Walker Street & Howard Street · A decade in

Built around the founder.

A studio for cultural founders, set in two buildings, and run by someone who's spent twenty years on both sides of culture and the deal.

The founder

H. Scott Young.

Scott's been building studios for thirty years. The first was in music — Pitch Black Entertainment, GRAMMY-nominated — a room where artists brought songs and left with records. Waterlab is the second studio. Same instinct, broader material: a room where someone reads what you've made and helps it land.

Between the two: eighteen years operating commercial real estate, reading the deeds, leases, and agreements that quietly decide who benefits. Alongside the work, a collector's eye — buying art from artists at formation, before the market arrives.

That instinct — across music, property, and provenance — is now a method. Scott invented the Agreement Intelligence Framework: the language Waterlab uses to read structure at the table.

More on this thinking: Atlanta Tribune

A long shape

A decade told in three notes.

What started as a building that held a few creative professionals became, over the years, a place cultural ventures got clarity and amplified their voice.

2016

Snake Nation is formed

Snake Nation is formed at Walker St as a collective of creative professionals.

2017–2023

The lineage forms

Comedy Hype, Bridge 17, Snake Nation, Holy Sip, MF Blu, Pierre's Panic Room — six ventures find their footing through the room. Each becomes its own.

2024

Howard St

Howard St opens in Baltimore. Some founders can move between Atlanta and Baltimore. Most will pick a home and stay there awhile.

Walk the rooms

Come sit at the table.

Most conversations start with a visit, or a Formation Read. Both begin the same way.

Visit Waterlab