How Two 22-Year-Old Dropouts Are Reimagining Event Planning | EP 20
Description
In this episode of UNinvested, Sahil interviews Avante Price, CEO of Posh, and his co-founder Eli Taylor Lemire, CTO at Posh. Avante and Eli share their entrepreneurial journey, from dropping out of NYU to building a revolutionary events and ticketing platform that has gained over 1 million users across 6 continents. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of their startup journey and share insights into what it takes to succeed in the competitive tech industry.
What we explore:
The background and early influences of Avante Price and Eli Taylor Lemire
The origin and growth of Posh, an innovative product in the events and ticketing space
The entrepreneurial philosophy and experiences that shaped Avante and Eli's ventures
The importance of community building and user feedback in product development
Strategies for overcoming challenges and staying motivated in the startup world
The decision to drop out of NYU and pursue Posh full-time
Insights into fundraising, team building, and maintaining a positive company culture
Where to find Uninvested:
Website: https://www.uninvested.org/
In this episode, we cover:
[00:00:00] Introduction: Sahil introduces the episode and the guests, Avante Price and Eli Taylor Lemire
[00:00:16] Background: Avante and Eli share their early influences and experiences
[00:00:56] Early ventures: Discussion on how Avante and Eli started working on startups
[00:02:03] Founding Posh: The vision behind Posh and its initial development
[00:04:43] Dropping out of NYU: Avante and Eli explain their decision to leave NYU to focus on Posh
[00:06:53] Early challenges: Overcoming initial hurdles and building the MVP of Posh
[00:10:28] The impact of the pandemic: How the pandemic influenced Posh's growth and development
[00:12:00] Fundraising journey: Insights into their fundraising strategies and experiences
[00:15:19] Growth and scaling: Tactics for acquiring early customers and scaling the business
[00:17:24] Handling stress: Dealing with the pressures and challenges of running a startup
[00:18:32] Fundraising difficulties: The challenges of raising venture capital and dealing with rejection
[00:21:00] Building a team: Hiring strategies and managing a growing team
[00:23:00] Company culture: Creating a positive and inclusive company culture
[00:23:53] Final thoughts: Avante and Eli share advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
[00:24:08] Conclusion: Sahil wraps up the episode with closing remarks and thanks the guests
[00:00:00] Sahil: Welcome back to UNinvested, where we decode everything entrepreneurship and tech, making it so everyone can understand. I'm Sahil, and I know we took a short break, but we are back posting regularly, so be on the lookout. Crockett's on sabbatical, so I'll be holding down the fort for now, awaiting his return.
On today's episode, we'll be interviewing Avante Price, CEO of Posh, and his co founder, Eli Taylor Lemire, CTO at Posh. Avante and Eli are both NYU dropouts that have raised over 5 million to chase their dreams. Their company Posh has over 1 million users across six continents. Their innovative product in the events and ticketing space aims to revolutionize events with features like customizable event pages, community outreach, instant payouts, and more.
Welcome.
[00:00:45] Avante: I'm Avante. I'm 22, about to be 23. And yeah, I've been working on startups since I was, you know, , 16 years old.
[00:00:56] Eli: Eli. I'm also 22. I'm from Portchester, New York. It's a small village, about 40 minutes north of the city. Did a lot of. music videos for rap artists. And then I used that to get into film school at NYU.
And when I came to film school is when I met Avante and we started working on Posh.
[00:01:15] Sahil: You know, one thing big, you guys both voice is that you guys both dropped out at NYU to go on and build Posh. What was that moment when you're like, we should drop out. We should just focus on this full time. Was there a specific amount of traction you got?
Was one of you pushing all the water, or was it like, hey, like, this is our time?
[00:01:31] Avante: I think it was all very organic. It's actually really interesting. A lot of people, you know, like to think of this big dropout story where people are like you know, doing homework assignments and then also they're like, screw this, and they like, shut their laptop and they drop out the next day and then start a something or something like that, but It's not like that it was all kind of step by step where we actually started Posh as not even what it is today, not even a tech company actually we incorporated the company, called it Posh as an event company, which is funny because that's what our users are, right?
