Event planning can be mind-numbingly tedious, often with a million moving parts to consider. From booking a venue to selling tickets, hosts reach out to multiple vendors at a time to secure the best optics for large events. Since the idea of outreach is daunting — especially for hosts new to the nightlife scene — technology startup Flite wants to make event planning in major cities accessible for all.
With over 12,000 monthly active users, Flite is a ticket sales, vendor sourcing and team communication platform that equips hosts with all the operational resources they need.
CAS senior Suvir Wadhwa and Stern alum Rahul Surana became friends in their first year of college and eventually founded the business in November 2022. Like many first-year students, Wadhwa and Surana were immediately charmed by New York City’s nightlife scene. While it was fun experiencing events just as attendees, Wadhwa and Surana quickly realized that there is more to throwing parties than just partying.
“In my sophomore year, I saw seniors throwing parties, and I was like, ‘This is pretty cool,’” Wadhwa said. “Then I noticed they were making $6,000 to $7,000 every night, just throwing parties for college students, which was insane. Just imagine five parties a semester, they make $30,000, all while enjoying themselves. And I was like, there’s so much lost opportunity here.”
While observing upperclassmen work their magic with events and assisting behind the scenes, Wadhwa and Surana recognized logistical problems that befall large-event-hosts. Whether it was contracting an available and relatively affordable DJ or using Excel spreadsheets to keep track of hundreds of transactions, there wasn’t a single all-in-one marketplace that could make these processes more efficient.
During the early development stages of Flite, Wadhwa and Surana found that hosts wanted to be connected to stakeholders without any mess or headaches — not only DJs, but also security guards, bartenders, photographers, promoters and more. They spotted an opportunity to integrate services that giants in the hospitality industry don’t provide.
“There are so many ticketing platforms out there that provide the foundation for your event, but nothing else,” Wadhwa said. “Eventbrite, Ticketmaster, etcetera, only focus on the ticketing aspect. So once we started pitching vendor sourcing, people were like ‘Wow, this is really cool.’ I now see hosts saving so much time putting up their events, and they get more time to sell tickets.”
Flite runs a somewhat counterintuitive business model. The startup generates some revenue through hosting its own events. But instead of charging outside hosts who use the platform to run events, the platform charges a percentage of final ticket sales to attendees.
“At the moment, we don’t plan on charging the host anything because we care most about just having their events set up and them benefitting from our tools,” Wadhwa said. “Instead, we make 12% from the end user, so somebody might pay $1.20 extra for a $10 ticket. It’s a much fairer business model and substantial revenue still comes in.”
In addition to ticket selling and vendor sourcing, hosts have access to other backend features, such as an internal messaging program for streamlining team communication, a branding tool suite for designing event postings and even in-house ticket scanners for optimizing door entry.
Alongside the popularity with hosts, Flite has attracted prominent figures in the music industry for event collaborations — such as rapper Sean Kingston as a headliner — as well as renowned nightlife venues like MUSICA New York and a couple of rooftops in Brooklyn.
However, success didn’t come overnight, especially when the team was first trying to get its foot in the door with investors.
“I think the biggest attraction to Flite is probably our traction today and how quickly we’ve been able to get to the numbers we have,” Surana said. “I’ve sent well over 2,000 emails and LinkedIn messages to different venture capital firms, just trying to get our name out there.”
In February 2024, Flite began participating in the San Francisco-based LAUNCH Accelerator and secured $100,000 of seed funding from founder Jason Calacanis, a top internet entrepreneur and angel investor. Through LAUNCH, Calacanis has backed over 300 technology companies like Uber, Robinhood and Calm. His support kicked off tremendous exposure for Flite’s endeavors.
“He has been very, very helpful. He’s a smart guy who always has the answer to everything, no matter what you bring in,” Surana said. “Having somebody like that in your corner is amazing. Ever since then, we’ve secured checks from other investors and even got $10,000 last week.”
Flite has also been able to grow with the help of advisors like Andrew Boryk, a Forbes “30 Under 30” entrepreneur who has raised over $70 million across several portfolio companies. Guidance from mentors like Boryk has been instrumental to Flite’s expansion, especially when overcoming roadblocks.
“We went to a couple of tech mixers in November just trying to meet people in the startup ecosystem,” Surana said. “When we met Andrew Boryk, we were in a bit of a mental block and he was willing to set up a call with us to get us back on track. He has bet on us, not just our startup. He thinks that it’s the people who are the reason why he believes in a startup so much.”
With the newfound confidence from investors and advisors, Flite has since scaled in headcount, employing developers to make a dedicated technology team, Stern sophomore and chief commercial officer Kanay Jay Shah and CAS junior and chief growth officer Jasmeet Sahota.
Although Shah and Sahota mainly do outreach work for the platform — such as sales calls with an 80% to 90% conversion rate — they also run the commission-based internship program where they pay students from the University of California Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and other prestigious universities for outreach efforts. In today’s intense job market, Flite has identified and served the demand for internships, receiving over 400 applications every couple of months.
“The big thing for us is that these interns have different interests and they’re adding value that we don’t have ourselves,” Shah said. “Their work allows us to have extra bandwidth to focus on bigger, more important tasks.”
While the master plan of most startups is to grow fast, Flite plans to continue taking care of hosts and attendees as methodically as possible, whether it’s answering customer feedback at 5 a.m. or coding 24/7 to fix a bug.
“As we grow, we want to show people what they’ve gained from our platform and be proud of it,” Sahota said.
Contact Andrea Lui at [email protected].
