Angelica Burlaza
From left to right: Tamas An, Josh Gluckman, Morgan McMeel, Paul Stacek, Alex Manavi, Sam Halfon, and Drew Parkin.
Live entertainment has historically had a short memory when the tools are suboptimal. A line gets stuck at the door, a reservation disappears into the wrong system, a high-value guest vanishes from view, and the venue goes right back to guessing. Speakeasy has built its name in that chaos, and co-founders Tamas An, Alex Manavi, and Paul Stacek attribute their progress thus far to an unmatched approach to client success and product rigor.
Tamas An, CTO, leads product development, engineering, and technical operations. Conversations with the core team place him at the center of a company that has grown roughly 500% year-over-year and now serves over 200 industry-leading operators nationwide, with 0 churn to date. That trajectory sits within one of the more compelling macro tailwinds in the U.S. economy: arts and culture contributed $1.2 trillion to U.S. GDP in 2023, representing 4.2% of the nation’s total economic output and growing at twice the rate of the broader economy (National Endowment for the Arts / U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Arts & Cultural Production Satellite Account). Zoom in further and the live sector specifically tells an even sharper story, independent live venues, festivals, and promoters alone contributed $86.2 billion directly to GDP in 2024, surpassing the economic output of the U.S. beer, gaming, and airline industries combined, and generating $153.1 billion in total economic output when fan spending on dining, lodging, and transportation is factored in (National Independent Venue Association). Meanwhile, the U.S. conference, concert, and event market is projected to scale from $429 billion in 2024 to over $670 billion by 2033 (GlobeNewswire), making the infrastructure that powers these operations a critical layer of a rapidly expanding industry. Speakeasy’s foothold in that market has been built almost entirely on reputation: 85% of new clients came through direct operator referrals.
When Word Gets Around
Photo Courtesy of Speakeasy
For years, venues and event organizers have relied on disconnected tools for ticketing, reservations, payments, guest records, and marketing, with staff bouncing between systems while managing the many moving parts of live operations. It’s a particularly acute problem in an industry that runs on narrow margins and a tight weekly window to generate them. Speakeasy consolidates those tools into a single platform with purpose-built solutions across each vertical.
The company describes their thesis in direct terms: “We enable operators to run more efficiently, freeing up resources and enabling reinvestment into what matters most: the guest experience.”
With founder roots in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Budapest, Hungary, Speakeasy is now headquartered in New York City and operates in 30+ cities across the United States, with plans for rapid expansion in the coming quarters and years.
Built In The Mess, Not Above It
The three co-founders stepped into a business where small technical failures can quickly turn public opinion. Their academic backgrounds, most notably CTO Tamas An, a double major in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Chicago who graduated at the top of his class, help explain why they are well-suited to handle that kind of pressure.
Early work at Speakeasy focused on the payment flow at the door, one of the most overlooked yet exposed parts of venue and event operations. The team identified immediate opportunities to reduce costs, unlock incremental revenue, and increase customer data capture. The bet appears to have paid off, with some venues reporting six-figure incremental revenue increases, and a recent Chicago venue case study citing a 12.2% EBITDA margin improvement driven solely by Speakeasy’s at-door payments feature.
The company later widened into ticketing, reservation management, CRM, direct marketing, premium booking flows, and revenue defense. Clients surfaced one pain point after another, and the product kept moving toward the places where venues were bleeding time or losing visibility. A recent client, Gino LoPinto, Partner at E11EVEN Miami and CEO of E11EVEN Music, stated that, “Speakeasy has been a godsend for our operation. We’ve increased revenue thanks to an intuitive, easy-to-use system that integrates seamlessly with our POS. Consolidating ticketing and table reservations into a single platform enabled us to move away from multiple tools. It’s streamlined our entire workflow, and our accounting team loves it too.
Another line from company executives carries the larger ambition: “Our mission is to power the full stack of the live experience economy.” The ground beneath that ambition, however, appears solid, a category that had been underserved for years and a product that operators are clearly reluctant to leave.
Why Operators Kept Talking
Winning a client is one thing. Getting that client to send you the next one is another, and with churn at zero to date, operators clearly aren’t treating Speakeasy as a short-term experiment. The platform targets the problems that actually cost operators money: siloed booking flows, chargebacks, disorganized in-venue spend tracking, and guest data that goes uncaptured rather than driving the next sale.
The client list reflects the range: TAO Group, Fontainebleau Resort, Barstool Sports, Blind Barber Group, semi-pro sports teams, health and wellness studios, and landmark venues like Waterfront LA. The co-founders point to a deep understanding of operator needs and the trust those operators have placed in them as the clearest measure of how far they’ve come and where they’re headed.