If you’ve attended a Boston startup event in the last few months, chances are you found out about it or signed up for it through Markit.
Since its founding in 2021, the Boston-based startup Markit Social has supported college parties, fundraisers, art galleries, hackathons and nightclubs. But in Boston, where it was born, Markit is nearly synonymous with startup events.
Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Chang says Markit is more than a platform to find events. It also uses texting to help event organizers engage with their attendees and keep them in the loop about future events.
“We kind of just want to streamline reengagement marketing and building community through events,” Chang said.
The chief executive said they focused on texting for Markit because there are “way too many mediums and channels” people use.
Building a text-based community
Chang founded Markit after graduating from Tufts University and working at Realtime Robotics as a software engineer. Chang found himself wanting to wear even more hats than he held at his day job, so on the side he started to play around with building an app.
Markit has changed its focus a few times since Chang’s early experiments with building a “social Tripadvisor” and a “Tinder for events” serving university students. But from the start, Chang’s focus has been on creating easier ways for people to find out about and attend events.
Markit launched out of the Tufts Venture Accelerator and was part of the Techstars Boston cohort in 2022. The startup raised $1.2 million in funding in September 2022, and Chang said Markit is now raising a seed round.
Coming out of Techstars, Chang said the startup started looking beyond the university space to serving businesses. Typically, its customers are event organizers or businesses that run events, such as comedy clubs or music venues.
Markit uses a SaaS business model. There are several pricing options ranging from a free starter subscription to a $200/month business plan. Users receive their own personal phone number to send messages to anyone that’s part of their "textable" following.
“Imagine you’re a comedy club or you’re Venture Lane or you’re Techstars and you’re hosting an event every month. Over the course of a few months, you build up hundreds if not thousands of people that have ever gone to your events,” Chang said. “Anytime you go and post a new event, you can send out a text to everybody.”
Chang said so far the company has seen that sending these texts is an effective way to get people to sign up for events, and it involves very little work by the organizer. It could also eliminate some of the costs for advertising for events.
Markit has over 100,000 users a month on the platform, Chang said. The company is active in New York, Los Angeles and Boston. Chang said it's growing primarily based on referrals. In New York and LA, comedy clubs and music venues make up most of its customers. But in Boston, startup events are the big users.
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Chang also runs a text list of events he sends out to over 500 Boston founders, investors and operators every Monday.
“My little selfish goal is I want every event that I put in there eventually to be using Markit,” Chang said.
Markit also maintains a document of events in several cities, including Boston and Chicago.
Outside of Markit, Chang also stays involved with Techstars Boston. He is the president of the Techstars Boston chapter and runs the monthly events. These events are typically for Techstars alumni, but he’s been working to open them up to the community. Being more open aligns with Techstars values, Chang said, and gives the accelerator the chance to connect with more founders.