So we were building a community of NYU as well as Columbia and other New York college students. And effectively what we wanted to do was create a community where people were coming to not only socialize, but also to network, right? So people that were similar to us that were builders or tinkerers or freelancers or had some type of hobby other than just like, I want to come to New York to get a degree because usually the New York City college student has a little bit more about them, right?
That they want to express and find out. And so we wanted to be that community where they could come network and meet people to work with outside of just their normal day to day school work. And that was really fun. We were hosting, you know, about 200 person events about once a week, once every two weeks using products like Eventbrite, you name it.
And through those experiences, obviously Eli and myself became closer. And as well as that, we found out how poorly made these incumbent products were. And so effectively the first step was Eli actually just built us the MVP of Posh as a software tool for our own processes. And so he was originally doing our videography and all of our marketing and pivoted into a CTO by building this MVP that was really, really powerful.
Helped us scale from 200 to 500 people per event in two events. And then right after that second event we used with this internal tool, the pandemic happened. And so we realized, Oh my gosh, we have this crazy tool in our hands that helped us scale our events, you know, literally by more than double over two events because of just a few, you know, simple product enhancements.
Mainly, you know, the white labeled customization the SMS tool that you built early on, as well as a lot more financial flexibility, having earlier access to our cash than on other platforms. And effectively, right, the pandemic as it started a lot of different ventures as sad as it is to say, because obviously there's a bunch of stuff that happened during that time, but for us, it was really beneficial.
Because a, we were able to go back online with school, right? And put a lot less time in to getting our degrees and kind of, you know, be on one zoom call here and a Google meets with each other building on the other side. As well as being remote, right? So actually I moved to Miami for six months, which was one of the first markets in the U S to open and was able to be on remote school for those first six months of the pandemic, as well as going to event organizers and venues that were open in Florida, because it was one of the first states to open and get us some early traction.
And so after that first six months simultaneously we had raised a hundred thousand dollars still in school. And we got to about a million dollars in GMV in that timeframe, as well as had this venture funding and realized like, okay, this is serious. And then a few months after that, we raised our first real venture round of about a one and a half million dollars.
And simultaneously in that period, that's when we were like, okay, we have other people's money on the table, you know, over a million dollars in cash in the bank, we can pay ourselves the salaries that we would make or maybe even a little bit less than the degrees we have. Okay. Right. But like at least enough to keep the lights on and like give ourselves three meals a day and pay rent.
And I think that was the big light bulb moment of like, if we can pay ourselves enough rent enough to cover rent and food, then why would we go get a degree and get these jobs jobs we don't want to do? We might as well pursue this. And even if it fails, you know, NYU lets you take two semesters off and come right back.
So there was really no downside. It really even wasn't even the big, you know, dropout that you might call it. It was really like a leave of absence. That then it became a very extended leave. But it was all very well calculated.
[00:05:22] Sahil: So it was a mutual decision or like, was one of you kind of hesitant about it, pushing the other one?
Or were you guys both on board with it?
[00:05:28] Avante: Very, very on board. Yeah. There was really no risk in taking a leave. And I think I would suggest that to a lot of people. One of our early investors, Corey Levy has a whole program around this called Z Fellows, where he urges you to take two weeks off of work.
He gives you 10, 000 to go after what you're building. It's really early stage. And. If it fails or you don't think that you want to, you know, drop out or quit your job, then he's super fine with that. But if it does well, he'll be one of the first people to write you that first six figure check to actually help you take the leap.
And he was one of our first investors. And, you know, that ideology, I think is becoming more and more apparent in this early startup ecosystem where it's like, people just want to give you a few bucks to see if it works or not.
[00:06:05] Sahil: But I guess, you know, we kind of glossed over some details like, you know, all at one time we were doing classes, raising money and getting your first customer attraction all the way up to a million dollars in GMV.
So. I'd love to like dive a little bit deeper in that, like, how are you able to one, you know, what were your tactics to go get those first few customers? How were you able to convince them? You know, I assume going to event organizers, you know, trying to pitch to them, but at the same time, at what point were you like, okay, let's try to venture raise.
Like, do we have enough traction or was it, do you have any traction? All kind of went to an angel.
