KC Startup Hoopla.io Is Causing A Ruckus In The Event Space

Hoopla.io, Kansas City startup, startups, event startupTo many the event space is an extremely crowded one for new startups. It seems everyone and their grandmother wants to challenge the stranglehold that LiveNation/Ticketmaster has on the event industry. Others feel that they are safe battling the likes of Eventbrite and TicketLeap, and then there are the dime a dozen startups aggregating events in your local area.

Well when we heard Kansas City startup Local Ruckus was pivoting to something new in the event space we were intrigued.

Basically the problem is that event repository websites are everywhere with none really having that big a piece of the pie. That problem stems from the content. Typically these event sites have a sentence or two about the event leaving potential attendees wondering what the event is really about. Without a more indepth look at the event itself, event organizers are leaving would be patrons on the table, or at least still at home.

Adam Arredondo and Matthew Marcus set out to change the way events are marketed and promoted by putting an emphasis on the content and content distribution.

Here at nibletz we must get 25 emails a day from entepreneurs and event organizers that ask us to publish their event. Well it’s hard to write five sentences much less 300 words on an event when all we get is the name of the event, date, time and if we’re lucky, cost. So unless we want to go digging through the internet to find the relevant information and build a story we have to pass on it, and it may have been an amazing event.

Marcus described Hoopla.io like this: “Many local businesses don’t have the time, money, or expertise to effectively promote their events. Publishers struggle to provide high quality, relevant local events to their audience. With a focus on content distribution, Hoopla.io solves both sides of the problem and will create a nationwide local events syndication network.”

In it’s previous life Local Ruckus was trying to do what many local event sites are doing. While it may not sound like it, Hoopla.io is offering a new, and definitely refreshing approach to local events on a national scale. Local Ruckus had hit a wall that other startups like Louisville’s Impulcity and Nashville’s Wannado have hit. That all changed.

“We had been working on our original startup Local Ruckus for a couple years now, and it hit us that Ruckus didn’t have the scalability or force of disruption needed to spread across the country like we had planned. With that epiphany, we knew we needed to change our direction, and change it fast. Hence, Hoopla.io was conceived and born in the span of two months. With Local Ruckus, our passion to help local businesses better promote their events, and consumers more easily discover local events, was always simmering on the back burner of our minds.  Hoopla.io was created when our goals and mission really started to boil. And everyone knows to take action when things start to boil.” Marcus said in an interview.

Hoopla.io has already received significant validation. They’ve already partnered with Kansas City corporate giant Sprint. They’ve also acquired over $100,000 in non-dilution capital, been named “Best Young Company to Work For” by Turnstone, and they’ve also been accepted into the Digital Sandbox program.

Hoopla.io  is also preparing to pitch in the semi-finals of the Miller Lite Tap The Future startup contest. The contest pits startups against each other in regional pitch offs judged by ABC Shark Tank Shark, Daymond John.  Miller Lite held their first semi-finals in Phoenix Arizona on October 15th. The remaining pitch offs include Atlanta, October 22nd, Dallas Texas, October 30th, Philadelphia , November 1st and Chicago November 5th. Hoopla is pitching at the Dallas event.

Find out more about Hoopla here.

 

 

New York Startup Wants You To DoItInPerson

DoItInPerson, NY Startup, Event Startup,startups,startup interview

There’s a new kid in town in the event space, and it’s New York startup DoItInPerson.

Founder Aron Schoenfeld realizes that the event space is very crowded but it’s also very fragmented.  There are event discovery startups, event community startups, event social networking startups, and event ticketing startups. DoItInPerson is taking all of these fragmented pieces and putting them together in one platform. Their all in one platform promises one place to go for managing, promoting, and discovering events and communities.

Schonfeld has covered everything about an event with DoItInPerson. Using their platform you can create and manage your community, find and book speakers and sponsors, create and sell tickets, create partnerships, invite attendees, and monitor how it all fits together. Schonfeld found, through putting his own events together, that he was using different tools for each thing.

There are already a handful of great event organizers who have turned to DoItInPerson and discovered that the platform delivers everything they say it will.

(Disclosure: We’re using this product to help organize our Everywhere Else Conference and it’s been extremely helpful.)

EEBOTHDiscountWhat is your startup, what does it do?

DoItInPerson.com is an online event platform that allows people to create, manage and promote events and communities. It brings all of the fragmented pieces of the event space together; from creating and managing your community, sending newsletters, booking speakers, selling tickets, adding sponsors to managing partnerships. Our goal is to simplify the event process and create data around events and communities that will help organizers sell more event tickets.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds

The company was founded by Aron Schoenfeld. Aron is an accountant by trade and has worked on multiple startups. His first startup, which he still currently runs, is DreamArtists Studios, a boutique music production company that has composed theme music for shows such as ABC’s Good Morning America and 20/20 and ESPN’s Year of the Quarterback.

Where are you based?

We are based in NY

 

What is the startup culture like where you are based?

Very intense. Everyone wants to work on a startup and there is a lot of hustle going on. Unfortunately, I think that in NY we see more ideas and less actual startups than in other cities.

