Stagecast makes concerts smarter
Stagecast is on a mission! By letting concert goers use their smartphones to engage in the show, they want to revolutionize the concert experience. After joining the Brighter Program in 2016, this KTH Innovation alumni company is gearing up.
The music industry has gone through tremendous changes in the past years. When services like Spotify changed the way we consume music, many artists started focusing on their live acts to stay on top. At the same time, smartphones developed rapidly, and was soon in everyone’s hand during a show.
Former KTH Students Hedvig Ahlgren, Jonas Hermann, and Markus Wallentin, together with Robin Bugdahn who was then a student at FH Mainz in Frankfurt, make up the founding team of Stagecast. After noticing that people were already using their phones to interact with the artists and each other during concerts, for example by using hashtags or flashlights, they decided to create a way to enhance the concert experience even more. Now, Stagecast is a full experience design platform for live entertainment events, turning mobile phones into parts of the show both before, during and after an event. Want to know more? Check out this video!
In 2016, Stagecast joined the Brighter Program. Following four months of preparation in Sweden, they travelled to Silicon Valley for an intensive week of workshops, conferences, visits and investor pitches together with six other selected startups.
Hedvig Ahlgren says:
- I remember the day when we found out we were going to be part of the Brighter Program. We were all exploding with joy Silicon Valley had been a dream destination for all of us for a long time!
The Brighter Program is KTH Innovation’s internationalization program, which aims to boost the development of early-stage projects that have the potential of reaching the global market. For five years, KTH Innovation has brought our startups to Silicon Valley to boost their international journey.
- My favorite memory from the trip was the last day of the program, when all the participants got to pitch to KTH Innovation’s network at the Prezi HQ, says Hedvig Ahlgren. Everyone was so nervous but it was a great challenge, and super impressive to see all of the seven startups pitch their ideas! It was overall very inspiring and a great kickstart for us to get going on developing Stagecast as a company and also to prepare for the seed round we started one year after that!
Now, after graduating from the KTH Innovation pre-incubator program and moving to Amplify, Sweden’s first music tech incubator located at the Royal College of Music, Stagecast have locked down their first customer, a production company that uses the Stagecast app at one of their shows. They are also planning a hackathon in May together with Telia and Universal Music. Read more here!
So what’s next for Stagecast?
- We will continue working closely with a few select customers within the music and sport industries, says Hedvig Ahlgren. We have a festival collaboration planned for the summer, and hopefully a few sport events coming up as well. We hope that by working together with these key players, we will learn more about what works in our product and business model and then be ready to scale towards end of the year, beginning of next! Wish us good luck!
Hedvig Ahlgren’s advice to the next participants of the Brighter Program:
Do your research!
Look up the companies, networks or people that you want to connect with.
Use your free time!
You will have some time outside of the schedule, or you can take the opportunity to stay a bit longer. Use the time to meet those important contacts and see what that can lead to!
Prepare your pitch!
Prepare as much as possible to maximize your impact. Before leaving you will take part in a number of workshops with KTH Innovation. Use them!
Apply!
I really recommend applying to the Brighter Program!