[00:06:34] Avante: The first check, was that first, obviously, right. Going back to the story. Pandemic happened in March, but we already had an MVP, but it was only an internal tool. So there was no create event flow, right? It was Eli hard coding a page for us to use internally.
So that those months between March and October, 2020. We're building out the tooling we already had in a white labeled format or in a user friendly format where other people could have access to the product that we already had. Right. And so October 2020 is when we consider we actually launched because that's when other people could take advantage of these tools.
And simultaneously in that first month, we did 150, 000 in GMV in our first month and then raised 100, 000 angel check. From someone in our network who saw the early traction and wanted to help us out. And so that was, we were very fortunate for that. Cause you know, getting your first a hundred thousand dollars is definitely one of the most difficult steps.
Usually getting a 10, 25 K check from some accelerator can be kind of easy, but getting a hundred grand is definitely. Not especially without early traction but we were lucky that, you know, a, since day one, we had real revenue, right? We had a take rate since the day we opened our doors. And I think B, we had this angel who was already in our network while we were building the MVP that as soon as we had that traction and they saw we made, you know, 15, 000 in MRR in that first month, they knew there was something there.
And so they gave us that a hundred thousand dollar check. Moving forward from there, you know, I think our 1. 5 million pre seed was really just a testament to. How long we let that hundred K stretch, right? A had revenue since day one B, we were already profitable in a few of those early months and see, we made that a hundred thousand dollars stretch for almost, you know, a year which I don't think a lot of people are doing these days, so it was pretty easy to raise that first pre seed because of just like.
Us proving ourselves and going little by little. I think this is a very different story than most people who like raise a lot of money upfront without proving very much. And then they go out of business very quickly, right? It was a lot of little milestones that we kept hitting that we're able to make it easier to raise at that point.
But I also don't want to say that it was, you know, silly, easy to raise at all. It was definitely, even with all that traction, I think there's a lot. Harder than we would have expected, given how much more traction we had at the early stage than, you know, our peers or other people at the same stage. And I think a lot of that is an ode to the space we're in, right?
People always say like ticketing has been done a hundred times. But funny enough, you know, we're, we're venturing past ticketing and building more of a live events ecosystem, which we can get into. As well as a few other things, you know, being early stage, being minorities being college dropouts, right?
There's a lot of things that were definitely going against us. I think that made it definitely more difficult to raise money. But we, you know, we ended up doing it and dropped out.
[00:09:04] Sahil: So how many people would you say you had to talk to you before? You know, you kind of got that first check.
[00:09:08] Avante: I don't know Eli, what would you say?
[00:09:09] Eli: A lot. Maybe 40 or 50 on the phone. Probably more, a lot more emails than that though. For the pre seed. Obviously the hundred. Yeah. Sorry. The pre seed was a close connect, but yeah, the seed was brutal. And it was, I think we spent six to nine months, like actually putting it together.
[00:09:23] Sahil: Considering how early you guys were, that's not that long.
But why did, why did you guys decide to go the venture route? Like if you were already profitable, you've had what, 15, 000 in monthly reoccurring revenue. You know, a lot of people nowadays, they say. You should bootstrap, but it seems like you guys want to go the venture out almost as soon as possible as you could.
What, what was that decision making process?
[00:09:40] Eli: I actually did run out of money a year in right at the end of the a hundred K we were like about to close a little bit more. But I remember Avanti and I had to come out of pocket for the security deposit for the office and we like just barely got it.
And then the week after is when we started the seed and like got the first check in the door for that. But I think we both like just the age we're at and also how passionate we are about the space we're looking to do like a multi-billion dollar company or go home, you know what I mean? Like there's no really in between for us.
And so the, we could definitely run it as if profitable, small business whenever we want, but there's just nothing fun or ambitious about that. And we really want to make a, a crazy disruption in live experiences. So the only way to do that right now, at least. Is to raise VCs that we can grow at the rate that we want to and hire who we need to, to do so.
So was this a mindset you had day one? Not for the seed, but for the pre seed, for like the hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, I didn't have any mindset. I mean, I was just doing it for fun. I actually, like, genuinely enjoyed building websites and I think Avante genuinely enjoyed throwing parties. But again, we both had startups in high school, so we both like, had the itch to build some massive company at the same time.
