Mir Hwang is the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse. Mir talks about how his struggles to book music gigs as a teenager pushed him to launch the company that connects artists with venues for live shows. Mir also talked about how hard it was to steer the live music-focused business through the pandemic in an industry that was reticent to adopt tech to begin with. Plus, we learn about a fun venue that couldn't be more perfect for Darrell's future poetry residence.
Mir Hwang is the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse. Mir talks about how his struggles to book music gigs as a teenager pushed him to launch the company that connects artists with venues for live shows. Mir also talked about how hard it was to steer the live music-focused business through the pandemic in an industry that was reticent to adopt tech to begin with. Plus, we learn about a fun venue that couldn't be more perfect for Darrell's future poetry residence.
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Darrell Etherington 0:01
Hello, and welcome to found I'm your host, Darrell Etherington, and I'm here with my esteemed co host packets. Good tech. Hey, Becca, how's it going?
Rebecca Szkutak 0:10
Oh, you know, hanging in there. How are you?
Darrell Etherington 0:13
I'm just, I'm pumped about 2023. I've felt like I've hit the ground running. This gonna be my year, as they say,
Rebecca Szkutak 0:21
you can tell you're glowing. You've got all of these goals. It's gonna be the year, Darrell.
Darrell Etherington 0:27
Yeah, I think so. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about the stories behind the startups, which is what we do every week on found. And to do that we bring on a founder, and we interview them. Yeah, we've got a great founder this week. But first, just some housekeeping, please do subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't already. Tell your friends to subscribe, share the episodes around and leave a review, if you can, that really helps us a lot. And there's a chance we could read them on air at some point in the future. That's a thing we could do. I don't think our producer Maggie knows that. I was gonna say that. But we totally could do that. Anyways, today, we're talking to Mir Huang, the CEO and co founder of gig finesse, which is a platform that connects musicians and bands with venues with the goal of giving artists an easier and safer way to make a living playing music. So let's go into the conversation with mere.
Demir how's it going?
Mir Hwang 1:26
Good. How are you?
Darrell Etherington 1:27
Great, great to have you here. Before we get too deep into it. How about we hear a little bit more about your company? So can you tell us the high level the elevator pitch of what gig FINESSE is and what you guys do?
Mir Hwang 1:40
Of course, um, I just want to say thank you for having me. Like I said, I'm an avid listener found, you know, some no
Darrell Etherington 1:45
one has ever thanked us before. This is great. I'm
Mir Hwang 1:49
excited and humbled to be part of the vodcast today. Yeah, so my name is mir. And I'm the founder and CEO of gig finesse, where we've been transforming the booking process for artists and venues leveraging live show data.
Darrell Etherington 2:02
Nice. Okay. Wow, that was very brief compared to if you want to share a little bit more detail, you're free to I mean, yeah, what do you I know, you're at least the two sided marketplace, right? Yeah. Work with artists who work within us. But yeah, how does it all come together?
Mir Hwang 2:18
I guess it would be helpful for me to kind of give you a little background on myself and how this whole came out to be. So the idea of gig fondness came to me relatively early, when I was actually in middle school growing up in Canada, trying to book should I expand? I know, Darryl, yeah, you're also from Canada. So I think, you know, very typical, I kind of fell in love with music, just playing in bands and putting on shows with my friends. And you know, eventually, I was lucky enough to grow into a session drummer and had the pleasure of kind of being on the road. And that kind of helped me become more intimately familiar with the intricacies and frustrations of booking. Believe it or not, you know, I think to this day, artists are still cold, emailing, cold calling, dropping off demos, by hand venues are processing 1090 nines, right by hand pulling with pen and paper, there's so many different, you know, ways of communication. And also, to make matters worse, I think there's a lot of also unnecessary middlemen that kind of flood up the space in your industry, where it's already very difficult for, you know, artists and venues to make a living or make money in general. And the second side of the problem that I kind of saw was the lack of kind of data. And we can get into it a little bit more in depth. But for example, in our platform, we have artists with three to 5 million Spotify streams who can barely sell 30 to 50 tickets in New York. And you have let's say, a local and my new band with 5000, SoundCloud, toddlers who can sell three to 500 tickets, because they have a lot of friends or during Greek life or, you know, whatever it may be, right, yeah. And let's say if you and I would perform, Darrell and you sell 50 tickets, and I sell 200 tickets, but my fans are kind of boring. They're drinking water, maybe you know, a beer here and there, but your fans are, let's say, taking shots at the bar or you know, sipping on nice whiskey sounds, it makes more. It makes more sense right for the venue to book you over me because ultimately, at the end of the day, they're in brick and mortar business that run on FMB sales. So we wanted to do two things a how can we make it easier for venues and artists to really identify and find the right fit and cut out a lot of the inefficiencies and unnecessary processes that are currently in place. And number two, you know, kind of Moneyball almost write the music business a little bit and make it really truly understand what drives a successful show for both parties.
Darrell Etherington 4:52
That's super cool, because I imagine like this seems like an industry that was probably really low tech previously like I was there even any attempt to do any of that? Or was it kind of just like, we know this band and we heard from like another venue owner, like they bring in a good crowd and that kind of thing.
