Topic: Music
The Startup Life: Enter the Side Door
November 19, 2019 at 6:00pm
Side Door is a digital platform that matches performing artists with venues to create shows anytime, anywhere, on their own terms. Come meet CEO & Co-Founder Laura Simpson for a fireside chat and live performance with Cassie Josephine (Indie Folk Country princess). Laura and Cassie will talk about the challenges artists in the music business face and how Side Door ’s unique digital platform is defining a new business model capitalizing on the power of a networked community. Learn how Side Door is poised to hit $1 million in annual ticket sales by the end of 2020.
Cassie Josephine
With “a voice that sits between Roy Orbison and Dolly Parton,” Cassie Josephine provides a vintage sound to her deeply personal narratives (Jeff Liberty - CBC). Her latest collection of songs, Only Half Blue, is one she thinks of fondly as a fairytale of middle-aged proportions. With her backing band, The Cry If I Want To’s, Cassie’s dreamy anthems are brought to life with soaring harmonies, violin, piano, and electric guitar.
Laura Simpson
Lover of music and truth. Listen to the poets. Founder of The Syrup Factory, Make.Do.Camp. and Side Door.
Laura Simpson is a music industry professional, living with her family in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She founded The Syrup Factory, which began hosting house concerts 2011 and offering strategy and services to artists in 2015.
She has been an organizer in the arts scene since she was 14, going to all-ages shows and then eventually taking live music photography and freelance writing about shows and artists. That led her to be a journalist for seven years, working for CBC and Rogers Radio.
Side Door
Platform matching artists with spaces to create shows anytime, anywhere.
Side Door is a curated digital booking and ticketing platform used to facilitate booking and ticketing micro-performances in homes and other alternative venues in Canada and around the world. As a website and future mobile app, this technology-based company is innovating the traditional touring model for performers, live performances, and fan experiences.
Artists and Hosts sign up for free online through the Side Door website by creating profiles and answering questions about their preferences for performing or presenting a show in a house or alternative space (think bookstores, warehouses, parks, libraries, community centres, etc). The platform automatically matches Artists and Hosts based on their mutual profile preferences. Once matched, they are notified of the match, and prompted to discuss the details of booking a show together. Not only is Side Door a booking tool, but the online platform also has a booking contract and ticketing component that allows the Host to advertise and sell tickets. Fans will be able to visit the website or download the app to view shows in their area and shows they have been invited to, and they can buy tickets instantly online. Once the show is over the Host, Artist, and fans are all asked to provide feedback on the attended show.