 

What problem does your startup solve?

Our company aims to solve and eliminate the fragmentation in the event space to make it easier for organizers to create, manage, and promote their events in a way that adds meaning and relevance to their events. Currently organizers are forced to use multiple sites and platforms, which leads to a lack of cohesive data across the event space. Through consolidation, we will be able to provide organizers with the data they need to create better events and collect more event registrations.

 

What is one challenge that you’ve overcome in the startup process?

Getting people to see the value proposition and why we are different then our competitors. Many people are familiar with other ticketing sites or other community management sites. We spent a lot of time refining our message to show people we are not just a ticketing or community platform.

 

What are some of the milestones your startup has achieved?

We recently had our 100th event run on the site and have had over 1000 registrations.

 

What are your next milestones

Our goal now is to hit 500 events, get more activity in the community aspect of the site and focus on having people use the speaker portion of our site more, which I believe adds tremendous value to the events and seems to be a lot of people’s favorite feature.

 

Who are your mentors and role models?

My mentors include Sergio Fernandez de Cordova, who taught me a lot about what I know about entrepreneurship and has helped me any time I have had questions or issues.

 

My role model is my father who as a salesman, worked extremely hard all the time to make sure we had whatever we needed, but more importantly, always put family first. Whether driving to the Catskills in traffic every Thursday night in the summer to spend the weekends with us, or never missing a school event, he put family first, no matter how busy work was.

 

What’s next for your startup?

We just launched a redesign for the site and are focusing on making the site a more responsive design. We also plan to launch 5-6 new key features to give the site broader appeal and are hoping to get 4-5 large conferences using the site over the next few months.

Where can people find out more?

doitinperson.com 

Speaking of events did you see these 50 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt NY

nibpartner1

Louisville Startup: Implucity Headed To Cincinnati Incubator, The Brandery

Louisville startup Implucity is headed to a 14 week accelerator program in Cincinnati called The Brandery. Along with a 14 week incubation period, office space and mentorship Implucity will receive $20,000 in seed capital.

Implucity is a mobile app that allows users to discover events, purchase tickets, invite friends to events and send photos. Co-founder Hunter Hammonds told the Business Journal that there were plenty of times that he wanted to go out but didn’t know what to do, Implucity solves that problem.

“We’re not trying to be a social network at all,” Hammonds said. “It’s not about who I am. It’s about what I’ve been doing.”

There are several apps in the exact same space, during their time at The Brandery they are going to really need to work on refining their secret sauce.

According to Hammonds and co-founder Austin Cameron, they’ve raised under $250,000 so far, and hope to raise over $2 million after their session at The Brandery.  Right now their secret sauce relies on the fact that Implucity isn’t a social network, it’s focused on the singular user to find events to do and then share.

“I think that’s something we can hit because the user experience is awesome,” Hammonds said. “It’s just a cool product for you to use. It’s not a social network so we don’t rely on your friends. We just rely on you wanting to do something.”

Linkage:

Check out Implucity here

Source: Business Journal

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” check out these new stories

We’re on a sneaker strapped startup roadtrip, more info here

St.Louis Startup: Busy Event Is A Complete Event Management Solution Designed By Industry Veterans

Let’s face it at this point in time event apps are a dime a dozen. There are good established event apps like Eventbrite and there are some new comers to the space that may prove to be disruptive. On the other side of the spectrum it seems that anyone who’s hosted a birthday party for their three year old has come up with an event app. BusyEvent is actually neither.

The St.Louis startup was founded by Brian Slawin and David Schenberg two St.Louis area event industry veterans with over 40 years of experience. There complete approach to events works off the idea that you need to do more than sell tickets and check people into the door in order to have a great event. BusyEvent is part of the Microsoft BizSpark program. They are more than just an event app. Slawin tells Nibletz.com:

“BusyEvent is a live events technology company.  We have developed a mobile web app for event producers that helps make their events easier to manage and more profitable to produce.  Our premier product, gomobile.pro, puts an entire tradeshow into your phone, making it easier to find and connect with the people, products and information event participants are interested in.”

We got a chance to interview Slawin about BusyEvent and here’s what he told us:

Who are the founders of BusyEvent and what are your backgrounds?

Brian Slawin: Since the mid-90s, Brian has been working in the events industry, designing, building and managing tradeshow programs and technology products for dozens of Fortune 1000 clients like Domino’s Pizza, HP, Ameriprise and H&R Block, Toyota AirSports and many others. A strong operational leader with a clear communication style, he has successfully managed cross-functional teams, has a demonstrated aptitude as a hands-on software engineer and managing the use of numerous technologies.

David Schenberg: David is a veteran of the events industry with 20 years of experience designing, managing and selling technology that motivates people to meet and do business together. He has experience with major brands like AB, HP, M&M Mars, Domino’s Pizza, H&R Block, Ameriprise Financial, Marriott and Ritz Carlton. He leads the way in the use of emerging technology and his clients trust him to help navigate the ever changing landscape.

More after the break
Read More…