- 3 hours ago
What if buying a ticket felt as social as the party itself? Avante Price loved hosting events for his peers at NYU, but promoting those parties through platforms like Eventbrite felt outdated and clunky. He made Posh for the social age. It’s a mobile app that makes finding and buying ticketed events feel more like scrolling through Instagram or TikTok. When someone clicks on a Posh event link, they’re asked to download the app, where they land in a feed full of events, including ones their friends are attending. With a quick scroll, it’s easy to see what’s happening nearby, what’s popular and who else is going. “In the beginning, the analogy we always used was we wanted to build Shopify for events. The analogy has really expanded from Shopify to TikTok,” Price says. With $40 million in funding, it’s now used to promote everything from raves to business conferences. The app, frequented by 6 million people, has facilitated over $300 million in ticket sales since its inception, taking a 10% cut on every ticket sold. In 2024, the startup brought in $10 million in revenue.
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Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00In the beginning, the analogy we always used was we wanted to build Shopify for events.
00:05The analogy has really expanded from Shopify to TikTok.
00:17Avante Price, thank you so much for joining me.
00:19Thanks for having me.
00:20I'm very excited to chat with you.
00:22So you are building the modern version of Eventbrite.
00:25Tell me about what Posh is doing today and how you got the idea for it.
00:30Yeah, what Posh is doing today is a lot different than what we started out doing.
00:35Back in 2019, my co-founder Eli and I were at NYU and we were hosting events for our friends.
00:41He was a photographer, I was a DJ.
00:43And originally we were working for other event brands, but the events that they were putting on for college kids just like weren't really meeting the mark, right?
00:50They were at like these rundown bars in the Lower East Side and things like that.
00:53And so Eli and I actually became friends through working a lot of these similar events together and started Posh not even as a software company, but as an event company, which is very ironic, right?
01:04Because that's who uses us today.
01:05But Posh at the onset was just an IRL events company for NYU and Columbia kids to have a Posh upscale experience.
01:13And through that experience, we got a lot of different experience with Eventbrite or these other products that existed at the time, right?
01:21A lot of the modern products that exist today even weren't around in 2019.
01:25And so we felt very, very confined to what existed.
01:30There was not a lot of tools to create our own brand and messaging through these products, right?
01:34It was very branded to the platform.
01:36There were not a lot of marketing tools.
01:38There were not a lot of ways to access new audiences or re-engage our current audience.
01:43And so Eli actually originally just built a software product for our own event brand.
01:48And we were just using this tool as an internal product for our own events.
01:51We used it for two events and then the pandemic happened.
01:56And so we had this awesome product on our hands that actually helped us like double the size of our events from like one or 200 students to like three, 400 every time.
02:04Even across those just two events and then the COVID pandemic, right, kind of ruined our events business, but made us realize that like we had something really powerful on our hands.
02:12And also that now more than ever, right, as we all know in these kind of economic downturns, people are more open to using new products, right, than ever before.
02:20So we spent the pandemic just talking to users, right, talking to other event organizer friends, talking to everyone in the industry, talking to ticket buyers, consumers, the people that were coming to these events, right, and understanding like what would a re-envisioned product look like.
02:33But in the beginning, the analogy we always used was we wanted to build Shopify for events, right?
02:40So we wanted to build like an end-to-end solution for event organizers to custom brand their page, to send out marketing messages, and for their customers to be able to see who else was going.
02:50Kind of the three early value props.
02:52As we've expanded right now, we're at about six million users, we have about 50,000 organizers that have signed up.
02:58The analogy has really expanded from Shopify to TikTok.
03:03Interesting.
03:03And a lot of that comes from the consumer-facing approach that we're taking nowadays around aggregating all this supply and still empowering these organizers with end-to-end business solutions,
03:13but also then distributing that supply, right, in an algorithmic way to consumers, right?
03:19So depending on your tastes, you'll see a very different feed and algorithm than me or someone else, right?
