How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Med Tech Without Missing a Beat

As a kid, Adam Rosenwach BM ’10 liked how his dedication to music paid off: The more he played, the better he sounded. Today, as a venture capitalist focused exclusively on medical technology, he sees the same principle at work in the people he supports.

“Founders are artists,” Rosenwach said. “They see something nobody else can yet see, they bring it into existence through years of repetition and refinement, and they tie their identity to the work itself. The qualities that made me a musician are the same qualities I now look for in the people I back.”

Med tech wasn’t exactly at the forefront of his mind when he applied to Berklee 20 years ago. The Binghamton, New York, native had such a drive to pursue a career in music, he knew that “a traditional liberal arts environment with a music program on the side was not going to push me hard enough.” After graduating with a degree in professional music, Rosenwach spent years as a working musician in New York City, touring with acts like Bon Iver and Florence and the Machine, writing and producing, and founding music technology programs in public schools.

Your music education is not a gap to be explained away. It is an asset most people in business do not have.

Adam Rosenwach BM ’10

A few years into his hybrid music career in New York City, Rosenwach received a run-of-the-mill credit card offer in the mail, where signing up unlocked bonus points redeemable on travel. “Within a year, I had 10 cards open and roughly two million miles, with no debt and no damage to my credit,” he shared. “I used them to travel to more than 25 countries in that same year.”

He blogged about his credit card prowess, and that quickly turned into consulting, “helping small businesses earn and redeem points more strategically,” Rosenwach said. “That work put me in front of companies I would never have met otherwise,” including medical device incubator Coridea. He joined full-time in an office administration role, gained invaluable exposure to the industry, and ultimately wound up leading their business operations.

That transition prompted him to formalize the bridge between his two lives. Rosenwach earned an executive MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, which “gave me the vocabulary to articulate my path in a way that made sense to people who had not lived it.” The experience culminated in coauthoring a Harvard Business Review article on how artists can transition into business, setting the stage for what would come next.

At the start of 2026, Rosenwach and cofounder Tal Wenderow launched Star51 Capital, a venture fund that invests in developers of AI-powered medical devices. As a managing partner, most of his time is taken up by meeting founders (“We see hundreds of companies a year and only back a handful,” he says.) and deepening connections with investors.

“The musician training helps more than I expected,” he said of his busy meeting schedule. “You learn early to walk into rooms where the spotlight is on you, and you have to be on.”

Music as a Business Teacher

Five lessons Rosenwach carried from years of musical training into venture capital:

1. Listening is not a passive act. “Ear training taught me to hear what was actually happening in a piece of music. That same discipline is what makes due diligence work: Founders pitch a version of their company, but the job is to hear what’s underneath.”
2. The best players make everyone else better. “In a band, the bass player who locks in with the drummer elevates the whole group. In venture, the partner who supports a founder’s blind spots or a limited partner's investment needs builds the kind of trust that compounds across deals.”
3. You perform whether or not you feel ready. “The show happens at the scheduled time. Hundreds of hours of stage time taught me this. Pitch meetings and board meetings are similar in that you always need to be ready to perform.”
4. Calibrate to the room. “A jazz set in a small club requires different choices than a recital in a concert hall. Partner meetings, founder pitches, and clinical advisory calls each have their own acoustics.”
5. Nothing sounds better than authenticity. “My voice teacher at Berklee, Donna McElroy, taught me something I did not fully understand until much later. Technique can be learned. Imitation can be impressive. But the only thing that holds up across a long career is the work you do as yourself.”

“Your music education is not a gap to be explained away,” Rosenwach said. “It is an asset most people in business do not have. You already know how to practice. You already know how to perform. You already know how to take feedback without falling apart. . . . Those skills are rarer in finance and operating roles than people admit.”

Follow Adam Rosenwach on LinkedIn.