In this gigapod episode, we had a great talk with Givar Shabani, CEO and co-founder of Gigital. Gigital is a marketplace that connects professional musicians to bookers from the event and hospitality industry. Givar shares with us how Gigital was created, what are the biggest obstacles, how the covid pandemic affected the business and his top tips on how to have a successful digital platform!
The idea for Gigital came 4 years ago, as a solution to the challenge of connecting and networking musicians from different genres and styles to booking agents in the industry. It was a big innovation in the live music space.
Givar shared with us that, although in the last 10-20 years, there have been a lot of changes in the way music is created, distributed and listened to, the live music industry is still lacking improvements and updating. And for Givar, finding an industry that hasn’t been digitized is really exciting!
Givar explains that a big problem in the music industry is the capitalization of the know-how on booking and networking. And this has created barriers to opportunities for improvement and change in this field. And Gigital comes as the place where musicians can scale their work.
But unfortunately, the live music industry is a sector that suffered severely with the pandemic. Givar shares that in the year of 2020, since everything was shut down, there were no live concerts. However, just before the pandemic, they were experiencing rise and growth on the number of gigs - on average 5 to 10 times (compared to the previous year).
But this didn’t mean standing still. Gigital started focusing on their product and on what the post-pandemic market and products will be. Gigital is now concentrating on smaller gigs and events (such as local bars with DJs or restaurants).
Finally, we asked Givar to share his top 3 tips for those who want to start a digital platform B2B focused:
- It’s all about the team: having a good team makes all the difference! Having a solid and effective technical side will be helpful when testing and launching the product;
- It is nice to have the project management done in-house.
- Don’t be scared of sales – even if you are at the initial phase!
Thank you Givar, for the great talk! Be sure to check the full conversation here.