Mir Hwang 5:10
So it's definitely it was a tough business to crack into right to start, I think, like you said, right, a lot of people in this business are very hesitant to change, right? We're not selling into fortune 500 companies, right. It's a very relationship driven business. And for me, I think, you know, similar to many people my age, I think I you know, I was kind of able to witness firsthand, right, a lot of the kind of changes the music business was going through growing up, like, I still remember, you know, almost forcibly taking my Walkman out of my dad's hand and you know, making my making in my own or going out and getting my first disc man to, you know, buying 99 cents sauce and iTunes, you know, to fill my iPod and making sure all the album art was there to pirating songs from Napster to obviously, where we are with streaming today, right. And I think I was excited to see a lot of these innovations come about in the music industry, from distribution, side publishing side marketing side to make it for the better, hopefully, but unfortunately, I think the one downside that I saw in this seismic shift was a lot of these technological advancements made, creating, Sharing Marketing music easier, but it also made making a living off of music very difficult for, you know, a lot of these creators and artists in general. So I think, based on that really core principle, we approach this entire business where I think a lot of different businesses where they tried or entrepreneurs that tried to solve this issue, almost saw it as a simple just marketplace, right? When artists create a profile venues create a profile, and they can just kind of find each other. But because I think our team consists of, of course, very tech focused people, but also a lot of people who are musicians. And you know, a long time, I think industry veterans, we kind of really wanted to get to what we identify our call as the hair on fire problem, right? Where it's like, what do they really need. And ultimately, we realized that they don't necessarily need help finding artists. In fact, a lot of them get flooded with hundreds if not 1000s of like DJs comedians or bands wanting to play at their space. It's more about how can we identify the right fit, right, the right artist to put in that space that match their vibe, their brand, right, and make sense from a financial perspective as well. So I think using that we were able to really, um, slowly tackle this beast. I think that's alive music businesses.
Rebecca Szkutak 7:32
Yeah. And something I was definitely curious about, and with what you just said about how it isn't just a straight marketplace, which people have definitely tried and not done as well, in the past. What do people see about each other when they come on here? Like what do venues see about artists? And what do artists see about venues? What kind of information? Are they going off of that maybe they would be harder for them to get if they weren't using the platform?
Mir Hwang 7:55
Right? So we are a very turnkey solution, right? And we have two distinct kind of, I want to say business models, or our consumer base in this case. So we have what you call or what we like to call a ticketed venue where you're buying a ticket to go see a show more traditional, and then you have what we call a non ticketed venue where hospitality venues right restaurants, coffee shops, breweries, wineries, right hotel rooftops, you name it, and both of their pain points are similar but slightly different. And it actually allowed us to really kind of open up I think, a bigger door for a lot of our artists space. One of the pain points when we first started was we just focused on what we call the ticketed vertical, right? Because we're like, hey, the data is going to be really helpful to identify the right bands that bring people out that are high spending, right. And like this will also allow us to cut out a lot of the unnecessary marketing expenses, middlemen, pay artists more, put more money in the pockets of the venue's. And then we realized, you know, as we were slowly, slowly scaling the business, we were getting a little bit more and more inbound from these non traditional, almost venues, right. And I think this is when we first moved to Austin, during the pandemic, we were talking to a lot of these non traditional venues, because a lot of these artists were like, hey, it'd be really cool if GIK finesse can come in and help find the opportunities in like these non traditional venues setting. And it was very interesting when a lot of these GMs and you know, restaurant managers and even ownership groups, their pain points weren't necessarily about driving revenue because ticketed venues, that's all they focus on, right? It's the entertainment that brings in the personnel, right, or the fans that spend money at the bar. A lot of the times for non ticketed venues, it's more about finding the right brand fit, making it more enjoyable for the customer experience. Right. And one of the things that they were saying is already have a hard time staffing and you know, we don't really want to go out and hire like a full on talent buyer or an Events Coordinator for our little restaurant or bar and I am tired of you know, writing 150 checks and 1019 Heinz every year. So we want a turnkey solution where we can kind of tell you, Hey, these are our brand requirements, these are our guides, and this is what I think would be a good fit for the space. And you guys can just help us find those bands and just streamline all of it. Right. So that's been a very exciting I think, almost iteration of the platform where you know, now taking a step back I think I can it's been really cool for me to kind of go from a cool underground like awesome like ticketed venue in New York City to I'm in Austin, and I'm, we're booking this really cool barbecue joint, right, an hour outside of Austin. And there's 100 couples line dancing to Texas country, right. So I think it really kind of brings everything back to our core mission of like, we want to help artists find their stage, whether that be hey, I want to be the next Taylor Swift or Billy Eilish. And I only want to play coolrooms to hey, I love playing jazz, and I want to make a living, you know, here and there playing music, and get finesse makes it easier for me to find those opportunities and pursue them.
