Unreliable or shady performers and event planners are a perennial issue in the entertainment industry. Nicole Gallub knows that fact intimately after years performing, mostly in and around D.C., under her nom de guerre DJ Neekola. There's a limit to what word-of-mouth and Yelp reviews can do to ensure reliable performers and event planners find each other. Seeking a cure to that plague helped drive Gallub to found Pelonkey, an online platform to connect all kinds of entertainers with people looking to book entertainment for events.
"In a nutshell we are an entertainment marketplace for people to find and book entertainment," Nicole Gallub told DC Inno in an interview. "My main vision is to use Pelonkey to create structure and stability for the entertainment industry."
"Sometimes event planners don't pay, sometimes entertainers don't show up on time or get drunk."
A part of that is just education, she explained. Often, people planning events think they know what kind of entertainment they want to book, but in reality they really need something else entirely. The right entertainment can make or break any party, and booking three DJs and a troupe of mermaids (a real option on the platform) isn't the best idea for an intimate cocktail party, for instance.
"A lot of times people rely on referrals that don't work out. We can help educate them to find the right talent." Gallub said. "It's all transparent too. People know how much to pay and exactly where it's going."
Nicole runs Pelonkey with her sister, Ciera Gallub out of the 1776 tech incubator. Nicole originally recruited Ciera out of college to be her booking manager for her DJ gigs. Now Ciera is COO (and Unicorn) of Pelonkey, while Nicole is CEO (and Founder of All Glitter and Happiness).
"I saw so much potential in her, I had to drag her to D.C.," Gallub said, adding that the name of the company is purely to make it memorable. "It's completely made up. I wanted something that, if you search on Google nothing comes up but us."
With the help of hired developers, the sisters created the Pelonkey platform, building it on the essential support network that makes the talent and the bookers answerable for being flaky. That's is a central part of the platform, with fees and fines for late cancellations and no-shows, and even legal action if required. Agreeing to that and signing up with a credit card helps ensure that everything is aboveboard. It's a feature that Gallub said was requested by almost everyone she talked to in the process of creating Pelonkey.
"Sometimes event planners don't pay, sometimes entertainers don't show up on time or get drunk," Gallub said. This makes people accountable. People sometimes don't think of this as a business, but it is one."
Pelonkey takes an 8 percent cut from each booking, 4 percent from either end of the deal. Gallub compared that to the 20-25 percent that she's found to be standard for entertainment bookers.The platform has been up for a couple of weeks, but Pelonkey is hosting an kick-off party on Wednesday to officially launch. DJ Neekola won't be spinning herself, but there will be several local DJs there to handle the music.
"We will make a difference to getting this business standardized."
As of now, there are over 400 entertainers on the platform, including impersonators, musicians and magicians among other acts. The vast majority are in the greater D.C. area, with a few scattered around the rest of the country. The plan is to build up in D.C. before expanding the focus to Baltimore and beyond. That makes sense, as the company, bootstrapped as it is, will need to build up its userbase and revenue before scaling. That will build as people start to trust the platform, Gallub said.
"We're bringing passion and experience, but it's going to be reliable," she said. "We will make a difference to getting this business standardized."
