Imagine booking a band, DJ, comedian or dancer for your corporation's event in under five minutes.
That's what Channing Moreland and Makenzie Stokel envisioned when they created EVA, an on-demand entertainment booking marketplace primarily designed for corporate and private occasions. Moreland said she and Stokel met in 2012 as freshmen at Belmont University, and each had a passion for live music entertainment. That led the co-founders to organize events such as festivals and house parties, which was the fun part. The manual and time-consuming process of booking entertainment was not so fun.
Moreland and Stokel launched EVA in 2015, originally using its platform to book entertainment for college campuses and shifting in 2018 to serve the corporate world. Nashville-based EVA quickly matches vetted artists with events in need of entertainment. It also connects corporations with their professional entertainment of choice. The startup is expanding that service to Charlotte, North Carolina, launching in the city next month.
"We have some really strong support in our artists community in the North Carolina area," Moreland said. "So for us, it just made a lot of sense with the corporations that are already headquartered there, the groups that are moving there and our current clients that are asking for us to go there. It just became a no-brainer for us to launch in the fall."
The startup plans to offer event organizers here a portfolio of seasoned local entertainers for hire.
EVA is currently available in Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and Austin, Texas. After its launch in Charlotte, the startup plans to head next to New Orleans, Moreland said.
To book entertainment, it takes three steps on the EVA platform. The client first creates an event, adding important details such as its date and budget. EVA then connects the client with a few vetted entertainment options, allowing them to view artists' profiles and select a match. After picking an entertainer, contracts are signed and EVA processes the payment and finalizes the details.
Popular entertainment genres on the EVA platform include singer-songwriters, DJs, full bands, seasonal acts, speakers, dancers, interactive experiences and comedians. Artists could be picked for a variety of occasions ranging from corporate, private and public events.
The startup has worked with 2,500 professional artists, and has more than 3,000 event opportunities for creatives.
EVA aims to provide the platform as a way to connect local entertainers with higher-paying opportunities to sustain their careers.
"Our big passion is really driving economic impact for the creatives in the city and giving them a new revenue stream to really support their overall focus in their creative work," Moreland said.
Over the years, EVA has seen big organizations use its platform for special occasions, including Charlotte-based Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC), American Cancer Society, ESPN, the U.S. Air Force and BMW.
The startup is in the process of closing on a $2 million pre-series A round, which it believes will oversubscribe, Moreland said. She declined to share a specific revenue number, but said the company has hit a multimillion-dollar figure.
EVA is now focused on expanding nationwide and providing additional solutions to the entertainment-booking industry.
"We're seeing there's a lot of additional solutions we can provide entertainers in the ease of booking and payments," she said. "And then for corporations, we're noticing these bigger partnerships where we are helping support an organization across all of their events and really being that one partner for them that they can trust. So we're just looking at how do we build out more on our platform to really support that."