Darrell Etherington 11:09
Right. Yeah, and you've got even the, like, private venue options to rather private events, which is cool, too, especially for that kind of thing. If you were like a string quartet or something, and you go find that they're totally do that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's I mean, it's, it's a really cool setup and business. So initially, can you tell us a bit about why you changed focus? Was it driven by you mentioned the pandemic, so you founded this in 2019. So actually, just let's talk about the timing of it, because that must have been tough for this kind of this
Mir Hwang 11:41
summer of 2019. And I think, also, for me, stereotypes did hold true and coming from a more, you know, traditional Korean American background, right, I'm trying to pursue anything in the entertainment business where you know, being a musician of any sort, was an uphill battle, right? To say the least. So I actually ended up kind of finding myself on track to go to medical school, I graduated with a chemistry degree. And right before, you know, I was applying to these different medical school options, that's when I think I was able to really kind of sit down with my co founder, Ryan, who also happens to be my cousin. And I remember, you know, talking to him saying, you obviously known each other for such a long time we grew up together, and you've known that I've had this idea for a while. And I think it's only gonna get honestly harder and harder for me to take this leap of faith. Because once I commit to medical school, right, not even for going to student loans and the time and the cost, what if I have more responsibilities? Right? What if I, you know, and married and have kids, there's all these other factors that make it I think, more and more difficult for you to partake in something so risky, like, you know, starting a company in the music, business space, right. And I thought to myself, I was like, Hey, we can always go back. And he was working at Google at the time, and I was still planning medical school where like, we can always go back to the corporate career, I can always go back to school. So hey, there's no better time than now. Let's do this now. And you know, he was also crazy enough to take the leap of faith with me. And like you said, right, six months in from New York, six, eight months in global pandemic happens. And I'm sure you know, nobody, when you build out projections, right, it always looks like a beautiful hockey stick growth curve, right. And Nobody's expecting next February, there's going to be a global shutdown, and all our revenue is going to evaporate. But now, you know, kind of looking back hindsight, it really gave us an opportunity to really get to know our clients better, and really get to know our, you know, artists and venues, and, you know, our sound engineers, our ATMs, GMs security guards, we really took a, you know, almost a full circle approach to better understand every single person that's involved in putting on a good event. And I think because of that we really had a long, lengthy, robust time to really iron out and build a product that resonated with the crowd. And I think also, kind of the pandemic almost helped a lot of these more difficult and traditional, I think business owners take a step outside of their comfort zone and say, Hey, I know we've been operating this way for the past 3040 50 years. But maybe now it's time for us to try something new. Right? Is there a way we can kind of see this in a new lens? Yeah, that's
Darrell Etherington 14:34
interesting that it was that I kind of like it because you weren't, I guess focused on having an MVP in the field and like trying to build the plane underneath you as you were flying like you were able to do a lot of customer research. And then also, that second thing of have it being a major kind of like jostling point for a really sort of like a nurturer bound industry, right. That's, that's super Eat like the timing works out great shit, right? As long as you have enough runway to survive it, which just seems like you did. Right. So it
Mir Hwang 15:07
was it was really tough. And I think you know, that's something that I definitely owe to my team. You know, of course, I think many I'm sure founders will echo right. It's, it's always a huge rollercoaster ride, right? The highs are so high and the lows are so low. Yeah, I remember, you know, during the pandemic, we had to everybody had to move back into our homes. And we were down to almost our last two months of runway and Ryan and I were thinking to ourselves, we're like, okay, we feel like we have something here. Because a lot of, you know, people that we're talking to, they really liked the idea. They really liked the product. And I think we got really hit with this really unfortunate event. So what do you what do you think we should do? And I had this conversation with the team too, right? I was like, I know, you guys all took the leap of faith to join this crazy journey with us. And I felt horrible. A lot of the times, I felt like, you know, I was responsible for all these really talented people kind of taking a leap of faith. And now they aren't necessarily making money. And they're everybody's kind of moved back into, you know, their parents homes. So we decided, we're like, Hey, I think we have to last two, three months of runway, let's just use it. And let's see what we can come up with. So that's what kind of encouraged me to just literally pack one backpack and move over to Austin at the time. And I don't looking back, I mean, it's crazy. But I remember the first time in this journey that I've had, my doubt, where I was the only room that we could afford or I could afford was subletting a dorm room at UT Austin. So that's exactly what I did. And I had two roommates, an 18 year old kid at the time and a 19 year old student, right. And it was during finals. And I remember one of my roommates coming up to me and saying, Hey, can I pay you $20 For you to go downstairs and get me a six pack now that the exam season's over, I wouldn't appreciate it right. And for that I remember we were so I was personally like we weren't paying ourselves anything, right? We're so it's like, this is the easiest $20 I can possibly make. Right? So I go downstairs, grab the six pack, and I'm coming up. And that was the first time I was looking at myself in the mirror and the elevator and thinking, wow, like, what am I doing with my life? Right? Like, this? Seems crazy. Maybe my mom was right, I should have gone to medical school. What am I trying to do here? And you know, fortunately, I think from then on, you know, things slowly started opening up. And we were really able to test our MVP. And we had really good mentors and advisors that, you know, we were able to meet along the way. It's thanks to them, right, they were able to kind of stand by us and ride with us through the good and the bad. And they took a chance on us. And I think you know, from there, we were able to really kind of scale the business in a more successful way. Yeah, I'm curious
Rebecca Szkutak 17:57
about coming out of a period like that. And having that kind of experience, especially as the business started to scale and pick up what learnings and what best practices will you keep from that low point in the company that you'll be able to kind of utilize or sort of look back on as you guys continue to grow?
