Pivoting to Survive: How a Cross-Country Move Saved GigFinesse

Ethan Peyton: Hey, everybody, and welcome to the Startup Savant podcast. I'm your host, Ethan. And this show is about the stories, challenges, and triumphs of fast-scaling startups and the founders who run them. 

Our guest on the show today is Mir Hwang. 

Mir is the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse, a startup that is re-inventing the way artists and venues connect with each other. Mir is a graduate of New York University. And this normally wouldn't come up in the show about startups, but we're going to get into the significance of that in a little bit. 

GigFinesse is Mir’s first company and from the looks of it, he and his co-founder have really hit their stride. And that is what we're going to dive into today. 

But before we do, remember to subscribe to the show so you don't miss any of our awesome founders, and of course, subscribing is also the simplest way that you can support the show. 

All right, now that we've covered the housekeeping, let's jump into some fun with Mir. Mir, welcome to the show. Glad to have you on board today!

Mir Hwang: Hey Ethan, thanks for having me.

Ethan Peyton: Thanks for being here. 

All right. Let's start right at the beginning. Tell us a little bit more about what GigFinessese is.

Mir Hwang: Yeah, so GigFinesse is a music tech company where we've been transforming the booking process for artists and venues by leveraging live show data. It's an easy-to-use platform that connects live music venues of all sizes, tastes with thousands of artists from all across the country. And it allows them to curate shows that are perfectly suited to their music preference. And this also allows artists and venues to maximize their returns by leveraging live show data from eventgoers as well.

Ethan Peyton: Got ya, so there's a data side and there's also a booking side. So it sounds like you're solving a couple of different problems here. Besides just those two problems, what was the actual problem that you're solving? Like, weren't bands already getting into venues? What are you all doing that’s over and above? 

Mir Hwang: Yeah, so I think it would be helpful for me to give you a little background about myself and how the idea for GigFinesse came about. 

So for me, the idea for GigFinesse came to me relatively early when I was actually in middle school trying to book my first shows for my own band. And I fell in love with the live music side just by playing in bands and putting on shows with my friends. Over the course of time, I was lucky enough to grow into a session drummer and have been on tours and had the pleasure of being on the road across the US and Canada. And I think by doing so, I became really intimately familiar with the intricacies and frustrations of booking. 

Believe it or not, to this day artists are still cold calling, cold emailing, dropping off demos. You know, these venues are processing 1099s by hand and they are [inaudible] with pen paper. And artists are getting looped in last minute with the production managers manually sending over guest lists. I mean, the list goes really on and on and on in terms of how archaic and inefficient to music the live booking side really is. 

So it wasn't too long before I found myself immersed in a community of artists who were equally as frustrated and looking for better ways to source gigs and perform. And I think one unique thing that we brought to the equation was, like many people our age, we were kind of right in the precipice of witnessing a lot of the drastic changes the music business was going through, right? Where I still remember almost forcibly ripping my dad's Walkman out of his hands, to you know, listen

Ethan Peyton: [chuckles]

Mir Hwang: to my first album, to going out and buying my first Discman, to buying ninety-nine cent songs on iTunes, or pirating songs on Napster, to making sure my album art was impeccable on my iPod, to obviously where we are with streaming. And I think I was really excited to see all the innovations come about across the board, whether it be from distribution side, publishing side, marketing side. 

But unfortunately, the one downside that I saw in this shift was while technology advancements made creating, sharing, and marketing music a lot easier, it also made it very difficult for artists to actually make a living off of music. Hence performing live now has become more crucial than ever for artists and venues in terms of being able to actually generate revenue. 

So in the summer of 2019 my co-founder, Ryan, (who also happens to be my cousin) and I both decided to take the leap of faith together. And he forgo Google and I decided to forgo my medical school journey. And we both kind of set out on this mission to improve the live music ecosystem as a whole.

Ethan Peyton: Those are some pretty big, pretty big things that you forewent. Did you kind of have an idea of like: We're going to try it for this amount of time and if it doesn't work, we're going to go back into the lives that we had already planned for ourselves? Or was it more like a: this is going to work and we don't have a choice - we've got to just do it?

Mir Hwang: You know, I think for us, and for me, especially, it really came down to the “what if?”. I was telling myself if I commit to medical school now, realistically by the time I'm out of my residency program, and I'm in a position where I'm happy, realistically I'm going to be in my mid to late thirties at the earliest. And it's only going to get harder and harder for either of us to take the leap of faith. And you know, I think working on your own idea or starting a company is very risky. So we wanted to do it when we were both young when we could afford to make mistakes. Because going back to school or going back to any of the bigger corporations is something that's always in the cards. So we wanted to kind of do this early on so at the very least, we can get it out of our system and say “Hey, we've at least given it our best shot.”

Ethan Peyton: Yeah, you can do these things at any age but there's definitely some benefit in being young, and there's some benefit in being older as well, but -

Mir Hwang: Totally.

Ethan Peyton: you’ve got to play the cards you dealt. And it's really cool to see that you took the leap, and it seems to be working out so far.

So you were in this industry, you were a drummer since middle school, you had a band or bands. So you were pretty steeped in this industry and you were kind of part of the audience that was experiencing this problem. 

So when you were kind of ideating this business, do you feel like you came at this from a problem first, or an audience first, point of view? And let me clarify: did you know that you wanted to start a business for this audience or did you see this problem and choose to solve this problem with a business?

Mir Hwang: I think I definitely identified the problem first because it was something that I first-hand experienced myself. And being around a lot of my musician friends it was something that we were all talking about. 

What I thought was interesting was there were a lot of different “solutions” out there that existed in the ether. But none of them really seemed to address what I called “the hair on fire” problem - the actual issue at hand. Where there are a lot of marketplaces where there are a lot of backend softwares that may help in terms of booking overload, or in terms of maintaining a cleaner ecosystem, in terms of managing a calendar, or whatever it may be. But none of it really seemed to solve the problem at hand, which was that a lot of these live music venues are getting flooded with hundreds if not thousands of email inquiries. 

And their main problem is not necessarily finding musicians or comedians or DJs to book. Their main problem at hand was how can we identify the right talent that actually brings ROI when we actually open the club or open the venue? So, I think a good example of this is you know, we have artists on our platform with three to five million Spotify streams who can barely sell let’s say fifty tickets in New York City. And you would -

Ethan Peyton: Right?

Mir Hwang: have a local NYU band with five hundred Soundcloud followers, who can sell three hundred tickets because they're in Greek life, or they have a lot of friends and family in the area. Or say, Ethan, you and I were to perform and you sell a hundred tickets, and I sell two hundred tickets, but my fans are boring. They're drinking water,

Ethan Peyton: [Chuckles]

Mir Hwang: maybe a Bud Light, but if your fans are taking shots at the bar or drinking expensive whiskey, it makes more sense

Ethan Peyton: Oh, yeah, they're wild.

Mir Hwang: [Chuckle] Right? 

For the venue to book you over me because ultimately it's a brick-and-mortar business that's driven by F and B revenue. 

So we kind of wanted to take a step back and better understand what really was the pain point that both the artists and the venues were trying to solve. And one of the things that really excited us was hey can we, not only, of course, use technology to streamline a lot of the inefficiencies in communications and everything that are already in place, but almost money ball, the live music ecosystem? Where we can book more predictable and profitable shows right in an industry where there's a lot of over-promising and under-delivering

Ethan Peyton: Yeah, that totally makes sense, it’s kind of just playin’ matchmaker. And if you've got all this data, you know you were talking earlier about data collection and using that data, then you can make better decisions. 

Is this kind of all being presented to the users in a form of a web app or a Native app? What's it look like to the users?

Mir Hwang: It's a form of a web app. So it was very interesting when we first built our prototype, we actually envisioned it in an app form and we actually launched beta in an app form. Then we soon realized that a lot of our end-users were not necessarily working on their phones. They prefer

Ethan Peyton: Right?

Mir Hwang: to go in, right, out of any setting and they were all working on their laptops for the most part. So we realized, okay, so this is a better way for us to actually service our customers. While I think an app is going to be something that we're definitely going to launch down the road. For now, we saw a lot more demand from a web app perspective. 

Ethan Peyton: Yeah, that's a huge insight because it's that form factor. You may have all of the same functionality, you may have all of the same endpoints in data and usability on all that stuff, but if people want you in their pocket then that makes sense. But if they don't want to, you know. If I'm coming to work and you've given me the best tools to make the best podcast possible, but it's on my phone, then yeah [chuckle], I am probably going to use the second-best tool because it's on the computer. So yeah,

Mir Hwang: Totally

Ethan Peyton: knowing that form factor, that's huge. How did you gather that data? Like, what was the feedback that you got? And how did you facilitate people telling you: “Hey, this is the place that I want to use this product.”

Mir Hwang: Totally. And I think you know this is why people always talk about the importance of customer discovery and how it never ends. 

You know, for us, it was definitely the same thing. I remember when we first kind of envisioned our prototype, it was almost kind of like Tinder of music booking is the best way to put it. Where instead of now cold emailing all these venues and filling out different forms, like we can just make it into an app, venues get a profile, artists can get a profile, right? Venues can maybe upload their descriptions and what kind of acts they're looking for and like what their budget is. Artists can apply and they can swipe left and right to find the perfect match and there's like a rating system. 

And when we actually went out and did the customer discovery a lot of our venue partners were like ‘This sounds amazing! This is going to revolutionize how we book shows and we're super excited to try this out.’ And in less than a month we ended up actually losing all of our prototype or demo clients, which obviously I was extremely shocked! And I went back to them and I was like ‘Hey, I feel like we've had multiple conversations, I thought we really understood your pain point, and this is kind of what you wanted us to build. Why are you guys not using it?’ 

And I think that's when we really kind of realized and we were able to hone in on their actual pain point. Which was A, we don't want to work on our phones and have to swipe through hundreds of these profiles, right? And number two, ultimately, at the end of the day, what we care about the most is the success of the show, right? When it comes to, well, how many tickets selling, but more importantly, what kind of numbers is it bringing up right at the bar? 

So we knew that that was ultimately the number one metric that the venues were going to really hone in on and focus on. And that kind of allowed us to kind of make a pivot right towards okay, so this is actually the problem that they want us to solve. It's not that they want us to better lay out all the artists that are applying right, because that doesn't necessarily help them, nor save them that much time. They want us to identify and streamline the data collection so that we can better predict. So yeah, that's kind of how we ended up making a pivot from our initial app and testing phase to where we are now.

Ethan Peyton: That makes sense. 

So that represents one of the kind of obstacles that you ran into, specifically. But I know that there were some other pretty big obstacles that you all had in your kind of earlier years.

Can you tell us about a few of those challenges that you and your co-founder faced and how you dealt with them?

Mir Hwang: Yeah, I mean for us right, having founded GigFinesse in the summer of 2019, I think you know we've been faced with plenty of curve balls.

Ethan Peyton: Oh yeah!

Mir Hwang: And I think you know hindsight, obviously, is 20/20. But like, as tough as it has been, we've kind of learned to run a very disciplined and tight organization right in operation through it all. And I think because we were almost forced to run lean and make smart use of capital with a focus on sustainable growth. 

I think part of the reason why we were able to succeed and still raised in this down market was because we really embodied that kind of mindset in mentality throughout our entire you know growth of the company. You know, I think any really founder will agree, right. The highs are so high and the lows are so low, and we've definitely been through so many different curve balls. Where at one point, people were questioning the viability right of our entire business as a whole. 

During the pandemic questioning, are people really going to come back to live events? Is that even a reality? Is this something where you guys want to pivot into live streaming right? There's whole sorts of number of debates that we're going through our heads with no way for us to cash flow the business. 

So we had to definitely make a pivot, and during one of those pivotal decisions that we made at the time was moving out of our main market, which back then was New York City to Austin.

Ethan Peyton: Hm. Okay, let's get into that because there's not many groups of people, especially, that are willing to uproot themselves and move across the country. And let's I mean, even bigger - you're not moving from, you know, one large city to another large city. You're moving from New York to Austin to pretty different places specifically just to continue working on this business. It's a pretty bold move. Tell us more about that!

Mir Hwang: I think one of the things that I found really interesting is you know, the Dunning-Kruger effect that everybody talks about turns out to be extremely real. Like a lot of the startup stories that I was exposed to all kind of followed a very similar trajectory. It was mostly come up with a great idea, right? You want to build a prototype and then you pitch to investors. You raise capital and then you secure attention from the media and then you experience hyper-growth, right? And that's what kind of floods a lot of our Linkedin or different social media because you hear a lot of the success stories. 

And for us you know, I think, luckily, you know, we were convinced that, well, I was convinced at least that I had a really great idea. And with that out of the way, like we were thinking everything else would kind of fall into place. And for me, I remember when we first started the biggest challenge I thought I would have was appeasing my mom when she found out that her only son was no longer going to become a doctor. And I think early on, you know, it definitely seemed to be the case. 

The first few months for us were smooth sailing. I guess we can go into this later when we talk about the student side, but you know we won a lot of non-diluted funding opportunities from various startup competitions. We met a lot of amazing mentors and we were able to identify early customers who, you know, helped us develop an MVP. 

But you know, this kind of honeymoon phase didn’t last long. 

You know, just as the business and product and the team were starting to take some sort of shape and form, covid-19 hit. And the pandemic instantly wiped out all of the progress we thought we had made. And you know as the entire kind of industry grounded to a halt, you know we were right back at square one. And I still vividly remember the day my team and I rented a U-haul, and we were driving out of New York City. And initially, the plan was let's stay at a team member's parent's house and just wait it out right for the month or two.

Ethan Peyton: Right.

Mir Hwang: So thought so we thought. And you know, one month quickly turned to six and I was personally really wrecked with a lot of anxiety and guilt. You know, I felt responsible for my team and, you know, my co-founder whose lives and careers were put on hold to work on something that seemed like wasn't viable. We didn't know when this was going to end. 

And for us at the time, you know, getting in front of investors were nearly impossible. And, you know, people who take our calls were questioning the very viability of the industry that we were building GigFinesse to serve.

Ethan Peyton: Yeah,

Mir Hwang: So, I think for us, instead of pulling the plug, then and there, I think that's when we decided to deploy the little kind of capital we had left in a last-ditch effort. And we wanted to see GigFinesse through, even if it meant just for a few more months. 

So [with] just the suitcase and a backpack I move down to Austin, Texas. I sublet a tiny dorm room because that was the only thing I could afford at the time. And, you know, went on foot you know door to door talking to more clients. Meanwhile, you know, tutoring chemistry on the side to kind of help pay the bills. And this was really almost a do-or-die moment for our team. And the question we had was can we grow in a completely new market with no connections, right? No understanding and no proof of concept.

And I think, luckily for us, you know, our product resonated with several key partners in Austin. And many of those who took a chance on us then, are still some of our most valued clients now and we've been able to really scale. 

And moving to Austin, I think also helped us open up a really kind of cool vertical that we didn't necessarily think about. When we first envisioned building GigFinesse, our main focus was helping and targeting your traditional ticketed venues where you're buying a ticket to go see a show. And then when I moved to Austin, I realized really entertainment was everywhere, right? There’d be wineries, breweries, coffee shops, hotels, restaurants. They were all having some sort of live music or comedy or DJs. 

So I decided to just go in and talk to all the different decision-makers and shareholders-right? I would talk to the food and beverage director, or the GM, or the venue owners and ask: Hey, you know, do you run into any pain points or do you have any problems that you want to address when it comes to sourcing talent and booking? 

And it was very interesting to hear their side because their pain points were similar to the ticketed side, but it didn't necessarily rely too much on the draw aspect, right? Because most of these venues, they're doing it for more of an ambiance, right? So their pain points were mere like, we don't necessarily have the budget to bring on a full time events coordinator to handle this full time so it usually oftentimes falls under my shoulders or my F&B director’s shoulders. And it's really painful for me to deal with. You know all these musicians or comedians coming, I have to still manually cut 1099s and cut them checks. I have to deal with all the day of show loading information and X, Y and Z. 

From the accounting team's perspective, they’re like, nationwide, we have to cut thousands of checks to all these different individual artists, you know. And we're looking for more of a turnkey solution where we can really scale our entertainment needs across the US. where we can kind of give you guys a direction of this is our budget. This is kind of what we're looking for, and you guys can come in and be the experts and really curate and help build this brand with us. Which was something that was very exciting to me because at the end of the day, the number one thing that I really wanted to do for GigFinesse was help artists find their stage, right? 

And I think it's such an important distinction here where there are musicians where they would tell me, Mir, never in a million years would I be seen playing Wonderwall on Six Street or on Broadway in Nashville.

Ethan Peyton: [Chuckles]

Mir Hwang: I only want to play the coolest and hippist venues because I want to be the next superstar. But you know there are also artists who are like: Wow, I’m gonna get paid five hundred dollars, you know, to play at a steakhouse and play jazz standards. And this is an exciting way for me to, you know, have a supplemental income or pay for rent, whatever it may be. So this really allowed us to kind of open up two very similar but unique verticals where we can really, you know, kind of help our artist user base in general across the board.

Ethan Peyton: That makes sense. It's because, I mean, for the simple fact that you're running a two-sided marketplace here, and just because one side is being super well served doesn't necessarily mean that the other side is getting all of the same love and attention and all that stuff. 

And in fact, let's talk about that. 

The whole concept of a two-sided marketplace for a minute because, you know, I tend to get in conversations with founders. And it's always the first-time founder that jumps into the two-sided marketplace types of ideas. And I don't know if that's because, like the founders who have already done something, they're like ‘You know what? That's a headache. and I'd rather go do something else,’ or if it's just- so I don't know what the draw is for the first-time founder to come into the two-sided marketplace concept.

Mir Hwang: [Chuckles]

Ethan Peyton: But you're making it work! And so let's talk about it. 

What do you feel as though at the very beginning you were able to focus on one side over the other and that was able to sustain you? Or do you feel like you had a necessity to bring on both sides and that was absolutely required to make it work?

Mir Hwang: So I think one of the biggest challenges right, and this is the whole chicken and an egg problem that all marketplaces talk about Right. Like which one do we want to service first? Right do we want if we have too many venues and two little artists? That's gonna be a problem. If we have too many artists and two little venues. That's also going to be a problem.

Ethan Peyton: Right.

Mir Hwang: Luckily for us, that wasn't something that we had to worry about as much because the musician side or the artist side in terms of supply is ever flowing. So in fact, it's the same thing right now, we have a pretty big waitlist of artists wanting to join the platform and we have to be selective in terms of which artists we want to work with and let into the platform because we want to make sure that they also provide a lot of value to our venue partners, right? 

So for us, I think it was two things one. I think the artist side of the platform was very easy for us to understand and build because we are run primarily by also artists, right, or ex-artists. So there are a lot of problems and pain points that we were experiencing or we had experienced where we knew, you know, if we can address these pain points, it would make our lives so much easier. 

And then we had to go dive in a little bit deeper from the venue side where they were the one really kind of telling us ‘Hey, these are some of our main pain points and we're looking for someone to really address these solutions.’ 

And once we were able to do that, and once we started onboarding our venue partners, artists were ecstatic, I think, to just use our product in general because it's completely free for artists to join, right? There's no fee associated with them and it just makes their lives a lot easier and unlocks, I think, a lot more potential for them to go out and get shows. 

So for us, it wasn't necessarily a chicken and an egg problem. Um, it was more about, I think, getting the prototype built and getting the idea off the ground, right?  And then convincing, I think, our venue partners to give us a chance to prove our product and see it in action.

Ethan Peyton: So then, of course, this is a speculative question. But as you now see and understand your market, and, you know you're running a business that serves both sides. Do you think that there is always a case where the business owner, the entrepreneur, the founder can say, If I solve this problem it will increase the benefit for both users? Or do you think there are still some cases where it's fifty percent work on this side and fifty percent work on the other side? 

Mir Hwang: I think it may not always be fifty-fifty. It might be more like seventy-thirty. That was definitely the case on our end. For us, I think, one advantage that we had was, unfortunately, I think artists have been disadvantaged for such a long time, right. And the status quo is extremely extremely predatory and antiquated. So for us, it didn't require much in terms of technological advancement to satisfy and quench their need of like, you know, wanting to try something new.

And then from the venue side, you know, we had to really get down and figure out the numbers and figure out the metrics that they cared about and what kind of output they wanted to see in terms of using technological solution. Where in an industry especially that's very hesitant to change, right, I think for us, that was definitely the biggest hurdle. Where we were having to go out and convince an industry and a lot of the decision-makers who have been doing things, right, in one specific way or a certain way. And to get them to think now outside of the box or try something new is an extremely tall task. 

And I think this is where I think the timing actually, hindsight, the pandemic did allow us to get in front of more people. Because, for the first time ever, I think a lot of these venues or hospitality owners were thinking to themselves, you know, does it really make sense for us to go back to our old ways? Or does it now make sense to look at different solutions that are out there, right, that can kind of decrease our overhead and we can yield higher ROI?

Ethan Peyton: Right, right, New world, new solution that's can't beat that. 

All right, so let's go back to something that we've both mentioned in the beginning. That you had some different experiences with accelerators during your time at NYU, and doing some basic research, it looks like they have a pretty robust like support system for entrepreneurs. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with these programs?

Mir Hwang: Totally. 

I think, you know, one of the things that or one of the reasons why I looked into the student program, in general, was actually, thanks to my co-founder. So I remember Ran and I sitting down and he had already graduated and he was already in the workforce, right, at Google. And one of the things that he was telling me was how he regrets not being able to take advantage of a lot of the resources that were right in front of him at MIT when he was there in terms of entrepreneurship or mentorship or anything in general, and he really encouraged me to go out and say; hey, like you know, once you're out, nobody wants to help you anymore. Now you're in the real world. when you're still a student, there's a lot of people that are willing to take calls or meet with you, and there's plenty of resources that you're going to be able to take advantage of, which, once you're out right now, those options or those or those doors close itself. 

So I think it was unique for us both, because neither of us were you know, business majors or neither of us had like an M. B. A. right. We were both first-time founders, really trying to figure everything out as we were building. So it was really helpful for us to go to a lot of these. Like at NYU, for example, we have The Entrepreneurial Institute, where any student can walk in, talk to different mentors or coaches, and get advice in terms of even little things right. Like what is an LLC what's a C-corp? Like, what are some of the steps that you need to do to start your business? right? Is this even necessary right now? Or what is VC, like how do you fundraise like, even down to the real, real basic stuff, right to obviously business model canvases, and really thinking about how to structure your business. 

So I think for us it was a very, almost no-brainer, um, right situation where this is right in front of us. It doesn't cost us anything, so why don't we look into it and see what we can get out of it? And from there I think we were able to really leverage our connections and our network to apply to different programs that were also offered to students. And you know, I think our, basically our entire pre-seed capital, right, the initial capital that we required that was needed for us to focus on building the company for about a year was strictly all non-deluded funding that we were able to raise from NYU

Ethan Peyton: So raising that funding from those programs was this some sort of competition that you won, or was this sign up for this program and we’ll give you lots of money to go do a thing? Or…what did that look like? 

Mir Hwang: Yeah. It was the balance of both, right? 

There are two competitions that we participated in that we won. Stern [School of Business] has one, called a 300K Challenge. And you know, the Tandon School of Engineering also had one called the InnoVention Competition. Where now that would be more like a scholarship or a prize, right, a grant where you would be able to win if you end up winning the entire competition. 

And then there's one more program called The Summer Launch Pad, which is more like an accelerator program. But unlike your traditional accelerator programs where you know, you raise the SAFE, let's say, and then you have to give up equity. This was a completely non-dilutive funding opportunity where they would let you in the space. You could. You would basically get a co-working space, right, get connected with a lot of amazing founders, and then towards…all for free. Meanwhile, also getting a little, right, access to capital.

Ethan Peyton: That's huge! 

Did they just offer that to anyone who came in with a business idea or was there some sort of hurdle that you had to go over to get that funding and get those benefits?

Mir Hwang: Yeah, you definitely have to go through a lot of interview processes, right? 

You have to get to know the team at the entrepreneurial institute. And then, you know, they determine whether or not you know you're a good fit. And it's about a two-and-a-half-month-long program during the summer, 

Ethan Peyton: Okay,

Mir Hwang: and it really kind of allowed us and gave us I think an opportunity to taste what it's like to work on your idea full-time.

Ethan Peyton: And this was GigFinessese that you were working on during these programs, correct?

Mir Hwang: Yes.

Ethan Peyton: Cool. That's awesome! 

So, knowing what you know now, do you think that…if you hadn't taken these opportunities at NYU do you think that you would have put yourself into an accelerator program? Or do you think that you would have tried to kind of more got on your own because the options weren't as you know, pretty or nice as what you had at school?

Mir Hwang: We were definitely, I think, more strategic about how we wanted to, you know, raise and scale the business. You know, I think there's a lot of value that you can get out of with a lot of these amazing accelerators out there. Right? Especially for first-time founders where I think it's almost like a blue check mark. Right? It gives you credibility if you are a YC-backed company or you know a Techstars-backed company, whatever it may be. 

Um, maybe we were a little bit more, you know, stubborn or young and naive. But we thought…we're like: I think we think we can do this ourselves. We have a great product. We have all these amazing opportunities in front of us where we don't have to give anything up. So let's try this out and I think because we were able to really prove our concept out and we were able to get validated by a lot of these people and competitions in general. I think it really kind of cemented our mindset of like, I think it may have been easier, right, to get that almost credibility aspect by going through another accelerator. But we were confident that we could kind of scale it ourselves without having to get, you know, another, I guess, verification from one of these bigger accelerators out there.

Ethan Peyton: Got ya. 

So when you went into this, I mean, Obviously you said you know you were a student. You hadn't done business before. You knew the industry. You knew kind of what it looked like from one side and you had an idea. So you go into this situation, this accelerator. This, you know, all these different competitions and…and I'm sure that they've got lots of support from people who know, you know, who know this business is going to be good for this reason. It's going to be hard for this reason. All that good stuff. 

But what…how big was the kind of like, the shift in business idea from when you went in, to when you came out?

Mir Hwang: I think when we went in, we were still in the customer, really discovery phase. Right? And one of the things that Ryan and I really wanted to do was before we went out to properly fundraise, we wanted to get to some sort of product-market fit first and I think we were in that phase where we were experimenting. Where, like, what is really the solution that's going to drive growth? What is the solution that, you know, our end users are going to pay for and appreciate? And I think that's what you know the accelerators allowed us to do because that's… we actually had the freedom to only think about that. 

Ethan Peyton: Hm.

Mir Hwang: We didn't need to think about forcing revenue. We didn't have to think about, you know, how we're going to pay our bills. But what really is the solution that we should be aiming to build for this to work? 

Um, and I think once we got to that point, and this took a little time right, after the accelerator right, and after we had graduated, we were still obviously pursuing it. And I think towards the end of right before the pandemic happened, I think that's when we were getting a little semblance of ‘okay. I think we know what we need to build,’ and then I think with the pandemic hitting it allowed us to now, really, then take a step back and you know, gave us time to develop the product. Right? Kind of test it out a little bit. And then further continuously talked to our end users, so that when things were slowly returning, we were able to really, kind of go all in and really put it out into the market to test it.

Ethan Peyton: All right, let's get down to the raw tactics for just a second. You mentioned that there were two competitions that you were in where you won non-dilutive funding. 

Mir Hwang: Mmhm. 

Ethan Peyton: I think everyone wants to do that. 

So what are your biggest tips and tricks to win these competitions? I don't know exactly what type of competitions these were, whether they were pitch competitions or something else. But what's…what's your tactical Advice for people who want to go win some cash?

Mir Hwang: So I think both of those were you know, pitch competitions. As a whole, the best advice I think I can give to founders and even, you know, contestants right now who are competing is: I think ultimately, at the end of the day pitch competitions rely almost to a fault in storytelling. It's very hard for a judge to determine the viability and success of a business with a five to six-minute pitch, right? Because they're not analyzing your piano. They're not really analyzing anything, right? 

So I think for the most part I've seen amazing founders and amazing companies, you know, that obviously, that would potentially lose out on some of these competitions. But eventually, actually go on to be very successful businesses. And part of the reason why I think they weren't able to win is because they couldn't necessarily communicate their story as effectively as some other founders could, even though their idea may have eventually turned out to be less lucrative or less successful. 

So I think, you know, in a pitch competition setting specifically, I think it's extremely important for you and your co-founders to really dial in the storytelling element.

Ethan Peyton: So then did you find some like? Did you find some advice on…on YouTube, or did you go take a storytelling course? Was there a…was there a storytelling class at NYU?

Mir Hwang: Yeah, so that's one of the…one of the actually exciting things that we were able to kind of take advantage of. Right? Where when you're going through the accelerators or when you're going through these programs, they had these little mini boot camps where you can choose to opt-in, and one of the boot camp, for instance, would be like filing in your pitch and storytelling right and then it would focus on like your background, your story, like why your team is the right team to disrupt. Right? Like the total sample market size, whatever, it may be. They would lay it out in a format in a concise format where I feel like as a first-time founder like there's so many things you want to talk about and you don't know what to prioritize. 

Um, and I think these sort of like classes where these lectures that they had would help us kind of think about it in a more you know, concise way where it's like ‘Okay. these are the main points that we want to get across, so let's build a short deck around it.’

Ethan Peyton: Cool, that's great advice. Go figure out how to tell your story. That way people can write you a check. 

All right, let's…let's get into…let's get into GigFinesse. And what are we going to see? What are we going to see GigFinesse jump into that's new for this next year or so?

Mir Hwang: I think you know this year we have a lot of exciting things in the pipeline. We’re really excited to kind of really scale nationwide. I think up until last year we were very focused in our key markets where we had a bigger presence. 

Now we're slowly finally being able to go out and expand and meet the demand in a lot of, you know, different burgeoning markets that are all across the US. We're excited about Chicago, we’re excited about Denver, Arizona, like LA. All the major markets that I think, you know, would really benefit from GigFinesse. And we have a lot of artists in those communities that have been reaching out to us consistently asking us when we were going to finally launch. 

And I think another exciting thing for us is you know, towards the end of this year, one of…something else that we want to focus on is being able to provide our services in more “satellite markets” where we get a lot of inbounds from musicians or, you know, comedians in your non-traditional main cities. Right, like, a good example would be like, Richmond, Virginia, or Ashville, North Carolina, and they all have you now a massive blossoming artist’s community. There's a lot of breweries, there's a lot of venues out there. And a lot of these artists, also, you know, are consistently reaching out to us saying ‘Hey, like it would really be helpful if we had GigFinesse here as well.’ So now I can not just book my shows in the bigger cities, but I can also book it when I come back home. 

I think just continuing to dial in the product right making. Obviously, I think our artists and venue experience you know to be as good as it can be, and also, I think being able to kind of expand our services nationwide so we can continue providing more opportunities to artists all across our different markets.

Ethan Peyton: All right, that's exciting. I can't wait to go see a show in Ann Arbor that was put together by GigFinesse!

Mir Hwang: [Chuckle]

Ethan Peyton: [Chuckle] All right, what is your number one piece of advice for early-stage entrepreneurs?

Mir Hwang: So there's a ton of great advice I've received from people, I think, along the way. But one that always you know comes to top of mind, for me is the 33% rule. So the 33% rule states that one-third of your network should be people you can learn from, so who once stood where you stand? One-third should be people on the same boat as you, peers who inspire you. And the last third should be people who you can mentor so you can give back to the community that nurtured you. 

I think because entrepreneurship in general and starting your own company, it's so tough. But it's also an extremely lonely, I think, road that a lot of founders embark on. So keeping this, I think, really tight-knit network really helped you know me not get carried away with the highs or the lows.

Ethan Peyton: I think that's really really excellent advice. 

Um, all right we are. We are coming to the end, here. I've just got one more question for you and it's the simplest one. So you've already done all the heavy lifting. 

Where can people connect with you online and how can our listeners support GigFinesse?

Mir Hwang: Um, you can obviously reach out to me directly through Linkedin. 

In general, you can also check out our Instagram or our website. 

If you're an interested venue or hospitality owner that are looking to, you know, improve, or bring back programming. You know, it's an easy one-click, and our team should be able to instantaneously reach out to you. 

If you're a musician or an artist, comedian, DJs…anybody looking for a better way to perform, same thing. Just go on our website and apply to be an artist. 

And we, with our recent fundraising we’re also continuously looking to bring on more people for our team in general, So if you're interested in, you know what we're building and would like to learn more, feel free to also check out our hiring board as well.

Ethan Peyton: Cool Mir, this has been a lot of fun. Um, it's cool to see businesses that aren't just you know, B2B sass that are coming in and doing…doing fun stuff, getting funding, and just making people's lives better. I'm stoked…I'm stoked to have you on. So thanks for coming on!

Now, everybody that's listening, you can find all of the different links and everything that we talked about in today's show on the show notes. Those are going to be over at startupsavant.com/podcast. But that is going to be it for this week's episode of the Startup Savant podcast.

Hey, if you like this episode, the best way to let us know is leaving a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify! And if you're a fan of Youtube, we post all of our episodes over there and you can just leave a comment below the video wherever you decide to reach out. We read all the stuff, so let us know how we're doing, and as always, thanks for hanging out with us. We will see you next week right here. Until then, go build something beautiful.