What's up, party people? My name is Sunny Ray. My next guest, her name is Sarah Klingman. We're going to be talking about turning events into reservations. It's going to be a conversation with her. She's the founder of Mostest on We're going to be talking about turning events to book reservations and how hospitality businesses can capture demand before the guest even walks through the door. With that said, Sarah, how are you doing?
I'm great. How are you?
I'm excellent. I Where in the world are you calling in from today?
Yeah, I'm calling in from New York City. I'm working today out of Chief's co-working space in Flatiron.
Very cool. So, I guess take us right into the deep end. Like, what is Mostest? What's the problem you're solving? And yeah, like why should I guess why should people care?
Why should people care? It's a great question and great place to start. So, you can book a table in 6 seconds and you can book a hotel reservation in about the same time. The entire hospitality industry, whether it's restaurants, hotels, concert or your flight, are instantly bookable. And yet, when you want to bring people together, which we believe is super important, you're automatically shifted right back into the '90s with forms, emails, phone calls. And at Mostest, we think planning an event should be as easy as booking a reservation.
That really resonates. I like that. I'm a big fan of, you know, getting people together in person as well. I used to do events back in the day, big sign of doing dinners.
Yeah.
So, let's just slow things down a little bit. I'm really curious about your background. you ran Foot Locker account at Adidas. Like, what did that job teach you that you use every week now?
That job taught me a lot. The art of negotiation, how to drive B2B partnerships even within a brand that's consumer-facing, which has actually been something that's been super pertinent to the Most of business model because we obviously sell to enterprises, but we're also, you know, subsequently a very friendly a consumer-friendly brand as well. Yeah, and I learned a lot. I mean, it was a high-pressure, high-visibility job working on the Foot Locker team, and it's the number one account for Adidas globally. So, there's a lot of, you know, navigating bureaucracy, as well as a lot of eyes on you and pressure to drive results, which obviously is not so different than being a founder.
Oh, wow. That's super interesting. I guess is it Speed Factory? You guys like customers influence who got made? Like, what did you learn about what people say they want against, you know, what they actually buy?
Yeah. I have a theory on this. so, Speed Factory was an initiative where we were working with Foot Locker and a couple of other strategic accounts to bring trends quicker to market. So, taking a step back, a little education on the, you know, sneaker industry, it can take around 12 months to bring something to life. So, as a brand like Adidas, you're trying to understand the pulse way in advance and predict those things. So, Speed Factory was really unique way for us to have a pulse more closely on the consumer and be able to provide them what they were asking for in a more timely manner. That said, one of the things that I learned in retail is this theory of a towel wall. So, I worked in home for a while before I got into the sneaker part of the business, and when you walk in a department store and you look at a towel wall, you see lots and lots of bright colors. However, the only towels that sell are white, gray, and navy. But, you'll see 27 colors. So, I think as product people, you have to understand that there's an aspirational element that gets people in the door, and considering their connection with you as a brand, and then there's something completely different often times that they need and transact on. But, you need both. If you're a wall of white towels, no one's going to come look at you.
I like that analogy. Okay. Interesting. So, you Sorry, what's that?
Sorry, I thought you said something.
No, I see you So, you described leading a business north of 200 million there. like what was the hardest part of that number that I guess nobody sees?
Yeah, I mean, the most interesting time to be in the business was COVID. You know, we switched from growing the business to collecting receivables from accounts. So, it just completely flipped the business upside down. and I would say that you know, as I grew in my career and managed different businesses, obviously that changed. But, at that time specifically, it was this really interesting moment for the brand to come together, and it completely shifted our strategy. So, we went from driving Adidas strategy and trying to maximize and grow to you know, really thinking about how do we get paid by our partners so that we can minimize layoffs. So, it was a really interesting time, but also a really important education for me as a founder and CEO. Because a lot of times as an individual contributor or a middle manager, you're not getting visibility to the hard conversations that are happening. Whereas, COVID sort of presented this unique example and moment in time where we were all owners because we were all sort of in survival mode.
Yeah. I remember that. I guess like retail to software is like a real jump, right? So, like what did you have to kind of unlearn, I guess, from the old industry?
I actually think that coming from retail has been a massive advantage for me in trying to build something both in B2B as well as that consumers like. I think that the importance of having a great technical partner is not lost on me, but I jerry-rigged our first platform using Zapier and Squarespace. This was before Lovable, 3 years ago, and generated a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue. And so, I think that in a way I think more simply about product and really I'm thinking about the user experience because I don't necessarily have the tech chops. And in a way it allows me to give really clear strategic direction and or a different perspective with someone who, you know, like my CTO, has been doing development in natural language processing for over a decade. You know, he's got the subject matter expertise and I have a really, if nothing else, always strong hypothesis of what the user wants from us.
I love that.
And And when did you first look at booking an event and think you know, this can't possibly still work this way?
