Black-Owned Live Events Platform POSH Brings TikTok-Inspired Personalization To Event Experiences While Earning $10M In Annualized Revenue – AfroTech

The pair were students at New York University (NYU) and met while working at events. Price was a DJ, and Taylor-Lemire was a photographer. During an interview with Forbes, Price shared that the pair initially worked with other event brands geared towards college students, who he claims were missing the mark.

“POSH at the onset was just an IRL events company for NYU and Columbia kids to have a posh upscale experience,” Price told Forbes. “We got a lot of different experience with Eventbrite or these other products that existed at the time. A lot of the modern products that exist today even weren’t around in 2019. So we felt very very confined to what existed.”

He continued, “There was not a lot of tools to create our own brand and messaging through these products, right? It was very branded to the platform. There were not a lot of marketing tools. There were not a lot of ways to access new audiences or re-engage our current audience. And so Eli actually originally just built a software product for our own event brand and we were just using this tool as an internal product for our own events.”

The founders used POSH for two of their events, which helped them double the number of attendees. However, the world was shut down due to COVID-19 in 2020, which led to a significant hit to their events business. Still, they recognized there was a great opportunity on their hands thanks to POSH.

“Now more than ever, as we all know in these kind of economic downturns, people are more open to using new products than ever before. So we spent the pandemic just talking to users. Talking to other event organizer friends. Talking to everyone in the industry, talking to ticket buyers, consumers, the people that were coming to these events and understanding what would a reinvisioned product look like,” Price said, according to Forbes.

AS POSH previously shared with AFROTECH™, the founders wanted to also make it easier for fans to become event industry professionals themselves.

“POSH was born to democratize the ability for any fan with a passion for live events to get involved in the space with as little friction as possible,” Price told AFROTECH™. “Simply put, our mission is to democratize the ability for anyone to earn capital through live experiences.”

POSH’s initial tagline was to create “Shopify for all events.” Price shared with Forbes that the three value propositions early on were to provide a thorough solution for event organizers to custom-brand their pages, send marketing messages, and give customers access to who else would be in attendance.

The vision has expanded. It’s still offering similar solutions to assist organizers but now ensures consumers can experience a curated feed of events tailored to their interests. So, each user on POSH will have a personalized feed and algorithm.

Milestones

POSH has achieved various milestones. It has nearly 6 million users and almost 50,000 organizers on its platforms, Price told Forbes. The founders earn revenue by charging 10% of what organizers charge for paid events. In 2024, the company earned $10 million in revenue, notes Forbes. In total, POSH has facilitated over $300 million in ticket sales, and 10% of that goes back to the platform.

POSH has also received $40 million in funding, per the outlet. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, this includes a $22 million Series A funding round led by Goodwater Capital in 2024.