EEvery seat in Kiln Auditorium, and the overflow lobby, was filled to capacity on Monday night as five Utah-based founders pitched for $100,000 at the second annual Utah Tech Week Pitch Competition .
In the end, one company won the admiration of the judges and won a supersized check for $100,000. stage time, a professional recruitment solution for live performing arts spaces. The runners-up and first place won $25,000. neighboran AI-first home services marketplace that helps homeowners take their projects from the inspiration stage to budgeting and execution.
Founder and CEO of Stagetime jenny moser We want to solve one of the major problems in the performing arts industry. She says professionals are hired on an ongoing basis, and before Stagetime, there was no central digital location to bring talent together in one place.
“These contracts last from three weeks to maybe six weeks, so you know that employers are basically always looking for talent, and talent is always on the lookout for the next job,” even for professional opera singers. One Mr. Moser said in a lecture. pitch.
Stagetime allows industry members (individual talent, hiring managers, booking agents, etc.) to create portfolio pages that include important information such as location, availability, citizenship, race, pronouns, visa status, and more. Portfolio pages are hosted on Stagetime, making it easy for industry professionals to connect with each other.
“Our business model is focused on giving this specific data back to the people who need it the most, and the people who need it all the time,” Moser said, adding that there are currently 3 million people in the U.S. market alone. The performing arts professional said he works freelance.
rob henneferco-founder, and Frame VC partners And one of the pitch contest judges says he marked Moser's stage time as the first choice before he even finished his pitch.
“I think Stagetime is a phenomenal company that's working on the kind of thing I really want to focus on, which is an unknown but huge market: moving offline processes online. ” he says.
In addition to Hennefer, this year's judging panel consisted of seven other knowledgeable individuals from all walks of life.ben lopez Mercato Partners Entrepreneur in Utah brad bonham, kat kennedy kickstart fund, Gabby Porras Signal Peak Ventures, Chris Jelm Connectic Ventures, brent hill Origin Ventures, Corey Cozens 1 person from Philo Ventures and 1 AI VC analyst; wendaluses cloud-based technology to collect data, communicate with company founders, analyze financial data, and rank companies.
tyler slaterThe winner of last year's Utah Tech Week Pitch Competition and the founder of Nonsense, a language learning app that helps users learn languages using their favorite Hollywood movies, the judges deliberated on their decision. While there, he addressed the crowd at the kiln. Winning last year's pitch contest was the springboard for the company's success, he said.
“Since last year, we've had a content deal with NBCUniversal in Hollywood for Lionsgate Studios movies, and we're actually launching this week,” Slater said. “We brought in an amazing designer who is one of the top three designers at Netflix. While we were waiting for the license, we tested it with a small number of users. I watched people maintain their app every day for two years. We've seen this and are very excited to release this app.”
The future of Stagetime is equally bright. The platform already has 10,000 active users and a pipeline of paid enterprise accounts, including the National Symphony Orchestra, Opera House in St. Louis, and Austria's Vienna State Opera.
“2024 is extremely important for us. This was completely serendipitous timing,” Moser says of winning the pitch contest. “For some time now, I have felt that this business is in a very good position for the next stage. I have been inspired a lot by the organizations I have admired growing up as a performer. It's exciting for some companies to step in and start paying enterprise-level for a product, but taking it from a few companies to an entire industry is a whole other order of business, and that's why this funding That is what it is possible for us to do.” 
