Making Live Music Equitable: A Letter From Our CEO
By Mir Hwang
In light of GigFinesse announcing our $3.6m round of seed funding this week, I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude and share our journey up until this point.
I fell in love with music by playing in bands and putting on shows. My time as a touring session musician would make me intimately familiar with the intricacies and the frustrations of booking live entertainment.
It wasn’t long before I found myself immersed in a community of artists who were as equally desperate for a better way to source gigs and perform. In the summer of 2019, my co-founder Ryan and I decided to take a leap of faith, forgoing Google and medical school respectively, and set out on our mission to improve live music for both artists and venues.
Most startup stories I’ve been exposed to follow a very similar trajectory. Come up with a great idea, build a prototype, pitch to investors, get funding, secure attention from the media, and then experience hyper-growth. I was convinced that I already had a great idea, and with that out of the way, everything else would fall into place. The biggest challenge, I thought, would be appeasing my mother when she found out her son was no longer going to become a doctor.
Early on, it seemed as though I was right. The first few months of GigFinesse were smooth sailing: we won non-dilutive funding from various startup competitions, connected with amazing mentors, and found dedicated early customers who helped us develop an MVP. I now know that the Dunning-Kruger Effect is very real!
Unfortunately, the honeymoon period did not last long. Just as the business, product, and team were starting to take shape, COVID-19 hit. The pandemic instantly wiped out all of the progress we thought we’d made. As the entire live music industry ground to a halt, GigFinesse was right back at square one.
I still vividly remember the day my team and I rented a U-Haul and moved out of New York City. The plan was to crash at a team member’s parent’s house and just “wait it out” for the month or so we thought the pandemic was going to last. One month quickly turned to six. I was wracked with anxiety and guilt. I felt responsible for my team, including my co-founder, Ryan, whose lives and careers were put on hold.
Getting in front of investors was nearly impossible, and those who would take my calls were questioning the viability of the very industry I was building GigFinesse to serve.
Post-pandemic solutions for the entertainment sector were suddenly in vogue, and in-person experiences were out. I was told again and again that live music would never fully recover.
Instead of pulling the plug then and there, we decided to deploy the little cash we had left in a last-ditch effort: we had to see GigFinesse through, even if it meant just a few more months.
With just a suitcase and a backpack, I ventured down to Austin, Texas. I sublet a tiny dorm room and went on foot, door to door, trying to talk to more customers, all while tutoring chemistry on the side to pay the bills. This would be the do-or-die test for GigFinesse: can we grow in a completely new market with no connections, no understanding, and no proof of concept?
Luckily for us, our product resonated with several key partners in Austin. Many of those who took a chance on us then are still some of our most valued clients now.
As individuals, we tend to overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can achieve in the long term. Day-to-day progress can seem slow, as with any start-up, and sometimes this can get discouraging, especially for dedicated teams working around the clock to make things happen.
Looking back, however, it’s blindingly obvious how much that daily effort can, over time, compound into major results. Today is one such example. This seed round is the result not of successful pitches or friendly meetings, but of the entire GigFinesse team working bit by bit every single day.
At GigFinesse, we have been working tirelessly to reinvent how artists and venues connect. Through our platform, artists receive tailor-made opportunities, generated by our matching algorithm, to book shows at our venue partners, nationwide. Our booking engine is not only powered by data collected from each performance but is also vetted by our team of experienced talent-buying veterans, giving GigFinesse industry-leading booking efficiency alongside impeccable curation.
In just over a year, we have had the pleasure of working with over 5000 artists, and have generated more than $1.5M in payout. Alongside them, GigFinesse powered over 100 different stages all across the country.
To all of the artists, we’ve had the pleasure of working with and to the many more that we’ll work with in the future, thank you for all of your support and for being a part of our journey. We look forward to continuing to make live music booking sustainable and equitable.
To all of our venue partners who trust us to curate their space, thank you for providing a stage for artists to pursue their dreams, and for preserving the unique cultural fabric of the live music community.
We are excited to use our funds to continue growing nationwide, providing quality programming to our venue partners, and finding sustainable opportunities to perform and grow for our artists.
Thank you to Bessemer Venture Partners, Cosmic Venture Partners, NJME Investments, NYU Innovation Venture Fund, and all of our amazing early investors, who stood by us from the beginning.
I, on behalf of everyone at GigFinesse, would like to thank you, our loyal artists & venue partners for being with us through good and bad. We could not have gotten here without you.
It is a huge privilege to have the opportunity to start your own idea and chase it. You get to choose to solve a problem that has real meaning. Even though GigFinesse opened up a myriad of challenges that I would have never expected to face, we stand here today because we tried. We had the courage to put it out there.
Cheers to the exciting things the future of live music holds,
Mir Hwang, Co-Founder & CEO