My wedding. So, over a you know, about a decade ago, it wasn't the first time, but it was the most glaring time because I I had been working in home like I mentioned before and there was a lot of disruption in the interior design and home space by tech-enabled services. So, Havenly, Homepolish, you name it, you know, there were lots of different efforts being made to democratize access to luxury. My wedding was the most expensive thing I've ever purchased or that my family helped, you know, all of us together combined, and I couldn't believe that there was absolutely nothing tech-enabled outside of traditional marketplaces that left all the research and legwork to me to help me solve the problem. Now, that was just the beginning of the story. The 10th time I would have hired Mostess, which eight of the 10, by the way, were in the workplace, I decided that somebody had to solve this problem. And if it wasn't going to be somebody else, it would be me. I also had a little bit of a theory that it was a female problem because I was planning all of these personal events and I was also being asked to plan them in the workplace. And when I looked around, it was other women, right or wrong, just being asked to do the same thing. And so when you think about the tech and BC ecosystem, my hypothesis was that this was a female problem, so therefore it was going to take a female to solve it. Cuz the typical pattern matching male founder wasn't going to necessarily think to prioritize this.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I guess you say that you started with a transaction and not with AI, right? Like so, can you walk me through why that order matters so much?
Yeah, well, it matters in a lot of ways as we think about our growth strategy. it takes Mostess from being a theoretical bet to a growth plan that's largely about monetizing a lot of the demand that we've already seen. Because AI, when we started 3 years ago, wasn't largely commercialized, I focused on democratizing access and supercharging planners through technology. About a year and a half ago, I really started thinking about AI as a competitor for really entry-level transactions. I absolutely believe in the value of human touch. Oh, you do? Okay, sorry, one moment. I believe in the value of human taste and context and touch, but at the same time, you know, I think that anyone who's thinking about AI just as a toolkit is probably thinking about it the wrong way. So we started sort of shifting our entry level from being like lead magnets and platforms and whatnot to actually being like can a planner and can AI actually execute this part of the process. Sorry, I'm being kicked out.
Got it. Yeah, it's okay. If you want, you can take a minute. that's not a big deal.
It's fine with us.
See you guys later. sometimes I'll have my little guy crash the party as well. Just got to roll with the punches. Just have the fun of doing live stream.
Okay. So, I was going to say your first pricing model.
Was hourly and it didn't work, right? Like what broke and like what did you replace it with?
It just doesn't work. People are deliverable focused, companies are deliverable focused. it is a model that took an incredible investment potentially in building the logistics management side of just tracking the hours alone. And yes, there are tons of services that operate this way, but it doesn't align incentives and that really was the biggest problem. So, we wanted to align outcomes rather than hours so that whoever is working with a company has the same goal versus a planner wanting to rack up their hours and a company just wanting the deliverable.
Yeah. Got it. Cool. Okay. And planners were never going to be replaced by software, right? Like so, how do you get a human professional to hand work to a model?
Yeah, so we have trained our models to have the context, taste, and judgment of a planner. With that said, the creativity piece, the boots on the ground the day of, any event that's a bit more expensive or complex, there's still the customer need to have someone who's accountable that we don't see going anywhere anytime soon. but we've changed trained our models on thousands of memos written by event planners on how they think about booking a venue, how they think about evaluating a vendor, budget management, timeline nudges, things like that. So, it's really meant to be the planner in your pocket.
Interesting. Cool. I guess that's what you mentioned you raised early from two firms instead of one big round. Like what did that teach you about like kind of who to take money from?
You know, I got a bit lucky and I know I hate these venture stories cuz it makes it sound easy and it's really not been easy, but my first check-in was relatively simple. And it was with Wildwood Ventures, which is a pre-seed fund based in Denver, backed by VF Corp as well as, you know, obviously other LPs and they were introduced to me on a LinkedIn post. Like someone commented at me, they were made a post about wanting to back female founders, but not necessarily seeing the deal flow. I mean, I was an LLC. I had no idea what I was doing as it related to venture. I had taken a couple of classes at Harvard around entrepreneurship. I had a little bit of the lingo, but I was completely green and we really hit it off and they saw the traction that I was able to create with relatively no product or no proprietary product and got really excited about how they could enable right CTO or mentorship from their side. And then from there, we have been able to get some fantastic strategic partners, to join us. So Q Capital set terms for our seed round and we've had partners like Nexus Global as well as T-Squared, which was founded by Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake, you know, to join us as investors, which is great.
Cool, good for you. Can you give me Most in.
T-Squared, Tiger Timberlake, get it.
I like it. Can you give me Most in like 1 minute? Like who's it for? What do they get and what do you like kind of refuse to do?
What do we refuse to do? I don't know that I have an answer for that. I would say with Most, our thesis is simple. Events are going to become reservations and with us you can choose how you plan. You can plan fully AI taking you from idea to booked in just one chat or you can opt in for our best-selling concierge, which pairs the same technology with a dedicated planner to give you that human taste, judgment, and executional excellence. We try to say yes. We try not to say no, and that's actually a very anti-industry point of view. So, there's not necessarily something we won't try at least once.
Cool. Okay. And 37% of your growth comes by referral. Where do the other 63% come from? And like which routes have kind of has been worth like repeating?
