For 30 Under 30 Alum D.A. Wallach, A Strong Start To The Next 30

Back in 2011, D.A. Wallach appeared on FORBES' inaugural 30 Under 30 list in the music category, thanks to his work as one-half of the band Chester French and his role as Spotify's artist-in-residence.

“We want to help artists, and we believe there’s every reason you should put your music on Spotify,” he explained at the time. ”We want to make that experience richer, more rewarding. Our goal is to make artists a lot of money, more money they’ve ever been paid.”

He had another goal--to become an investor in Spotify--which he accomplished while working at the fledgling streaming service. The experience has kept Wallach's musical fires burning (he released his first solo album, the classic pop Time Machine, on Capitol's Harvest Records last month) but it also lit a new one: to become a venture capitalist, and not just in the music business.

This fall he and billionaire Ron Burkle announced the creation of Inevitable Ventures, a fund that Wallach, now 30, says is "to find early and mid-stage investments in technology companies with a focus on the most significant industries for human beings...big meaty industries that affect a lot of people, and particularly those that are particularly ripe for modernization."

Wallach met the billionaire through music industry pal Sean "Diddy" Combs, who has worked on a number of deals with Burkle, including alkaline water brand Aquahydrate with fellow entertainer-entrepreneur Mark Wahlberg. Earlier this year, Burkle called Wallach and asked if he wanted to work on something together, and their partnership was born.

"D.A. is a visionary young investor with an instinct for novel solutions to important problems,” says Burkle. “With Inevitable Ventures, we're looking forward to supporting entrepreneurs whose ambitions can deliver to us a better future."

In recent years, Wallach has accumulated small stakes not only in Spotify, but companies including SpaceX, Vox and Fancy. Still, he found it difficult to expand. "The main thing I lacked as an investor was money to invest," he says. "Which is sort of the essential agreement."

Now that he's teaming up with Burkle, worth $1.6 billion by our last count, that shouldn't be an issue. Wallach is most excited about healthcare startups including Doctor on Demand, which lets patients see doctors from the comfort of their homes, and Blink, which delivers cheaper prescriptions to consumers by cutting out the pharmacy. He's also focused on a handful of startups whose business is life extension and enrichment by developing real-time human health sensors.

Says Wallach: "Our real value can be in helping to bring good ideas that would other be trapped in academia or the science world to commercialization."

In his spare time, Wallach will be making his acting debut alongside Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land--a film by former Chester French drummer Damien Chazelle, the filmmaker behind Whiplash.

And so, since turning 30 less than a year ago, Wallach has released a new album, announced a new joint venture and a scooped up a new Hollywood role--not a bad way to start the next 30 years of his polymath career.

Stay tuned for the 30 Under 30 Class of 2016, due out in early January.

For more about the business of music, check out my Jay Z  biography, Empire State of Mind, and my other book, Michael Jackson, Inc. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.