Startup Weekend Cebu Winner GIGBox: bringing venues and artists together

Startup Weekend Cebu winner GIGBox is trying to do something new in the local music scene:  bring venues and artists together through an online gig scheduling system.

“I love music.  Whenever I go around the world, I go to local hangouts where I can listen to independent music and check out the scene. Since then, I’ve met a lot of interesting people like John, a restaurant owner in Cebu. One time he was so irritated because the band they hired cancelled for the night.  He was telling me that he’s tired of the system.  So I thought, why not try to bridge the gap between artists and venues by coming out with a web-based platform where venues can connect with bands and support independent artist groups?” said Nathan Salugsugan, co-founder of GIGBox.

The jubilant GIGBox team from L-R:  Jeb Saldariega, Victoriano Eco, and Nathan Salugsugan

Thus, GIGBox was formed. It is a scheduling system where venues can easily find a band, a DJ, a solo artist, or even a dance group and also help them figure out which artist is trending. It also supports those who need a place to perform as well as provides information to fans who are interested in the schedule of their favorite artists.

GIGBox bested 16 other participants in this year’s Startup Weekend Cebu organized by TechTalks.ph and the Department of Science and Technology – Information and Communications Technology Office.  And since its first run in May 2012, Startup Weekend Cebu was supported by Kickstart Ventures, a wholly-owned incubation and investment firm of leading telecommunications company Globe Telecom together with Globe Labs.

“This was the fourth Startup Weekend in Cebu and we saw how the participants: developers, non-tech entrepreneurs, students, and local startup founders have, to some extent, benefited from the previous runs. The 17 ideas that survived the 34 first pitched last Friday night certainly showed more thought and not just because they’re fun to do,” said Pia Angeli Bernal, Social Enterprise Investments Manager of Kickstart.

She added:  “Kickstart supports activities like Startup Weekend Cebu because participants discover that it is entirely possible to transform any idea into a business in just 54 hours – “who knows, a future Kickstart startup investment might attribute their birth to one Startup Weekend Cebu.”

                The judges were fairly impressed with the original concept since the idea was born out of need rather than patterned against successful business models in other countries.

“It was a close fight among the top three teams but ultimately, we chose GIGBox because they started their pitch with a problem statement, which guided the team well in the next 54 hours from ideation to presentation of a prototype. Second, we haven’t seen anything like this.  We don’t think there’s much competition out there,” said Dave Overton, one of the judges and the one responsible for bringing Startup Weekend to Cebu. Overton is also founder of Symph, a design and development studio in Cebu.

Neck-to-neck with GIGBox is Likha, a shirt-printing web-based platform wherein anyone can create, browse, and share their design and have it printed on a T-shirt.  Third place went to JustBecause, an SMS-based event notifier for people who are not online 24/7 to ensure that they will not miss any important activity despite the absence of Internet.

Startup Weekend is a Seattle-based global grassroots movement where developers, designers, marketers, technopreneurs, and venture capitalists come together to share ideas, form teams, build products, and launch startup businesses. It is an intense 54-hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend.

Startup Weekends are specifically designed for entrepreneurs interested in receiving feedback for an idea, looking for a co-founder, or who want to learn a new skill, especially in the field of mobile and internet applications. The concept quickly became a global movement to generate breakthrough ideas in communities all over the world, taking digital start-ups businesses from ideas to investment readiness through intensive mentoring from industry experts and access to mobile markets and investors.