GigMaven – Bringing Musicians and Venues Together

Last week at the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Howard Han presented his NY-based startup GigMaven. The service is described as a way to streamline the booking process for musicians and venues. This morning I sat down with Han to learn more about GigMaven.

Basically GigMaven is a marketplace where venues list open gigs and musicians "apply" to the gigs. Once the musicians have applied, the venue selects a band to fill the gig. The venue pays a fee when they complete the process. It’s a similar business to another NY-based startup, ZocDoc.

For GigMaven to be successful, the key is to get enough venues from enough locations worldwide to always be able to fill a musician’s needs. I’d like to see them optimize their venue pages for the search engines. It would also be interesting to look at creating a destination site to help people connect with artists and to research venues. They could also work on ticketing or partner with a company who already handles the ticketing. The more they can "own" parts of the venue booking and ticketing process, the better I think they will do.

GigMaven is launching this month in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The company has raised an angel round of funding to-date.