Mir Hwang 18:13
Of course, I think for us, we were almost forced to adopt the Lean kind of startup methodology, right? It wasn't by choice, we, we didn't have a choice. And that was the only option that was given to us. Right. And I think even looking back on this very recent round fundraising, especially now I think for a lot of founders, it's a completely different market, right? We're coming out of this bubble of 2021, where companies were able to raise bigger rounds, higher valuations, right? And even us raising in the summer of 2022. Like it kind of brought about this massive, like, drastic shift right on how investors are evaluating companies. And I think for us, it really helped that we were running so lean. And we had this lean mean kind of green machine, where now given the market turbulence, a lot of these people are now looking at our investors are looking at, hey, like, does this company have more of a strong predictable cash flow, controlled burn? And I think that's kind of why we were able to successfully scale with such sin almost, you know, bandwidth in terms of capital. And I think that's something that we're going to continue kind of focusing on as well, right. I think, Ryan and I have a very, almost non traditional mindset, I think when it comes to fundraising where I wanted to really figure out our product market fit and go to market strategy first and build a product that people want to use. And fundraising should really or cash injection in general should just be a catalyst for you to grow, right? Not necessarily the other way around, where it's like, hey, let's get all this money, make a ton of mistakes and figure this out. I'm sure now we're gonna make a ton of mistakes scaling this business of course, sure, but I at least wanted to kind of get a better understanding and have you know, a more subtle stainable business first, before we went out, that's something that we're going to still continue to kind of iterate on right and have it in the back of our minds. So we're not just going out there and saying, let's take all these different risks, but rather, let's really focus and hone in on what we know, and what our value proposition is. And run lean, right.
Darrell Etherington 20:20
I think like, I'm interested in why the or how the you actually get to that lean point, because it seems like to me on its surface, especially just a very potentially, like cash and labor intensive business, right, especially thinking Market to Market. All markets are different in some ways, right? I'm sure. They're also more similar than they are different. Maybe not, but you tell me, but like, how do you do that in a lean way? How did you learn how to do that in the lean way?
Mir Hwang 20:45
Right. And I think this is where, you know, we were definitely fortunate enough to offset some of these costs, right, I think it was helpful for me to have such a phenomenal technical co founder on my side, where we can kind of reduce stop burn significantly off the starting point. We also when we first started the company, I was still a student at the time, and I was attending NYU. And we were really fortunate enough to kind of take advantage of a lot of the offerings and benefits that you get right as a student, we went through and won a lot of the non dilutive kind of funding opportunities, and like competitions and challenges that were kind of thrown at us. And it was honestly super helpful on our end, because neither Ryan and I were both first time founders, we don't have an MBA, right, we didn't go to a business school, or we don't have any understanding really about business in general. So kind of really like diving ourselves in reading about it, like, you know, really building our first business model canvas, and going through all these steps, almost being forced to because of a lot of these programs that we kind of participated in, I think helped us develop into, you know, at least slightly better founders. And we can kind of see some of the things play out, but also gave us the seed capital almost right, where we could comfortably take a little bit of a leap of faith and say, hey, at least for the next year, sure, we might be eating a lot more ramen than we would want to, but we can at least focus on building a product and a business that we really are passionate about.
Rebecca Szkutak 22:17
And I know you mentioned at the top of this call that selling into this industry is particularly difficult, because people don't want to embrace change, especially as far as like implementing technology goes, which is true for a lot of almost all of the industries that need to innovate the most this seems to be true of so I'm curious, what has it been like selling since you guys came out of the pandemic and sort of started to see that momentum pick up? And what are you seeing trends wise of what kind of venues what kind of artists are reaching out? Yeah, just like What's it been? Like?
Mir Hwang 22:44
Totally. So sales in general, in the hospitality space, where in our space is polar opposite and completely different from typical, like SAS or marketplace? Yes, right. And this is something that I think, was one of my biggest challenges in the beginning trying to communicate our story, when we first started to a lot of these VCs, because they see marketplace, they see just an easy like, here, if we put in a million this is like what's going to come out, right? These are the growth levers. And I remember getting questioned a ton about and I understand why you guys aren't going out. And maybe hiring like EDR isn't like VP of sales from a SaaS company and like, approach it that way. And I always have to tell them, I was like, Hey, we are unfortunately not dealing with your traditional entrepreneurs or fortune 500 companies where they're motivated to make a decision based on efficiency based on cost. A lot of the people that we're dealing with are making decisions based on relationships, or making decisions based on emotions, right? Not necessarily making decisions on Hey, this is great, right? And an example I always gave them was one of these people, they don't even use Google Calendar, right? Like they have a big, you know, paper calendar in the back where they input an ad. So I was like, this is
Darrell Etherington 23:59
a lot of these people aren't even running profitable businesses. I don't think they're the traditional customer.
