What started as a pandemic project by Goldstar Events to help customers and keep its engineering team busy is now a startup all its own.
Called Stellar Live Inc., the startup officially launched on its own at the start of the year. At the same time, its previous parent company, Pasadena-based Goldstar, was sold to rival TodayTix Group. As part of that deal, TTG invested an undisclosed amount in Stellar.
The capital will help Portland-based Stellar build out its team. Currently, the company has 18 people who are all previously Goldstar employees, including CEO Jim McCarthy and chief product officer Will Clark. Goldstar had an office of about 40 people in Portland.
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The Stellar employee number is expected to double this year, said Clark, who is now CTO of Stellar. The company is remote-first and is hiring for head of people, head of design and head of marketing.
Stellar has built a platform from the ground up that offers ticketing and livestreaming services to venues and live entertainment organizers. Think of it as Twitch built specifically for live theater and music events complete with ticketing.
The team was focused on overcoming the limitations of video and streaming platforms that weren’t built for shows. That includes ticketing, audience size, chat and audio and video quality. The platform is also available as Over The Top apps that run on streaming devices like Roku and Apple TV so people can watch shows on a TV.
“We started the project inside Goldstar in May 2020. By July we were doing some beta tests with bands and comedians and magicians. We launched in October 2020,” Clark said.
Once live events started to come back in the summer of 2021 the team turned to the broader future of live entertainment and what hybrid events could look like. Clark noted that many venues and entertainers learned they could broaden their reach with online events.
For example, one theater in Los Angeles that holds 660 people was able to sell 8,000 tickets to one online event. Most venues have less than 2,000 seats, Clark said.
Another event was a movie watch with the actor Bruce Campbell. Clark said 3,000 people bought tickets to watch the movie “Evil Dead” with Campbell on the platform. All told, more than 400 organizations have had shows on the platform. The average ticket price for shows is about $20.
Through its work as Goldstar, the team learned that on average people will travel 15 miles to a venue for a show. With a hybrid event, performers and promoters can broaden that and remove the physical limits on ticket sales.
“Our very first show on Stellar was a cover band (from a warehouse space in Southern California) and on that show we had people in the chat from Peru, Finland, Japan, Australia and all over North America,” Clark said. “That is the opportunity here. Not just to help through the pandemic but long term. All of a sudden, if you are the Oakland Theater Project your audience doesn’t just have to be Oakland. The audience is the entire world if you make it that.”
The startup is generating revenue. It’s been funded through Goldstar and now TTG.