But I think we also were just like, Having fun and inherently doing a nightlife business obviously comes with a lot of perks that make it Way more fun than like a normal tech startup would be. Cause we're going out to the events and like meeting cool people. So
[00:11:02] Sahil: go back to the Avante, what were you, what were you doing to get that, you know, first five customers to sign on, you know, when you were in Florida, in Miami, would you have some traction just compensating each other, but.
When you don't have any user success, you know, besides maybe yourself, you have to convince people that this will work. How did you do that?
[00:11:19] Avante: There's a few things. Think one, we're fortunate enough to have incumbents that we're competing with. I have a lot of respect for founders that are creating a new product and trying to displace another form of doing something, right?
If you listen to Kevin Hart's talk about the early stages of Eventbrite. They weren't doing what we did, which was I could go on the Eventbrite marketplace and get a bunch of users that have events active and just try to find their email by backtracking on Instagram and on their websites and things like that.
Put them in a spreadsheet and write them a really nice, cool email. And go after it, right? If you look at Kevin Hart's building event, right? When there was no ticketing, he was going against pen and paper, which was, had been done, you know, since the dawn of time, and that's a lot harder because there was no online basically database, frankly, through a marketplace to go scrape these leads off of.
And they probably had to go hit the pavement and like find people and go shake their hand in their venue or whatever they were doing. Right. But yeah, for us, frankly, you know, the markets established of these event organizers and these marketplaces. Created these, you know, pseudo lead lists for us to go after.
And we were just saying, we have a better offering than what you're doing right now, but it's not too different to where it's like you know, 10 steps up. It's just like a step up in terms of the same product, but better instead of a different product for the same you know, workflow. But yeah, I think it was a lot of just going on Eventbrite a lot of the early emails when our product frankly wasn't better, right?
I think the UI was a lot better and that was the big selling point was like, there are bugs on here, but like your event's going to look better than the competitors. And we're also going to give you extremely high touch support. It's been an issue with a lot of the incumbent products in our space. It's just like, frankly, no support.
They're very product led. And so it's like, there's no like high touch success function for the organizers. And it's like, look, me and Eli are going to meet in a group chat with you. If there's a bug, you're going to text us. We're going to fix it in five minutes, but not only that, you're going to give us product feedback.
And this product is going to turn into something that like you have created fundamentally through your feedback and that retained a lot of people and built a lot of relationships that we still have today. But it was a lot of just you know, writing emails that were more about less about use this, it's better.
And I remember, I remember until the day I died, the number one email copy subject line that I had was NYU dropout seeking advice. And that always worked. The number one email copy. I still want to use it today, even though it's just like, obviously we're too late stage for that, but everyone's willing to provide advice to his dropout, right.
And everyone is willing to hop on a 20 minute call and just like, Be like, here's what I like and don't like about Eventbrite. And through that 20 minute call, I'd ideally would show them our product for five minutes and sometimes they'd be like, wait, hold on. You already have this? Like the email was very like, yeah, I'm building this idea.
I dropped that at NYU. It's not really ready yet, but we'd love to get your thoughts on it. And actually like the MVP was active and it was very well built in a bit, you know, usable. And so for probably about the first year or so after October, 2020 till like late 21, it was like kind of this pseudo advice esque sales strategy where they then realized that we had something dope on our hands, but they just get them on the call by like just trying to yanking on that part of them that wants to just be helpful to, to a dropout.
[00:14:24] Sahil: I've heard something like that along the lines for like other founders. You know, you ask for advice, you get sales, you ask for sales, you get advice. So everyone believes startups, they have this like hockey stick growth and like maybe like that's what you guys have had, but were there any dark moments when you thought about quitting, thought about stepping away?
[00:14:38] Eli: The first two years, we had a lot of stressful moments around bugs just cause it's like a transaction based business. So if something bad happens with checkout, Like one time none of there were transactions going through so we were charging people's credit cards But none of the order information was getting saved which is like a really really bad scenario And we were I don't think we were I think we were at like dinner or something so those scenarios where you're like scrambling to get back to your computer and Customers are losing money like those can be really stressful And then yeah, I'd also say anything related to team composition can be really not dark moments But just equally as stressful moments for lack of a better phrase just had to get more like cold blooded like when we had started We were very like, Oh, let's work with our friends.