Mir Hwang 24:05
Right. So I think there's a lot of kind of learning curve almost right for me to kind of tell this story in such a short amount of time. And a lot of the times, right, a lot of these investors hear that and they're like, Oh, that's not scalable, or that seems like a very difficult client to win over. Right? So we're at so I kind of had to do things the way we understood the business. And we were like, Hey, I think it's almost hubris for us to think, hey, we can just pay to acquire customers, we can go in and say, Hey, you guys are not running a profitable business. Let us come in and show you how to actually cashflow and run an economical business. Right. They don't want to hear that these people don't want to hear that they want to talk to people that they can identify with. And they want to actually talk to people who have been in the scene or part of the cultural fabric right and actually understand the side of entertainment hospitality, right unlike Some of these venture investors, for example, so that's exactly kind of what we did, right? We never went in saying, Hey, we're this revolutionary AI data powered booking platform where we can come in and magically, like, make your venue better. It's more about, hey, you guys are kind of running your business like pre OpenTable prereqs, because they're still taking phones, right reservations by phone, just because you improve certain operational practices, doesn't mean all of a sudden the restaurant is going to change, right? It's still your brand. It's still your, you know, baby, but I think there are different ways where we can come in and help you and your team, make better decisions, cut cost, save time. And I think this being told, of course, not even from me, but from people who were involved in building that culture in each of those markets, I think resonate a lot stronger. And it doesn't make us come off as this like big tech. You know, that's, I think, unfortunately, what a lot of sometimes hurdles that we have to go over, right, like, we're still such a small, young, lean company. But when people hear tech, Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of the music business, they think you guys are like, Live Nation, right? Coming in, right, and like, trying to take advantage of the independent music venues or whatever it may be. And I think that's where we had to really work hard to focus on storytelling. And I think once people really need our team, and I think meet the artists that are benefiting from the platform, and same thing from venues side, that mission really rings loud to a lot of people. But I think that's kind of how we've been able to really scale in an organic way, right? Without really paying to acquire any customers. It's all been really pure word to mouth, and then just kind of growing in from there. Cool.
Rebecca Szkutak 26:48
I gotta know, because you mentioned earlier that you guys have helped book things like barbecue restaurants and stuff. What's the weirdest venue that is currently? I'm like, dying to know.
Mir Hwang 26:58
Oh, my God, I so maybe not a weird venue.
Rebecca Szkutak 27:01
But oh, yeah, unique, weird is negative.
Mir Hwang 27:05
Maybe one of my actually, my favorite and unique venue that I recently went to is this place called Chicken and pickle. And it's a big fried chicken, like barbecue restaurant, that also has a ton of pickleball courts. So that's been blowing up right in kind of the South and in the Midwest in general, right. And we bring in a lot of cool, you know, like, talent, like country bands, DJs, and stuff like that, right? So it's been really cool for us to see and for me to really witness and meet some of these artists, right? And for them to really send us a note every month or every quarter, or DM us or email us saying, hey, thanks to you, guys. Thanks to get finesse, I was able to quit my job as a barista where I was able to quit my job as a bartender to pursue music full time. And I think for our team in general, like, that's what really keeps us going. I don't think you join a startup to make you know, more money. Of course, there's the eventual potential future success and exit. But a lot of these people didn't leave Google and different jobs because of, you know, money. I think it's more about like, are we actually making a difference in you know, community. And I think being able to see that on a day to day basis is really cool, I think for not only me, but for the rest of our team.
Darrell Etherington 28:23
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, that's a great idea. I'm trying to like, Can I do it? Can I make the Toronto version significant before they get?
Rebecca Szkutak 28:33
Like, where was that located?
Darrell Etherington 28:36
Sounds great. Yeah, I think so. To that point, you know, talking about making a difference for artists is that because I know, you know, when you hit your website, and maybe this is just some magic targeting trickery behind the scenes, but I hit the part of the brochure that I see is about artists, right, aimed at artists, is that by design, and is that for everyone? And is that kind of your primary focus of the focus.
Mir Hwang 28:57
So, you know, our overall mission in general is kind of helping, making I think, pursuing live music a little bit more equitable, right? I think the expression starving artists exists for a reason was because obviously, it's very hard for grassroots musicians to earn money performing. And of course, like likewise, because we're a marketplace, right? Like venues, bars, restaurants struggle, obviously, to book quality entertainment in a more seamless and cost effective way. And now, I think coming out of the pandemic, you know, more consumers are now craving this live experience and going back out. And, you know, for us, the number one focus always has been, of course, serving both the venues and the artists. But I think because we are run primarily and also a lot of our mission statement comes from, how can we give more back to the more underappreciated I think, artists community when when you look at the live music business, it's mostly geared Towards the top point oh percent, right, that's where a lot of the money is being generated and everybody's winning up there, we kind of wanted to flip that paradigm, right? But do it in a way where it's equitable, where venues can actually save a ton of money venues can also make more money with our platform. But also, instead of trying to take from what's seemingly, I think makes more sense, right, because they're the more desperate and there's more amount of musicians at the border. But kind of reversing that a little bit and saying, Hey, I think you know, without the foundational kind of musicians and artists that are chasing to be the next big star, the music business is not going to exist. Yeah. So how can we actually do our part to flip that paradigm? I think that's kind of, you know, how we've been thinking about gig finance as a whole, especially as we scale as well.
