“The faster that you fail, the faster you can move on to the next option, and the faster you can find success,” says Matt Moran ’92, the Chief Product Officer for Legends of Learning, a startup game-based learning platform that creates curriculum aligned math and science games for elementary and middle school students. But learning to view failures as an important part of success has been a journey for Matt, one that began when he came to Moravian Academy his junior year.

“[Coming from public school], I felt that trying my best and failing was one of the most embarrassing things that could happen. It was this rigid-ruled system that just valued checking off grades. Moravian was a great experience for me because I was treated much more as an adult and expected to be responsible for myself. This mindset change propelled and prepared me for a trajectory that, especially coming out of college, involved taking a lot of risks.”

While majoring in poetry at Bard College and moonlighting as the monitor for the new art department’s computer lab, Matt took a chance on learning HTML, Java Script, Adobe PhotoShop, and other software applications. “To me, the Internet was this amazing thing that was happening,” explained Matt. “It wasn’t too much unlike poetry, because with the Internet, you are using a language to communicate in a somewhat abstract way with other human beings.” Upon graduation, Matt was able to utilize his newfound coding skills as a product manager for a series of start-up companies in the technology space, including DoubleClick - an advertising management solution which was eventually acquired by Google. But working in start-ups wasn’t the only thing keeping Matt busy. “When I first got out of college, electronic music was new and was based mostly out of home recording studios,” said Matt, whose interest in underground music dates back to his time playing in bands while attending Moravian. “I started learning how to produce music on the computer and worked a lot with peers to learn what software they were using to produce various sounds.”

When his tech career moved him to New York City, he jumped straight into the electronic music scene meeting notable people like international DJ Lenny Dee, who became his mentor. This mentorship opened doors for Matt allowing him to travel and DJ overseas with other artists, while still pursuing his tech career online. And while his international DJ days are behind him now, Matt is still known to drop a song or two from the comfort of his home in Washington, DC.

Reflecting back on both his tech and music career, Matt credits Moravian for helping him realize setbacks often allow people to reach higher objectives. “Moravian helped me become the type of person that says, ‘I don’t need to know exactly what I’m going to do, but if I create options for myself and continue working down a path, things are going to work out.’ You’re taught that you should always be succeeding, but what people don’t talk about is, along the way, there is a lot of failure that goes into success.”

This article originally appeared in the 2019 Moravian Academy Fall Journal.