(POSH co-founders Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire)
The live events industry is anticipated to grow to more than $2 trillion by 2028, and two former NYU students with a solid understanding of the challenges that industry professionals face have established a platform to coincide with this expansion.
21-year olds Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire co-founded POSH to “democratize the ability for any fan with a passion for live events to get involved in the space with as little friction as possible,” Price told AfroTech.
Price has been a DJ for over a decade and Taylor-Lemire runs a freelance photo-video agency that produces content for major fashion magazines as well as Sony and Roc Nation artists.
They both left NYU in 2020 to focus their efforts on staying ahead of the industry's predicted progression, creating something that would better the way event professionals develop live events. This enhanced the duo's initiatives and allowed them to scale their activities prior to the disruption of the COVID-19 outbreak and its repercussions.
“Other existing platforms have limited functionality, offer little or no marketing tools and have weak financial infrastructure that requires organizers to wait up to 2 weeks after their event to receive their capital,” Price told AfroTech. “We built POSH to make it the best platform to find what to do as an attendee, make money as an affiliate and manage an event as a host.”
Following an initial test run in 2020 after Price and Taylor-Lemire prematurely ended their college careers at NYU, POSH officially launched in April 2023 to the public. The startup received $5 million in a seed round co-led by Companyon Ventures and EPIC Ventures. Cameron Dallas, Day One Ventures, Pareto Holdings, DoNotPay founder Joshua Browder and others also participated in the round.
“We are delighted with our recent investment in POSH, an innovative event management platform conceived and developed by event creators, for event creators,” Nick Efstratis, general partner at EPIC Ventures, said in a news release. “The founding team’s deep-rooted understanding of the industry’s challenges has enabled them to craft a solution that adeptly addresses the evolving needs of modern event organizers.”
POSH is meant for anyone looking to earn capital through live experiences and by utilizing the platform, organizers can “manage the entire lifecycle of a live experience,” regardless of event capacity.
Among the platform’s key features are white-labeled event pages, ticketing and RSVP tools, marketing tools (email, SMS, affiliate), instant payouts, dispute resolution, community management and kickback offers for attendees to become paid affiliates are among the platform's primary features.
These tools will be free to use for event organizers. In exchange for each ticket purchased, the platform will receive compensation.
POSH has already grown to over half a million users and processed $30 million in tickets. In the first quarter of 2023, the platform increased its number of live events and was used across six continents, demonstrating its influence and future viability. It is set to continue to transform the event management landscape, and equip event professionals to translate their passion into meaningful experiences for audiences.