Darrell Etherington 30:49
Cool. And you mentioned also Live Nation. And so I was curious about that, too. Like, do you foresee a time when you know, you've changed your focus away from just ticketed venues. But do you foresee a time when you run up against you know, that huge, looming Gargoyle, Ticketmaster Live Nation? And you know, they're famous for gobbling people up? Or just stopping them out? Or? Yeah,
Mir Hwang 31:13
of course, of course. Right. And I, you know, we've had, even as a young company growing the business, I think there has been a lot of, you know, potential Acqui hire opportunities, and a lot of these things that kind of came along our way. And this is where I think maybe it's my youth or my naivete, but it's like, I felt like, you know, we all decided to take a leap of faith to really make a difference and try to push the industry forward. This like, idea and notion of fiscal success, in my opinion, should really be just kind of a byproduct of where we want to get to, right. So I think for us, it's like, we see a universe where as we scale, hey, like, we can click a button and route a tour for musicians, right? So no more like taking a massive percentage of like this promotional element or routing element booking element, right? Can we use data to make sure artists can get better, like even sponsorship opportunities, right? Like, now we can say, hey, if we book Becca, let's say like Becca's fans really liked to drink, Bud Light. So then now that's something you know, maybe, and you might want to say, hey, like, you know, now we know which artists to sponsor and what our target audiences look like, which genre actually moves the most amount of, you know, of these, like, alcohol specific alcohol sales, right, allowing to bridge that gap where artists can actually really take control of what makes them unique and special, right. And, you know, I think eventually, like, that's why we started from the bottom because I wanted to build a transparent almost ladder system, where we can help artists go from your backyard coffee shop, all the way eventually into the stadium, right, using our data and using transparency. And I'm sure it's, at some point, we're gonna have to have that conversation with the big giants, right? And see how we can kind of push through. But for us, you know, I think we're all kind of in it for that one goal? Yeah, can we actually make a difference in the business that really needs change? So that's kind of the pathway we are on right now.
Rebecca Szkutak 33:20
And music is obviously such a huge industry that you definitely could probably make a great business keeping this just to music. But do you think there's any future plans to open this up to other types of artists, other types of creatives? Because I know,
Darrell Etherington 33:32
the lucrative world of poetry spoken? I like to see
Rebecca Szkutak 33:37
the new data on. No, totally.
Mir Hwang 33:40
And, you know, this is so funny, because I remember, you know, one of my mom's biggest gripe was me, or I would rather have you be she used to say, you know, GM at a McDonald's, right, that'd be jazz drama, for example, because it's like, you get a 401 K, you know, you get a consistent pay get into whatever it may be. And for me, I think ultimately, our goal is creatives, right? That's why I don't say musicians, I say artists, because we work with comedians, right? We work with poets, like we work with magicians, right? We work with drag queens were ultimately to us, they're all part of this, like exciting cultural fabric, right? That, you know, music and art and creativity is so really, that's what it comes down to our venue partners preference, right? They're like, hey, Sunday, we want to have like a jazz band. And we can do like more of a gospel brunch, right? But Friday, we want to drag brunch, right? Or whatever it may be. So then we can really help foster each community and make that kind of, you know, resonate within all these different I think, little pockets of creators, right, that exist in this big circle of music and art and creativity.
Darrell Etherington 34:48
That's cool, man. I think I just had a question about the company makeup and, you know, I know you have some positions open right now. So how do you kind of split it up and how do you think about Uh, your expansion strategy, it looks like a lot of your tech team is maybe based in South Korea, like, Do you have a fully distributed team? Or how do you work overall?
Mir Hwang 35:08
Um, so our tech team is based in Seoul, right. And I think that's one of the things that kind of going back to the question about how we were able to run a little bit leaner, we were able to kind of tap into our network a little bit, right, where we can attract really top tier talent in Seoul, at a slightly cheaper rate than the United States, for example, right. And because my co founder and I are both flown in Korea, and you can a Korean and we can both fly back, that was really helpful for us to have a team more offshore, but in a way where we can actually manage them, not just remotely, right. And it's from our personal network. And then I think the team gets really heavily broken down into more of the venue and artists racing, right. So in an overall scheme, kind of like client relations, because the music business is such a relationship driven industry. This is something that I also you know, I remember telling some of these VCs, where when I, let's say make a decision to go with Salesforce, or HubSpot, or whatever it may be, I usually don't reach out to my sales representative and saying, hey, you know, Happy New Year, I just thought to reach out and maybe we can grab coffee sometime. Right, right. But in this side, there is something to be said about, even though let's say that the college is going really well. They are so happy with all the deliverables, they still want to be cared for a little bit. Right, and they want to face 20 Not just this tech platform. So we have artists relations, that no individual genres really well, right. There's one, you know, like, let's say someone from our New York division focuses only on LGBTQIA community and like the queer music community, right. And then there's another artists relations, that focuses mostly on you know, let's say blues, and jazz, right, another one that focuses really on country and folk, so that we can really resonate and better understand all these musicians, because they're so different. Even all you know, bands were artists. And same thing from the venue side, right? Just having that a little bit more in person element. And being very just accessible, I think to our clients is like one of the first core things and that's why I think we were able to really like have a strong retention, right, and we haven't really last any, any partners, and they're so happy with us, because we're just right there next to them all along the way.