03:25Maybe we have aligned tastes, right?
03:27But the idea is why does Eventbrite suck for consumers, right?
03:30Because you go on and you see a pottery class next to a yoga event next to a rave, right?
03:36And no person under the sun usually has, like, all three of those interests or whatever other interests, right, might all be conglomerated on the same page, right?
03:44For us, you open the Posh app and you see this one-by-one feed similar to TikTok of personally curated recommendations based on your past event attendance,
03:54where people and your contacts are going, and all these other social and demographic-based profile creators.
04:01Does that make sense?
04:01Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
04:03How do you monetize that?
04:06Yeah, it's a great question.
04:07We add a 10% fee on top of the ticket price the organizer determines.
04:12And what's awesome about that is that we're super aligned with the organizers, right?
04:15They don't pay a dime to use our tools.
04:17But if you charge $100 for Zoya's birthday, then people can pay $110 to go, right?
04:24What's also awesome is that we also have this entire free product where two-thirds of our events are actually free, right?
04:29We don't make any money on them.
04:30And so similar to, like, a paperless post or a party full, you can do the exact same thing on Posh.
04:34Why that's helpful for us is because we obviously get more users to come in, right?
04:38And we get to retain our users.
04:40But also because a lot of these paid organizations also host free events just to build up their CRM on Posh and build up their brand.
04:47And then they can use the Posh CRM to text blast those free customers for their paid events.
04:53And so we have a lot of people who've come on hosting free events and then take the next level, right, and use our tools to actually monetize and start building a business.
05:00Does that extend to, like, individuals to, like, say I was hosting some sort of event for my friends and family, whatever it is, and I decide for some reason to charge them, you can still make money off of that?
05:13For sure.
05:14Yeah.
05:14And that's why a lot of the thesis, you know, I think bringing through that TikTok analogy, obviously on the consumer side, it makes a lot of sense, right, around getting these curated recommendations.
05:23But it also follows through on the creator side where we want to create new event businesses, right, similar to what Airbnb did for stays and kind of sharing a bed in your home, right?
05:33And then eventually people bought homes just to Airbnb out, right?
05:36That was not really a thing before Airbnb.
05:38We want to do this exact same thing, but for the events economy, right, where we want to basically enable you to first host Zoya's birthday party.
05:46And it might be a free RSVP event, 20, 30 people, whatever it is.
05:49Then you get this understanding through the context of the platform as well as what just happened.
05:54And you were able to bring these people together that maybe you know about something or you're able to congregate a certain demographic of people together.
05:59And because you have that special innate skill, right, you're able to actually monetize that through the Posh platform like you couldn't before.
06:07And so all the tools we build for organizers are centered around that idea of like you don't have to know what you're doing when you first come into contact with the platform.
06:14But we want to give you both the context, the resources, the software tools, et cetera, to like build a business that would not have been possible before.
06:21As not an event organizer, but just as, you know, an individual, what would make me choose Posh to host a party over something like Partyful?
06:32Yeah. If you're not trying to monetize, right, then I actually would suggest Posh only if you're trying to build a real business, right?
06:41And that doesn't have to be a monetized business, right?
06:44But say you're Nike and you want to host a Fashion Week pop-up, you would probably want to use Posh because we have a more customizable interface.
06:52We have more robust marketing tools integrated so you can text blast an unlimited set of past consumers, right, and even sort them by different identifiers.
07:00So maybe their demographic, like their age or their gender or what they've responded to on a certain form field, you can then filter them and then send out targeted SMS campaigns afterwards, right, which is really, really helpful for these brands, right?
07:13If you're trying to host a 30-person or less event that's not really that professional and doesn't need to contribute to something larger, to a larger brand or something, then that's where Partyful would make more sense.
07:24Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
07:25I've seen you working, you know, on Posh, I've seen concerts, I've seen festivals, I've seen business conferences, so it's kind of just everything's on there.