Yeah, so the referral loop for us is massive. It's certainly the quickest funnel conversion that we see in addition to being a large percentage of total. As we look to the balance, we've prioritized strategic partnerships and in-person activations. So, taking a step back and thinking about the paid media sector, there is a domino effect we're seeing with AI where paid media is no longer converting, and at least not at the same level that it used to be. So, you're seeing large brands such as MasterCard who just came out and said that they're shifting 70% of their paid ad budget to events take the strategy as well. So, for us it's all about the strategic partnerships and getting in the room with people. It's a bit of practicing what we preach, but it works. So, that's where we're finding the other you know, part of the funnel.
Good for you. That's awesome. I was going to ask you so zero vendor kickbacks is a kind of a stated principle. Like what did holding that line cost you?
A lot of investor questions, that's for sure.
For us, we want to make it really frictionless for venues and vendors to get on the platform. They have seen tons of softwares come and particularly transaction softwares come and try to create value, but maybe not necessarily fully understand their day-to-day. And so for us, we're still in learn learning mode in terms of how we can create value for vendors and venues. So we don't feel as that we have a right to charge them today. So we're we think it's a privilege to have them on our platform, to integrate directly with our calendars, to enable us to give them instant bookings. That's the best value and partnership that we can have today because that gives us an edge in market when we think about the businesses we work with. Anyone else you're submitting a form or maybe you're even going through a chatbot, but that instant booking element is only with Most of today.
Got it. Super interesting. So when a venue or like a vendor decides to work with you, who else in that business has to agree before anything moves?
It depends on the size and scope of the business. So we work with large venue groups such as a Mercer Street which owns, you know, Lure Fish Bar and a bunch of other restaurants in the city, to you know, single destination restaurants such as Suprema where the owner is the decision maker, is the executor in that context alongside, you know, one or two other people. So we have been very fortunate to get introductions many times to the founders of these venue groups and so we're able to move very quickly in terms of procurement. But we're also in discussions with large hotel groups where we know it's going to be a 6 to 12-month process of, you know, playing the game. So I'd say it varies depending on the company side and relevant bureaucracy.
What are you guys pushing hardest on over the next, let's say, 90 days and like what would make it a good quarter?
So we're focused on two things over the next, you know, 90 days. we have, number one, our supply. So we have a group of venue groups specifically that we want to have fully on board and us providing value to them. And then the second is amplifying some of the product features for those venue groups as well as our concierge service. So, concierge for us has been something that has been growing really fast and the product is, I would say, really close, but there've been a couple of features from design partners that have come up that have we think potentially limited our GMV capture. So, we're focused on those. So, it's all about maximizing the current demand, as I say, like getting our house in order before we're going out and trying to acquire new although that is happening organically as well. But for us, when you think about event spend and what we captured last year, one of the four arguments I have for Most of Us is that we captured 2% of event spend on the platform last year and this year we're only targeting slightly above that. And we're way above, you know, over indexing that. Said simply, the product could only book one type of vendor last year and this year can book 23. So, for us, it's really nailing how we capture that spend and are able to provide that value to the event host because that is the quickest way for us to quadruple our growth overnight.
Interesting. So, you sized the market above $90 billion. I guess like which slice of it do you take first and which do you leave?
I mean, the market's massive and it's changing really quickly. So, over the next decade, $1.6 trillion is expected to go into event spend and a large part of this is coming from paid media. So, I hate to say 90 billion sounds small, but I actually believe it to be small. with Most of Us, we have focused heavily on corporate events, which are defined as events that are paid for and planned by a company. Now, what you often times don't see in this spend is like sporting events, concerts, some of the other things. And then we're thinking about small to mid-size companies as our ICP, even though we already have developed relationships with several Fortune 500. And for us, we're thinking about the long tail of events, which is spend under 50k. These are the events that truly get no event support out in the market and guidance and an events team that's in-house which only, you know, 10% of companies have anyway, they're not going to touch those events regardless.
Got it. And you know, everyone's racing to put like a model in front of a workflow. Like what do you think most of them are getting wrong?
I think that one of the advantages Most has and when I see us versus the competition is because we didn't start with AI and we are building alongside those who are in the industry. I think we have a competitive advantage in really understanding what is valuable versus testing a hypothesis, investing a ton in proprietary models and then not necessarily providing value with the subsequent decline of sort of the SaaS model at the same time. It does feel like a perfect storm for those types of businesses that maybe not nail it right out of the gate.
Got it. Cool, Sarah. Well, thank you so much. That was really interesting and where do people learn more about you? How do people get in touch with also how do they learn more about the company as well?
Yeah, we would love to help you plan any event. There's no budget too small, no guest count too small. You can find us at joinmost.com and we would love to take the work off your plate so that you can bring people together.
That's perfect. I love it. Okay, awesome and then there's a whole bunch of people listening live. So thank you all. Really appreciate you and yeah, until next time. Sarah, hang out for 1 minute. I'm going to bring this.
