Nikki Sanz knows how hard it is to get a job in the music industry.
She moved to Nashville after graduating from college because it was the only way she knew to get gig jobs working on tours. Gig workers are typically freelancers and independent contractors that support artists' shows and tours.
Most notably, Sanz has worked for Eric Church and George Strait doing everything from planning and hospitality to working merch stands and running errands.
Getting a job on the road or for a one-night local show has historically boiled down to who you know and who those people knew.
But Sanz is working to change that. This week she officially launched her company Giggs, a career platform for the live event industry. Think of it like a LinkedIn but for gig work.
Since soft launching in November, her platform has gained over 10,000 users and 150 job posts that resulted in a hire. Companies that are on her platform include Live Nation, Clair Global, VIPNation, PTP Live, Red Light Management and Range Media.
“It’s a very secretive kind of world,” Sanz told the Business Journal, explaining that many companies don’t want to post jobs on typical online platforms because they often draw in fans instead of professionals. “It’s an issue when you can’t find enough jobs to apply for or enough people to hire.”
The music industry supports more than $3.2 billion of labor income annually, according to a report by the Recording Industry Association of America. Nashville’s music industry contributes $5.5 billion to the local economy, for a total output of $9.7 billion within the Nashville area.
But she’s not limiting her company to just live music. It’s for any type of live event such as marathons, corporate events and sports.
Sanz bootstrapped the start of her company in 2021, investing $200,000 of her own money. She went through two failed development agencies before finally getting it right. When she ran out of money on the second agency, she turned to investors.
Since then, she's raised half a million dollars from 12 investors, including InvestTN which put in $75,000.
“I could have bought a house. I thought about that when I ran out of it,” Sanz said. “I think every entrepreneur kind of struggles with ‘am I insane? is this going to work?’ But I knew it was going to."
In 2023, when things weren’t going according to plan and she was running low on money, Sanz called her dad, who works in finance.
“He was like, 'Listen, I don’t think it’s gonna fail. If it does you just got your MBA,'” Sanz said. “You're paying for education. I kind of started seeing it that way.”
How Giggs came to be
In 2021, when the world started moving again and artists went back on tour, Sanz found that with all the added pandemic restrictions and protocols, she was no longer enjoying life of the road. And many of her peers were also getting out.
“It was a very awful, intense time,” Sanz said of being on tour after the pandemic. “But I think if we’ve seen anything from this is that people don’t want that to happen again.”
Sanz points to the success, demand, size and scale of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, which Time Magazine reported as the highest-grossing concert tour of all time at at least $1 billion.
“If you think about the history of the touring industry, it’s really just like 50 years old,” Sanz said. “Could you imagine a Taylor Swift tour or a Beyonce tour in the '80s? They would never be able to pull it off. Shows, they've never been this big, ticket sales have never been this way."
After leaving the road, Sanz got a steady job, working with a company that hired gig workers for tours. She found that she couldn’t find the right people to hire and the candidates she did find weren’t the best fits for the jobs. That’s when she decided to create Giggs.
"That’s when it hit me,” Sanz said. “I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know tech and I'm going to start this tech company.”
She’s worked heavily with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, wrote her own business plan and met with mentors and focus groups. Now she has her own company, complete with four employees and a board of advisors.
What's next for Gigg
Companies can pay either $90 per job posting or get a subscription for $200 a month or $2,000 a year to use Sanz's platform. Users looking for jobs will pay a yearly subscription of $50. The goal is to be profitable by the end of the year.
All job postings and users are vetting by Giggs before being approved to join or post a job. Companies are able to post jobs anonymously after being thoroughly vetted.
The first phase of the company is a post and apply system, but future phases are set to include social networking and messaging features so users and companies can reach out to each other. She’s also hosting networking events across the country to help connect gig workers with companies.
“These big companies that have their own job boards on their website, where people go apply themselves, are still struggling to find people,” Sanz said. “We're not revolutionizing the wheel, this just has never existed in our world.”