And if this person's not performing super well, let's give them a few months to get back to where they are. And we kind of learned higher, slow fire, fast, the hard way. And
[00:15:35] Avante: the hardest moments have been fundraising. I think those moments, yes, though they were tough in terms of, you know, letting someone go or not getting the right person, we got past them pretty quickly and we were always very aligned on anything people related.
But fundraising is the only thing that's more of that ominous abyss. You don't know if someone's going to say yes until they do. And I think that the ambiguity of all of it is definitely the most stressful. Cause like, you don't know until like you just get that email in your inbox. It's like, Hey. We like the pitch like we want to write you x check and you're like, holy shit I didn't even think that pitch went well Like it's usually the one that you didn't even expect that like then comes in as well Which is pretty funny
[00:16:12] Sahil: when you're fundraising.
I'm sure you get a bunch of nos, right? You get the one yes deal is great But how do you get through the nose? You know a lot of times they'll comment like this isn't gonna work They'll be cut they can be better tablets can be very negative sometimes
[00:16:23] Avante: Negativity is not really the biggest issue here. I think the biggest issue is ambiguity around the why on the no is that it's a lot of just like, you know, you had three or four calls.
They asked you for a data room. They asked you to even pull up data that you didn't even have in the original data room. So then you like spent like two days, like running regressions, doing all this stuff in spreadsheets. And then like you send it to them. And then like two days later, it's like a one sentence email.
Like This doesn't work. Yeah, we're going to pass on this. And it's just like, can you at least tell me why, like, why did you have me do all this work and run around and not build my company instead to provide you information? Right. That can be very upsetting. But yeah, I think it really is just, you know, taking a deep breath, going on a run, doing whatever you need to do to, to, you know, relax and know that like everyone else received a bunch of nos before they received yeses, even the best startups in the world.
Right. I think that's honestly our north star that we've had to keep reminding ourselves. It's like, especially there's like, I forgot who said it, But there's a podcast I was listening to about like one of these big founders, you know, Airbnb, I think, or whatever it might have been, where the companies that get the most nose are usually the ones that have the most potential to become a hundred billion dollar company, right?
Because you're really building something that no one else has built before. And so either you're radically insane, Or you see the vision that no one else has seen before. And so you can build something that has never existed before. But no one building a hundred billion dollar company is going to get a million yeses, at least at the onset, until they get that hockey stick growth, right?
At the very early stage, if you're trying to build something that has never existed, then like, you just have to be really good at getting at least one person to see the vision that you see.
[00:17:57] Sahil: You guys are 22 years old. How do you change the narrative? Like, I'm not too young to be doing this. This is my time to be building this now, whether it's like, Fundraising or also hiring, you know, you're probably hiring employees that could be double your age with double the experience
[00:18:09] Eli: doing it Just by continuing to do a phenomenal job staying emotionally intelligent It's actually been really nice though.
I feel like Avante and I have come across like a really nice community of other young founders Again, shout out to Z fellows like Avanti was saying that was a really good plug into that
[00:18:28] Sahil: One thing I see with a lot of founders people I've talked to like clearly you guys are both not very arrogant But one thing is they You know, tend to feel a sense of a need for control over their company.
And, you know, when you're growing very fast, sometimes that can slip away for founders. So whether it be like the equity you had or like the decision making rights you have, how do you manage all of that?
[00:18:46] Eli: We're both working on that every day. Like I still want to, I used to do all the graphic design. Now there'll, there'll be like content or pages of the site going out.
And I like want to go in and just change like one pixel on the font size of something. And it's just that if you spend time as a leader micromanaging and making little tweaks like that, you just completely a. Mess up your own time because then you're not putting it towards the most important things, but b.
Your employees just feel like they can't breathe.
[00:19:13] Sahil: What about you, Avante? How do you feel about giving up some of that control? Like you must have been running all the sales processes, doing all the pitches. Where now you have to trust someone else to boost on your behalf?
[00:19:22] Avante: I think we've been fortunate enough again to have a A new change of heart in the last six months to pivot towards hiring top talent instead of getting people that, you know, do require all of micromanagement, honestly.
