The Opportunity

Bandwagon started as a small company with the goal to connect fans within sporting communities. The first product was IdealSeat, a StubHub-esque ticketing platforms for fans of college football games to sell and trade tickets. It grew into an event ticket seller and evolved into a startup seeking to utilize the Blockchain in 2020.

From this change in strategic direction came the concept of Fan Club, a social sharing app that quantifies fandom and allows ease of ticket purchase for high affinity fans.

Process

FanClub started as an app where fans could “mint” (post) photos from sporting or entertainment events on their feed, explore trending events near them or around the world and search for user uploaded art and music. To get investment and partnership from larger brands, I knew that I’d need to pitch a use case that solved a pain point for many people that is currently not alleviated from the digital product space.

During my brainstorming, I would see on Twitter Swifties talking about the Eras Tour. Some happy to have scored a ticket, some lamenting. I would think about the Harry Styles fans who camped out over night for a chance to see him in person. I opened my Spotify to change songs while I wireframed. And then I thought about my Spotify Wrapped.

Platforms like Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music already know who’s really a fan of which artists, they summarize it to us every year. But the overviews feel a little stale now. It’s just a read back of my listening behavior.

But what if I could do more with that information?
What if my genuine interest with my favorite artist made it easier for me to connect with them?
What if buying concert tickets no longer felt like Black Friday?

That’s when the idea came together to partner with music streaming platforms so that users can quantify their fandom. Fans get a Q-score based off of listening behavior and when you purchase tickets to live events, the score increases. Selling tickets goes against the score, as a way to discourage resellers and to ensure genuine fans have first access to purchase tickets.

Pitching the Idea:

The next steps were to adapt the existing Fan Club prototype to a Spotify Integrated specific use case to pitch to the brand. The new flow would allow fans to connect their streaming service when they create accounts and have a ticket platform integration to make concert purchases easier.

After creating two pitch decks, myself and the CEO of Bandwagon met with contacts at Spotify and Tidal to pitch our idea. The goal was to get buy-in and investment from the brands. Their response was positive, and Spotify especially saw a need to reinvigorate their yearly Wrapped, but the ability to invest was uncertain due to budget constraints.

Adjusting the Proposal:

I began wireframe a MVP iteration of the app; a very lean and scaled back version in hopes that brands would have the budget to invest in a smaller experience, and then incrementally scale.

Before we could meet again with Spotify and Tidal, the startup – Bandwagon – had to shut down. It faced similar constraints that other startups faced in 2023. My work on this and other projects at the startup.