drained him: a repertoire they didn’t want to play, sheet music they struggled to read, and the tedium of traditional scales.
In college, studying developmental psychology, a professor’s lecture pointed him toward language as a model for learning. “Music is a language. Why is it not taught that way?” Khastkhodaei said. He built his notation method around that idea. saying it faced skepticism at first but ultimately won over students because it freed them from rigid teaching methods and rote memorization. while allowing them to “speak” music before they could read it.
He also attributes the classroom shift to more than motivation. Khastkhodaei says students’ enthusiasm and confidence grow alongside their finger dexterity and auditory skill, and that most of his students can play their favorite song on day one—and keep playing.
Partovi backed the growth—and signed up as CEO
Darius Partovi wasn’t just a student. He became a catalyst. He began by advising Khastkhodaei on how to grow the business, then moved into a deeper role by doubling down as Payam Music’s CEO.
He turned to his own network to raise seed money. The company is financed through an initial investment in the single-digit millions from technology and Hollywood heavyweights, including billionaire investor Mark Cuban and Hollywood composer Hans Zimmer.
That seed funding is meant to support an ambitious expansion plan: hundreds of piano schools across the country.
The ambition looks unusual on its face—scaling a small cottage-industry school into a national chain. Partovi framed the goal as something Silicon Valley usually attempts: take a tiny operation in Washington state and build it into the first national piano school.
“Kids want to learn songs that move them, they want to learn to make their own music,” Zimmer said in remarks that connect directly to how Payam Music recruits and retains students.
Zimmer’s involvement goes beyond endorsement. His organization of composers, called Bleeding Fingers, is investing in Payam Music and mentoring some of the program’s top students.
Zimmer. whose background includes being the son of a classical pianist and studying with a piano teacher for two weeks as a child in Frankfurt. said that experience left him determined to teach himself instead. He described a childhood shaped by composition: he learned to play because he wanted to put his own music into the world.
His film career is also part of the credibility behind the claim that kids don’t need more drill to become better musicians. After taking up film composing in the early 1980s. Zimmer scored his first Oscar nod for “Rain Man.” He won his first Academy Award for “The Lion King” and a second for “Dune.”.
Zimmer argued that too many kids get stuck on a limited path, where the “homework” part of learning drains fun. He said he thinks teaching should be more exciting, creative, and relevant to today.
The same lesson shows up in how Cuban talks about motivation
Mark Cuban’s involvement carries its own story of coming up without much runway. Cuban took piano lessons at age 9. His mother pushed him to practice at least an hour a day. The lessons lasted six months.
Cuban continued to play on his own. Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” became his go-to song while he was in college. He said he believes the Payam method would have helped him stay motivated.
Cuban connected his investment to the confidence he gained from playing. “The reason I invested. and the reason why I think this is so amazing. is I know what it did for me in terms of confidence. in terms of always having an outlet. ” he said. “Literally. when I had nothing. I made sure I had a keyboard… just because it’s a chance to just express yourself.”.
He also tied the method to a more practical benefit: he said it gets kids out of the house and away from electronic devices while giving them a sense of confidence and an outlet “that only somebody who plays an instrument truly understands.”
The tech-anchored pitch is, in many ways, personal for the Partovis
Music isn’t a novelty for the people backing Payam Music. For Hadi Partovi and his twin brother Ali. piano learning began when they were stuck at home in war-torn Iran after the Islamic revolution. Their father cut out musical notes and taped them to the piano keys so they could teach themselves. Then he got them a piano teacher.
After immigrating to the United States, the family moved in with Partovi’s grandmother and lived in a single room. No longer able to afford a piano or lessons, Partovi continued to play on his own. Over the years, he described the piano as an emotional outlet—one that continues through his composing.
He tied his backing to a broader view of tech’s place in everyday life. “The more the human race advances in technology. the more we also need to advance in the things that make us human in the first place. ” he said. “Just as everyone is getting more into their screens. more into their phones and more into their keyboards. I think it’s important to remind everybody that you also should do things that bring joy without any screen involved.”.
Demand for music lessons is already there—and budgets are pushing families to private options
Payam Music’s growth is happening inside a broader market that already looks strong on paper. Pew Research Center data says about half of parents—54%—sign their kids up for music, dance, or art lessons, with parents who have more education and disposable income enrolling at even higher rates.
The National Center for Education Statistics estimates about 1.3 million students are enrolled in piano classes at the elementary, middle, and high school level.
But school arts budgets are under pressure. and the report’s financial numbers show where families are turning when programs shrink. With budget cuts affecting arts programs, parents are increasingly turning to private lessons. IBISWorld estimates annual revenue for private music lessons at $725 million, though piano lessons make up just $83 million of that.
Gabriel Seiler, a senior analyst with IBISWorld, expects demand for piano to keep rising. He pointed to how piano is instrumental in creating musical tracks in popular genres such as hip hop. rap. and electronic dance music. “This is an industry where you need new people to be interested in music. That’s the main driver of revenue,” Seiler said. “I think piano is your best bet based on what music is popular right now.”.
Seiler also raised the friction the business will face as learning methods shift. Technology is changing how people study piano, from YouTube videos and music apps to increasingly artificial intelligence. His concern: whether learners still choose teachers and in-person instruction or skip directly to free or low-cost online options. He said it surprises him that Silicon Valley is investing in physical locations to teach lessons.
At Payam Music, the business plan is built around scaling and outcomes
Partovi’s wager is that parents want what helped his son—and that the market can expand further as affordable keyboards and online lessons make piano accessible to more families.
He isn’t drawing a salary, according to the account, and he said he gets “almost nothing” unless the company achieves a “significant level of success, more than 10 times where it is today.”
Payam Music currently has two schools in Washington, four in California, one in Great Neck, New York, and one in Bethesda, Maryland, with plans to open more.
Costs are laid out as well: lessons cost about $100 for a 50-minute in-person session or $75 for an online session, with fees varying by age, level, and location. Partovi said the company plans to offer financial aid and scholarships for families who need them.
Parents are already acting as the loudest proof point. Afshin Adam Sepehri. a software engineer at Salesforce. said his daughter is now a teacher at Payam Music while studying computer science at the University of Washington. and that his son. still in high school. is progressing quickly. Sepehri pushed for Payam Music’s seed round and said half the investors are parents at the school.
“The music industry is ready for disruption,” Sepehri said. “After centuries, it should change for the better.”
Motivation is also where academic interest lands. Samuel McDougle. an assistant psychology professor at Yale and a bluegrass musician who researches how the mind and body work together to make music. said he isn’t surprised by trying to innovate across fields. He added that if it works, it works. Students at Payam Music even refer to their piano homework as “fun work.”.
For Payam Music, the question now is whether that early engagement can scale into a national network—and whether the method’s results hold once the school moves well beyond Bothell’s small home-school beginnings.
Payam Music piano lessons Mark Cuban Hans Zimmer Bleeding Fingers Hadi Partovi Darius Partovi NYU startup investment music education IBISWorld Pew Research Center private lessons