And so if you get the right people in the door, it's a lot easier to delegate things off your plate and not worry about that. But yeah, if you have, you know, frankly, garbage employees, and you're going to be very stressed out about them pitching the company wrong or.
[00:19:45] Sahil: Speaking of the pivoting, there's always a bunch of emotional side, you know, when you have this idea and you want to pivot the idea slightly.
So. How do you kind of feel about when someone else thinks of a different direction that you think the company should go in?
[00:19:57] Avante: That's one of Eli and my biggest strengths is that everyone's been very, very behind our vision, both internally, as well as our board and our investors. And that our vision is probably one of our biggest assets.
And so, especially because of the industry context that we have you know, Eli being a videographer, a photographer, me being a DJ, and us also, you Being users of these other products for literally almost a year before even writing a single line of code or thinking about doing this. And so we have so much context.
I was speaking to every single event organizer for the first year or so before we had any other customer facing employees. And so because we have so much context, like the reasoning behind the vision. And the steps that we take internally and how we pitch it, especially at all hands and things like that are the top pieces of feedback that we get.
We do something that we definitely suggest to anyone, which is you know, we're in performance review season here at the top of the year. And we also got a suggestion from some HR mentors to do executive reviews, right? Where our employees review us. And I think that's, you know, some of the most positive feedback we do get is around our alignment on vision and how it makes so much sense you know, the direction that we are going in.
[00:21:02] Sahil: What advice do you have to people that are building in college, recently graduated, you know, in these top positions? Maybe it's not going well for them. What are your thoughts on that?
[00:21:11] Avante: Going well for you. You know, the light is at the tunnel. You gotta, you gotta just keep pushing. Things are not just going well for us all the time.
Like you said, on LinkedIn and on social media, I think those things can be very toxic. And that people are only posting the positive. I think that what Eli was mentioning, get friends who are founders immediately as soon as you start building something, because they're going to be the ones that you can confide in when things are not going so well, and they're going to confide in you.
And make you realize that it's not just you who's going through these negative experiences and that everyone has these same experiences and then you can use them as a sounding board and vice versa and kind of keep growing together as well as from a hiring perspective. They might have people in their network, vice versa.
And so, yeah, I think one of the biggest value adds as soon as you're early on, it's just getting other founder friends because you'd be surprised at the value that you, me or you might not even know that that could provide to you. Friends that are working a nine to five, they. Just don't understand.
And so don't confide in that person because they're not going to give you any good feedback. You need people that have been going through the same exact things as you, and that are as passionate about an idea as you are, because they're the only ones that are going to get it. Your girlfriend's not going to get it.
Your boyfriend's not going to get it. Your parents aren't going to get it. Right. No, one's going to get it except for other founders. So you have to find those people and trust them and be honest with them about all the bad shit that's going on. That's the only way that you're going to be able to move forward.
[00:22:31] Sahil: And I just want to ask one final question. This is what I ask everyone i interview. Is there any routine you guys have kept throughout the years?
[00:22:38] Avante: We just did paintball against another startup about two weeks ago. That was super exciting. Eli organized all that. We got two buses up to Pennsylvania and did a big match. I think that was really, really great for everyone.
I'm taking my direct reports to the spa tomorrow, actually. And that's going to be really, really awesome just to, you know, relax with them and, and bond more. But again, based on positive feedback, we got from our employees. I think that's another really big positive is just like trying to, you know, add that human element back to it.
Cause actually adding more of the human element will get people to want to go harder and realize this is not just where they work, but this is a part of their life and this is a mission that you're collectively working towards building. And so, you know, having those after work experiences that you don't talk about work at, but you're just at, you know, with work people.
Cool. Can really elevate the culture in a meaningful way.
[00:23:24] Eli: We also, we also, like, bring our employees to the events all the time, which is another big routine we've done the entire duration of Posh.
[00:23:31] Sahil: Going to a nightclub, kind of the perk of the job.
[00:23:35] Avante: If we're in a healthcare company, I don't really know what you can do.
Maybe you gotta see, take your employees to watch open heart surgery or something.
[00:23:42] Sahil: And with that, my name is Sahil, and this has been UNinvested. Thank you.
