Two College Dropouts, Entrepreneurs Develop POSH App To Compete With Ticketmaster

Two young Black entrepreneurs dropped out of college to find their purpose.

Avante Price and Eli Taylor-Lemire said goodbye to NYU to launch POSH — an online event management and ticketing platform that is expected to rival ticketing companies such as Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, according to Black Enterprise.

Recently, the startup raised $5 million in a seed round to expand its operations.

Price and Taylor-Lemire, 23, experienced frustration while working part-time in NYC nightclubs. At first, the two hosted small events for college students, as well as young professionals until they made a determination they could make it bigger. So in 2019, they started POSH because of those experiences.

In an extreme turn of events, they dropped out of NYU, believing “they can revolutionize the event management industry,” according to Black Enterprise. Price is a disc jockey, and Taylor-Lemire is head of a freelance photo-video agency that specializes in producing content for fashion magazines and Sony and Roc Nation artists.

Thanks to their experience in the entertainment field, they evolved POSH into a management and ticketing platform that is similar to “Shopify for events,” Taylor-Lemire told AfroTech.

“The existing events industry is extremely monopolistic. Incumbent brands use a play-to-play model to keep corporate event organizers exclusive to their products,” Price said. “They put their brand before their organizers and make it extremely difficult to manage and scale the communities that event organizers work so hard to build. What completely sets POSH apart from other platforms is that they offer users customization of their own “marketplace” to fit their brand through white-labeled event pages. Aside from that, POSH also features and RS ticket VP tools, marketing tools (email, SMS, affiliate), instant payouts, dispute resolution, community management, and kickback offers for attendees to become paid affiliates. The platform then earns commissions from every ticket sold.”

The founders said POSH recently received $5 million in a seed round, which was co-led by Companyon Ventures and EPIC Ventures, with participation from Cameron Dallas, Day One Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Joshua Browder (DoNotPay founder), and others. The funding will be used to expand the team, update its mobile app and add new features.

Additionally, POSH experienced substantial growth: The user base has exceeded half a million and ticket sales total $30 million. In fact, in the first quarter of 2023, the platform increased its number of live events by 50% and has been used in six continents, which means the global reach, influence and potential for future growth are prevalent.

Photo Credit: POSH