Reserve your ticket for the 15th Annual Entrepreneurs Festival here.
When Avante Price (Stern) and Mir Hwang (CAS ’19) joined NYU’s Summer Launchpad, they were working on very different ideas from the companies they lead today.
Avante was behind ChoreBug, a marketplace connecting job seekers with high school workers, which he pitched at the program’s second annual Demo Day. Mir was building GigFinesse with his cousin Ryan Kim, pursuing an idea he had been thinking about since middle school: making it easier for musicians to get booked.
Neither founder could have predicted where those early ideas would lead. But they stayed close, and years later, their paths have converged in the same industry. Today, they are approaching the same night out from two different directions: Avante is transforming how people discover and attend events, while Mir is reimagining how the talent gets onstage.
POSH: Fixing What Eventbrite Broke
After ChoreBug, Avante built POSH because he was tired of event platforms that treated organizers like support tickets instead of people.
“I don’t have all the functionality you have on Eventbrite, but I’m here and I will respond to your texts at 2 a.m. on Sunday,” he said of the company’s early pitch.
It was a simple promise, but a powerful one. Instead of trying to beat established platforms feature by feature, Avante focused on something they had overlooked: events are social long before anyone walks through the door. Organizers needed more than a place to sell tickets. They needed a way to build a following, show people the vibe, make events easy to discover and share, and turn one great night into a community that keeps coming back.
That personal approach scaled. According to POSH, the platform has helped organizers earn $500 million in revenue, connected more than 10 million people, and recently closed a Series B led by FirstMark Capital. Even at that scale, the company is still pursuing the same mission Avante started with: helping people find their people, one event at a time.
GigFinesse: Booking Without the Chaos
The idea for GigFinesse began with unanswered emails. Touring Canada with his band, Mir struggled to get venues to respond to booking requests. When he started writing under a fictitious booking agent’s name, the replies came.
The music hadn’t changed. The perceived credibility had. To venues, an agent signaled that someone had already vetted the performers for talent, reliability, and fit.
That insight became the foundation for GigFinesse. The music technology company connects hotels, restaurants, and bars with a curated roster of artists and manages booking from start to finish, giving venues the confidence to offer live entertainment without the logistical burden.
Just as the business was gaining traction, the pandemic brought live music to a halt, “instantaneously wiping out” its early progress, Mir recalls. Since then, GigFinesse has raised more than $15 million from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, NJME Investments, and the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. With offices in Austin and Seoul, the company now operates in venues nationwide and powers over 1,000 shows each month.
Mir’s work has earned him recognition on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list and Crain’s New York Business 20 in Their 20s. Today, he brings that experience back to NYU as a Founder in Residence at the Institute, helping student founders turn their own insights into businesses.
Reunited on Stage
This year, Avante and Mir are sharing a stage again. This time, they will be the keynote speaker and moderator at NYU’s 15th Annual Entrepreneurs Festival.
Mir is now based in Austin, but he is flying in especially for the festival to sit across from his former Summer Launchpad classmate. Together, they will talk about the ideas they started with, the companies they grew into, and what it takes to keep building when the original plan changes completely.
Catch their conversation live on Friday, Oct. 9, at the 15th Annual NYU Entrepreneurs Festival in the Kimmel Center’s Rosenthal Pavilion. Doors open at 1PM.