Rebecca Szkutak 37:32
Do you do any kind of like vetting process for any of the venues? Or the artists on the site? Or like, just kind of more we do
Mir Hwang 37:39
we do both? Yeah, we do both? Right. So what I like to say is like, we're not Bar Rescue, right. And because we're, we can't write we can't come in and just like send our artists to this, like random crazy basement in the middle of nowhere with horrible sound system. So we have to be selective on the venue front as well, where, you know, we can say, Okay, this one actually fits our brand ownership really understands and appreciates what we're all about. And I think this is going to be a really great opportunity for the artists in our community. From the artists side. It's hilarious that I'll break it down this way, because I'm a musician myself, and it almost seems like a sin to do it. But I break it down in four different buckets, right, as a company, one bucket is unfortunately artists that we can't work with, they have no draw, let's say right, or, and they're also
Darrell Etherington 38:38
a skill or talent really grabbing this bucket. Yeah.
Mir Hwang 38:42
So for those artists, we have to say, hey, you know, like, maybe hone in on your talent a little bit more, and maybe, you know, consider reapplying in you know, three to six months, right. And then the three buckets of musicians we work with are one, you know, maybe this is like a new artist that moved to a new city, right, I can close my eyes and see them selling out way bigger rooms down the road, and the talent is there, but they just need help and they want to grow their fan base, right? Then we can give them the smaller opportunities like hey, can, you should, you know, start at a coffee shop, you should do this. And then as they scale, we can now give them a really cool opening opportunity for a bigger band right and then now they can get exposed to new our fan base. And we've had artists go from literally selling two tickets to 200 tickets, right in less than a year on the platform. The second bucket are of course the artists that you know, a lot of agencies and labels and everybody will want right great talent and great draw. And because we're very heavily involved in a lot of these up and coming like niche communities, right, we can identify them at a quicker rate, and then we can give them a lot of exciting opportunities. Lastly, would be kinda like what my old friend was a lawyer his band, right? It's three NYU Law guys, and it's been their dream to start a hunk rock cover band. And you know, I'm sure he doesn't want me to say this, but from a musician perspective, right and kind of band perspective, they're not the greatest right. But when they perform, can they bring out 300? You know, people from their law firm and and are they spending a ton of money at the bar? Of course, right. So then this allows us to now give our partner venue a really great night from an FMB perspective, but also allows us to now pull maybe a up and coming punk rock band that now can perform in front of a sold out Trump. Right, right. So I think it's a really like almost a healthy kind of ecosystem where like, in theory, people are like, Yeah, that sounds great. But it's just not being done. Yeah. Because it's more like kind of throwing a dart with a blindfold on.
Darrell Etherington 40:51
I might have by accident before but that intention. Right, exactly. That's really cool. I think we're almost out of time. But I do have one more question for you here. Which is, are you still gigging? Are you still doing any actual drummer? What
Rebecca Szkutak 41:05
bucket is your band?
Mir Hwang 41:10
Wow, you know, I guess since I'm doing this, clearly, we weren't in the, you know, the best buckets. But I think, of course, yes. So I actually used to play once or twice a month through the platform myself. And I still interact and play and fill in with a lot of musicians that booked through our platform. I mean, ultimately, this idea in the company started from my own right frustrations of, Hey, how can we make this easier and better, right? From me, forcing my mom to drive me and asking, you know, her if I can drop off demos at all these different venues all across, you know, Vancouver, to even me making a fake alias called Josh diamond, and having a faking an agency. So just so that I can even get, you know, an email back, which surprisingly, it did, right, compared to marijuana drummer versus Josh diamond, this agent that doesn't exist. Now the venues were responding to me, right. So I think it's always something that I will continue, you know, kind of getting involved in and, you know, continue to kind of playing within the, you know, the music, I think community and all these different markets that we're in, I think that's a good way for all of us to still be very hands on and involved with the evolving kind of product. So like everyone in our company, like still goes to a ton of show every month and everyone in our company actually still does Doros, right, we go to a ticket at your non ticketed show and sit there throughout the entire duration of a show at least once a month, just so that, you know, we can kind of take in what we're actually building, doing right, just sitting behind a computer and working on it. It almost seems at a certain point, kind of repetitive, and it can get boring, and you kind of lose sight of like, what are we really doing. But once you actually go to a show, I think that's when you see like, all these fans are like, wow, like, you know, I really had a terrible week. And this is the one night I get to go out and really enjoy it right. And the band's really like, you know, having a great time on stage and saying, Hey, this is the most money I've ever made playing a live show, like, thanks to you guys. And like the sound engineers and the bartenders and the barbacks all saying this is awesome. Like seriously, like you guys make my life so much easier. I think being able to, you know, kind of keep that internally right. At least once a month is super, super important. Yeah. As we continue to scale the team.
Darrell Etherington 43:36
Yeah, I think I mean, yeah, it's rare for anybody in most industries to even have something like that, that they can do. So obviously, you know, if you have the opportunity for sure people should get out and do it. I think it's kind of like I don't know about you, Becca. But we, when we have our events, it's a little bit like that. It's nice to get out there and like see people actually enjoying the community and like pitching and doing all that kind of stuff, but not nearly as cool as the band's.
Rebecca Szkutak 44:02
Yeah, seeing how someone else their interview style is really interesting. And like I can actually apply that to my day to day life, but definitely not the same vibe as going to a concert.
Darrell Etherington 44:11
Yeah. Well, thanks very much mir. It's been great having you and great chatting with you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, and all the best to Geek finesse as well.
