Event Tech Lab’s James Morgan examines the graduates from the Techstars Music Accelerator, and finds the companies on the cutting edge of live

 

Its all about the fan experience at festivals. We all design around the fan journey to make our events a success. But how can we use the data from those experiences to inform marketing strategies and tactics?

At the end of January, the prestigious LA-based Techstars Music Accelerator – the most prestigious technology accelerator for music and live events startups in the world – announced their class of 2020. Techstars Music invests US$1.2m into 10 of the best music-related startups from around the world each year. The Techstars Music team selects 10 startups out of hundreds of applications during a six-month global search.

Over the course of 13 weeks they are mentored by a 300 person-strong list of global music and tech executives, venture investors and global-scale artists. The 2020 Techstars Music Accelerator startups follow three previous classes that have raised more than $75m in follow-on funding with a combined valuation nearing $350m. My pick of the bunch to watch for the live events space is FanSifter.

FanSifter is a machine learning-powered fan data analytics platform. It will revolutionise the music, entertainment, and sports data landscape. It will inform marketers on how to sell more tickets.

The platform captures attendee data based on online behaviours. Fansifter’s clients – event marketers – will save valuable marketing hours with powerful segmentation, profiling and enrichment tools – allowing hyper-personalized communication of the right offer to the right audience segments at the right time.

Live events and music festivals will be able to launch smarter personalised campaigns via email, text, Facebook or Instagram to target potential buyers. The platform allows end-to-end trackable granular fan profiles´ performance.

To power the data collection, data analysis and behavioural preference outputs, the platform employs artificial intelligence algorithms. This new generation in event marketing data analytics caught the imagination of the high-powered mentors of the world famous Techstars programme.

Technology entrepreneur Aivar Laan, founder of Estonia-based FanSifter has been working on this project for some years. It was inspired by his successful festival ticketing platform, Festivality.

“I’m super stoked to kick off a new chapter in Los Angeles! Life does not give these kinds of opportunities too often, and when it happens, you´ve got to recognize such a chance, and put it all in to get there and make it happen” says Laan.

Being picked from a field of hundreds of startups is no mean feat. Marketers: be part of the data revolution and sign up for private beta at fansifter.com