07:37Tell me if I come to you as a, you know, event organizer, say I'm hosting a business conference, what's the process?
07:46How are we working together?
07:47Am I just going on the app and, like, building out my event and that's it, all good from there, or is there a human aspect to it?
07:55Definitely.
07:56That's actually a really, really core pillar of a lot of our success, in my opinion, is that human-to-human connection, and obviously that's what we're all about, but we have to follow that through in how we actually operate, right?
08:06So every single person you could sign up today, you will get contacted by someone from our organizer success team, right, the same day that you signed up, right?
08:14And they'll reach out, hey, Zoya, I just want to make sure that you're all good.
08:17If you have any questions, here's my email.
08:19You'll even get a phone number.
08:20If you text that phone number, it will go to a blue iMessage, right?
08:24It will not be green unless you have, obviously, an Android.
08:26But, like, the point of that is, like, you're texting a real person, right?
08:29It's not even, like, a programmatic text that you're sending out.
08:32You're sending it to a real person that's in our office in Soho who is actually going to respond, right, within minutes, maybe a couple hours at the most, right?
08:39And by following that through, we've also been able to create really, really tight relationships with our organizers where they can give us product feedback, and we can iterate and create those features really quickly.
08:49If there's a bug that comes up, we're able to solve it before most people figure out that it even exists, right, et cetera.
08:55But also we're able to help provide off-platform advice, too.
08:58So this organizer of success team really, like, I'd say maybe 10% to 20% of their role is helping with, like, how do I use the product?
09:05How do I set up my event page?
09:06The other 70% or 80% is really about, like, hey, I want to expand from New York.
09:11I've done all my events in New York.
09:12I want to go to L.A., right?
09:13Do you have another organizer in your book of business that is in L.A. that you could connect me with to collaborate, right?
09:18Or is there a venue you can help me find?
09:20Or is there a sponsor, right?
09:21We even have someone on our team who's strictly – her entire role is just to connect organizers with sponsors for their events.
09:28And so really, you know, the classic saying of, like, do things that don't scale is something that we really hold true at Posh
09:33by just trying to create these personal relationships with the organizers and help them with things way beyond the software product
09:39and be more like a business concierge service to, again, help them build these businesses that would not be possible at once.
09:45Amazing.
09:46And Posh is now hitting some $30 million in annualized revenue.
09:50From a purely marketing and, like, customer acquisition perspective, what do you think has helped you scale?
09:57Yeah.
09:58I think following through on that same thread, it's our community team is really, really core to a lot of our growth.
10:03So we have five people on our community team.
10:05And a lot of what they do is fly around the country and host launch events in cities that we see a lot of natural organic growth in.
10:13So Columbus, actually, where we're talking right now, right, is a city that we've been seeing a lot of random or natural growth.
10:19I opened my phone when I came off the flight, and there were, like, a good amount of events, like 30 or 40 events this week in the market.
10:24And so funny enough, later this month, the team actually already had set, before I even knew anything about this,
10:29to fly out and host an event where they're inviting all the existing organizers into a room for an open bar, right, industry happy hour.
10:36And then the sales team invites any leads they can find into that same room.
10:40And two or three team members will fly out from community and sales, and they won't really sell the product.
10:45They'll just kind of try to meet these people, understand, you know, what are they using today?
10:48What do they like?
10:49What do they dislike about it?
10:50But what you'll see naturally happen in these rooms is that the existing organizers will talk to the leads.
10:54And they'll say, you know, hey, the leads will ask, hey, why are you on Posh?
10:57What are you getting out of it?
10:58And they'll do all the selling for us because they'll explain how, A, the product, but B, that relationship with their organizer success manager, right,
11:05has really helped them build their business like never before, right?
11:07Before it was they were emailing a support at Eventbrite or whatever email and never really getting a reply back.
11:12They didn't really have a CSM relationship in any way, right?
11:15It was very, very impersonal, right?
11:17And just the idea that we'll fly out to their city to meet them, right, says a lot of things about how we operate.
11:24And I think that feeling follows through into, like, their willingness to then refer us to other people, right,
11:30bring their friends into the room for that happy hour, et cetera.
11:32But a lot of our core growth has just come from, like, referrals and hosting IRL events of our own for event organizers.
11:39Yeah, that reminds me of something you said earlier, that people connect with people, not brands.
11:46And I think that's exactly what Posh has done.
11:49But tell me, how did you even get into entrepreneurship?
11:52There's a very fun thing I read on your LinkedIn.
11:54It starts off with DJ at five.
11:57How did we go from DJ at five to now running a quite successful business?
12:04Yeah, my dad is a DJ.
12:06So he's been a DJ since he was probably, you know, in his teens.
12:11And so when I was a kid, he definitely wanted me to DJ as soon as possible, which was five years old.
12:16And it got to the point where he really made me take it very seriously, right?
12:20It would be, like, he'd lock me in the room and be, like, you've got to figure out this, like, how to do this transition until we, like, go get dinner or go to the park or something.
12:27It was very, very, like, classic, you know, like, celebrity kid kind of parent trying to create this, like, celebrity kid kind of situation.
12:35And so it got to the point where, you know, if I'm honest, it was getting almost toxic.
12:39And my mom made him, like, stop.
12:40But before that, I got, like, offers for Good Morning America, like, Ellen.
12:44Like, she always told him, like, no, he's not doing this.
12:47He's very against it.
12:48But I was on the news a few times.
12:49You can check it out on, like, YouTube.
12:51The name was DJ A Kid, so you won't find it finding my actual name.
12:55But by, like, seven or eight, my mom was, like, he's not doing this anymore.
12:59And I kind of stopped.
13:00And I was kind of, like, traumatized almost from it.
13:02But obviously, as I got to high school, I found out, like, I was relatively antisocial in things in high school, right?
13:08I didn't have a lot of friends.
13:09But I found that, like, this skill I had had since childhood was actually, like, cool to some extent, right, to people.
13:15And, like, I had a board and I could bring it to these parties and, like, get invited to parties I wouldn't get invited to otherwise, right?
13:21And so later on, you know, end of junior year, kind of senior year of high school, I started DJing more.
13:26And kind of falling in love with it on my own just because, A, it was a way for me to be in these rooms.
13:32And be kind of the man, for lack of a better word, right, or, like, a center of attention without actually having to speak to anyone, right?
13:37Because I didn't have great social skills.
13:39But everyone still thought I was cool and I was still part of the experience, right, just standing behind the decks and playing music that people liked, right?
13:44And you learn a lot about reading the room, too, which actually did help me improve my social skills.
13:48And, like, looking at people's faces when you play this song and then transitioning genres and all these things that I think actually really did help me and follow through into my entrepreneurial journey.
13:56But, yeah, fast forward, you know, simultaneously in high school, I was really passionate about software.
14:01I think the idea that you can build one product that can serve millions, if not billions, of people, right, really struck me at, like, 14, 15 years old.
14:12And so I also started another software company in high school called Chorebug.
14:15It was, like, TaskRabbit, but you could hire only high schoolers to do the odd jobs.
14:20And so the idea was to build community, right?
14:22A lot of my friends were under 18.
14:23And the gig economy was just kind of starting to pop off.
14:26And no one could really be an Uber driver or DoorDash, you know, deliverer, et cetera, because we were all under 18.
14:32So I was, like, why is the gig economy not an opportunity that's available to younger people?
14:35And so me and my co-founder, Oliver, at the time, started this company.
14:40And we were just employing local high schoolers.
14:42Originally, we were just putting up signs around Starbucks' around the neighborhood.
14:45You know, high school was available for odd jobs.
14:47And this did so well that eventually we tried to start expanding to other schools.
14:52We raised a little bit of money.
14:53I even worked on it into my freshman year of college.
14:56But it didn't necessarily take off.
14:58I think there was a lot of problems with high schoolers to stick with that thesis.
15:01You had to churn out the supply side of high schoolers as soon as they graduated.
15:05So if someone graduated, they were no longer on the platform, right?
15:08So to keep finding new high schoolers.
15:10Additionally, high schoolers aren't the most reliable people.
15:12So they would show up an hour late to a job or not show up at all, right?
15:16There were all these different things that happened that made the business break down
15:19fundamentally.
15:20But I think it was a really great learning experience kind of side by side with this
15:24kind of re-exploration of DJing that, you know, fast forward in my freshman year of college
15:28was definitely taking more of my time than Chorebug.
15:31And I was able to actually make money in New York.
15:33I was going to NYU.
15:33It was very expensive, right?
15:35So I was able to just like play parties at whatever club or bar and make a few hundred
15:40bucks and meet people.
15:41And so eventually it died down.
15:44But it was a great kind of foray into entrepreneurship alongside my love for music.
15:47That makes sense of why you got into nightlife.
15:49Yeah.
15:50Yeah.
15:50But throughout this, you know, from DJing to starting a company when you were 14, 15 to
15:56now running Posh, is there a business lesson you've carried throughout these entrepreneurial
16:01journeys?
16:02What's one thing you always follow?
16:06I think going back to what you were saying earlier, like it's all about the people, right?
16:10And like, it sounds very cliche, but it's like the people that you start these things with,
16:14the people that you are working with, the people that are your customers and getting as
16:18close as possible to them, right?
16:20These things are all very, very important.
16:22And if you forget about like the people that are going to make the business succeed, whether
16:26it's the team members or the customers, then everything falls apart, right?
16:30And I think a lot of people think too much about the metrics or the numbers or like the
16:35brand without connecting the brand to people's actual personal emotions or kind of inhibitions,
16:42right?
16:42Or drivers.
16:44They try to build a brand that just has a cool logo, but doesn't actually touch anyone,
16:47right?
16:47And that is all ultimately going to break down if you don't think about the people.
16:50Absolutely.
16:50Where do you think the events industry is headed in the next five to 10 years?
16:55What do you see?
16:56That's a great question.
16:57I think it's the classic idea of economic bundling and unbundling.
17:02I think right now we're in a period of unbundling where the event industry is actually getting
17:07heavily democratized.
17:08And that's what we're trying to be at the forefront of, right?
17:10Is we are trying to make it that people aren't all going to the Taylor Swift mega concert with
17:1650,000 people, right?
17:17Because you don't meet anyone there.
17:18You maybe go with your few friends and you don't really feel like you even connect more deeply
17:23with them.
17:23You're just kind of watching this entertainment, right?
17:25And then maybe you have something to talk about with them.
17:27But ultimately, it's not really a social experience, right?
17:30You're just consuming entertainment in a large room of people that you don't even know.
17:35What we want to create and what we see is already happening that we're only just kind
17:39of igniting more of is these smaller intimate experiences, right?
17:43The 20, 30 person mixer, maybe even a 10 person dinner, right?
17:48You look at companies like Time Left or 2-2-2, they're creating these like experiences where
17:53you can algorithmically be matched with six to 10 people for a dinner in these big major
17:57markets, right?
17:58Like there's not even companies just like Posh.
17:59Even Partyful, right, is kind of igniting this idea of like the 10 to 30 person like RSVP
18:05event, right?
18:06Because that's way more enjoyable and more repeatable than going to this kind of expensive,
18:11lofty thing where you don't even really connect any deeper with people.
18:14And so Posh, it's just a little bit upstream from a Partyful or a 2-2-2 or a Time Left
18:18where we're empowering the like 100 to 500 person, right, event where there's a one or
18:24two person LLC or even just individuals kind of sole proprietorship that these people either
18:30know a lot about a topic or have a lot of pull in a certain demographic, right, and want
18:34to monetize their ability to bring people together and eventually leave their full-time
18:38job to do this full-time just bringing the world together.
18:41And so I think over time, people are going to get more and more tired of the mega event.
18:46There's still going to be a space for that.
18:48But I think there's overall going to be an expansion of the event industry overall with
18:52this entirely new long tail that's going to be added.
18:54Absolutely.
18:55I would have to disagree a little because I made a lot of friends at the Taylor Swift concert.
18:59Okay, well.
19:01But does AI come in anywhere in the events industry?
19:05You think in the future or even now, are you using it at Posh?
19:09For sure.
19:10For sure.
19:10I'd be lying to say we're not.
19:12I think obviously with the algorithm, right, we're continually trying to improve this model
19:16we've built.
19:17We also are the first platform to algorithmically tag all of our events.
19:21So, for example, Eventbrite, they have a user-generated tag system where you would tag
19:26your event based on what you think it is.
19:28We use AI to take all the context of the event and then add one of hundreds of tags or multiple
19:33of hundreds of tags to each event.
19:35And that then goes back into serving our algorithm and our recommendations as well as a few other
19:40services we're releasing over the next few months.
19:42On the organizer side, we're at the early innings, but a lot of what we're thinking about
19:46and we're going to be releasing towards the end of this year in early 26 is around this
19:50product called Medici, which is basically our AI co-pilot that will sit inside of the product
19:54and actually make suggestions to the organizer on how to optimize their event page, text blast,
20:01copy to send out, when to send out a text blast in relation to their higher frequency
20:05purchase times, right?
20:06And all these other things basically being what the CSM is at Posh, right, for the organizer
20:11in a more scaled manner and also being able to service the smaller event, right, which
20:15maybe doesn't have as much of the CSM's time today, right?
20:18But being that personal business concierge partner based on all the data of your Posh account.
20:23Absolutely.
20:24Is this something, is Posh something you think you're going to see through to, I don't know,
20:29an IPO or is it something that you would eventually want it to be acquired?
20:35Definitely not.
20:36I think no one would be able to push forward the vision that we have in the way that we're
20:41pushing it forward.
20:42And I think our brand would ultimately be silenced for a paycheck.
20:45And that's not something that would make me feel good at night.
20:47So yeah, we're going all the way.
20:48We'll see how far it goes.
20:49And, you know, you've already made great progress having raised, how much have you raised?
20:55$40 million?
20:56$40 million.
20:57Yeah.
20:58$40 million, already doing $30 million in revenue.
21:00If you could give one piece of advice to all the young entrepreneurs out there, the aspiring
21:04entrepreneurs or the ones just getting their start, what would you say?
21:08So many pieces.
21:09One piece.
21:10I think the biggest thing is just to listen to your inner voice, right?
21:16I think a lot of people, especially in the age of social media, are so preoccupied with
21:22the voices around them.
21:23What are my parents going to think?
21:24What are my friends going to think?
21:25What is the person that I follow on social media and look up to doing?
21:29And how is what I'm doing the same or different than that?
21:33I think that the way to create something truly revolutionary and new and different is to just
21:37listen to your own intuition, right?
21:39And kind of silence all the other voices around you to really just hone in on what you believe
21:46in.
21:47And if you do that for long enough and you can really, truly follow what you believe
21:50in and not what other people are doing, right, you're going to be able to create something
21:55truly magical.
21:56Absolutely.
21:57Does your five-year-old DJ A kid believe what you're doing right now?
22:01I think he'd probably think I was going to be a lot farther than I am right now.
22:05Oh, wow.
22:06I love that.
22:07I love that admission.
22:08All right.
22:09Well, thank you so much for joining me.
22:10Yeah.
22:11Thank you for having me.
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