Mir Hwang 44:22
Thank you so much.
Darrell Etherington 44:29
All right, Becca, that was a conversation with Mir who is course fellow Canadian. Always an exciting highlight for me and we get that but also just a really cool band guy who then decided to go into business. What did you think about gig finesse and its approach to connecting venues and artists?
Rebecca Szkutak 44:46
Yeah, no, I thought it was really interesting because I guess as someone who's not in the music space, other than my only interaction with live shows is obviously just attending as a viewer
Unknown Speaker 44:57
you've ever performed? No,
Rebecca Szkutak 44:59
no. And we're all better off for it. But I just didn't realize this was an issue. Like it had never occurred to me because like, especially as a consumer, it's like you come across Ticketmaster, you come across Live Nation, you come across StubHub. But I didn't realize those only one so far. So it's interesting to hear of sort of this gap in technology in an industry. And while I hadn't, you will always talk in venture in startups about the industries that haven't added technology or that are really like, resistant to do so. And I guess music wasn't on my radar for that. Talking with Mira, it makes total sense why it should be
Darrell Etherington 45:37
right. I mean, the only reason I had any exposure to this problem at all, I think I was mostly like you just kind of like it was invisible. It's one of those invisible problems, which, I mean, it's perfect for sort of like that venture innovation space, because it's one of those things where it's like, oh, once you see it, it's everywhere. And hopefully, it's a big revenue opportunity. Right. But I think he mentioned Bar Rescue. And I was like, that's the only exposure to anything resembling this problem I've had, because sometimes they go into venues that have like, live acts that come on, and I'm like, oh, yeah, they have to book those live acts. And there's like, usually a person responsible for that for or whatever. And it's all massively unprofessional, which I think is the overall point of that show. But it's probably not that much better than the state of the industry overall, right? Like, it's somebody just calling around to people trying to get it done no real information on the past of the Act, or besides whatever a demo tape they send, or something like that, right? So once you start thinking about, it's like, wow, yeah, that's so in the past, but also hard to bring into the future. So I was, I thought that was really interesting when we were talking to me about like, how he sells to those kinds of customers versus how you would sell to enterprise.
Rebecca Szkutak 46:46
Yeah, and I think that's a really interesting aspect of this, too, is just that it isn't just, quote unquote, regular, like concert venues. Because if you think about it, I mean, of course, you see love music at a ton of other places. And just knowing my boyfriend works at a brewery and knowing when they put on events and stuff like that, they don't have a full time events person. So if they were going to want to book music, like that would be kind of a big job for someone who doesn't focus on that full time. Because obviously, you want to find someone who's good. And like, you were saying, even if you're not even trying to find someone who's good, you're trying to find someone's gonna bring people in to spend money. And that makes it way more complicated, especially to someone whose that's not their full time job. And I'm imagining a lot of these venues they work with that are non traditional venues, are kind of falling under that category, like this is a great solution for them. Because this really frees up their time because they don't have people focused on this 24/7
Darrell Etherington 47:37
know for sure, and even if you do, like there's probably just such a rarefied number of those people who have the ability to look at things like he was talking about, you know, pairing up people who are a big draw, because they happen to have a lot of friends or they're involved in frats, or sororities or whatever. And then actually good bands who are in the same venue who like don't have any audience but could essentially take that audience and make it their own and then keep collecting them and on their way to becoming like a mega success. Right. Like he described it mere describes it as money balling the bar industry. And that's very much what it feels like, right. But it's, it's doing that, but then also making it available to everyone as opposed to to like relying on your one great club promoter or whatever the person would be. Right. So it's making it so that everyone can participate in that. And it's not overly complicated to do so. Which I thought was really cool.
Rebecca Szkutak 48:25
Yeah, cuz I guess I also did just did not realize, or I guess, think about it. I mean, if I really thought about it, maybe I would have realized this, that those smaller Acts who play at some of the smaller, more local venues like they're not going to be like, Yep, I've got these three people were going to come and open for me or Oh, yep, I know, I'm going to do this little tour and I, I'm going to pick the opener everywhere. Like, I didn't realize that that didn't happen. But hearing that that is the case makes total sense. Yeah. So it's like, the pairing is a really interesting aspect of this too. Because, of course, that makes sense that they would need someone to handpick those kind of things. I just hadn't thought of it.
Darrell Etherington 49:00
Yeah, for sure. Like, if there was any optimization at all happening there. It was like sort of haphazard before but now it's like can be standard. But yeah, I'm excited about it. I think, you know, as I embark on my career as the travelling performing poet, I'll be able to bring new audiences to other amateur poets that I run across on my various adventures. So yeah, I think it'll work out great. But
Rebecca Szkutak 49:25
do you think you'll get books out the chicken and pickle Oh, man,
Darrell Etherington 49:28
yes, exclusively. I will assign an overall exclusive deal with the chicken and pickle. I'll do a chicken and pig of residency,
Rebecca Szkutak 49:36
and dream poetry opportunity.
Darrell Etherington 49:41
Found is hosted by myself Managing Editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch plus reporter Becca SGU. Tech were produced by Maggie Stamets with editing by Cal Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator Alyssa stringer leads audience development and Henry pic of it manages TechCrunch his audio products. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai