How Run Of Show CEO Gil Gibli grew to $550K revenue and 5 customers in 2025.

guys he sold about 30 of his company has precied around 200 Grand at a 650 000 valuation after he left his job at wework where he was running 50 to 100 events per week and he said oh my gosh I need to build a tool for event organizers to help them build their run-up show that's how he created runoffshowapp.com he's got five free years on it right now getting ready to launch paid pricing I encourage you to check it out we'll see what he does next hey folks my guest today is Gil Ghibli he's a strategic events and operation leader founder and entrepreneur and former senior director of private events at wework he's now real building run of show Inc all right Gail you ready to take us to the top uh sure um a lot of show uh is a smart task management project management tool that is specifically designed for event planners and Hospitality um and hospitality industries over the last five six years we work and even before I've struggled often with mobilizing teams getting everybody on the same page running multiple platforms so one of shows intention is to essentially consolidate all of these platforms into one collaborative place that your team of planners your team of staff can efficiently and collaboratively work on executing tasks and driving your event to the Finish Line yeah one of the questions I always have about tools like this is It's effectively a product management tool right I mean sorry a process sort of management tool right um You have click up you have Basecamp you have jira now your argument would be yeah but we're doing a bunch of specific things that are specific for event producers and you know Etc so give us a sense why why does someone need Roundup show when things like click up already exist by the way I watched your click up interview with this uh the CEO click up I loved it it was an awesome interview oh good thanks uh that's one the second thing is uh lineup show is designed with events planning in mind we have features that are very specific to the event industry that don't exist on Monday they don't exist on click up and they name a couple of those features for example a specific key moment slash run of show meaning when you create an event you want to make sure you have a moment by minute by minute a lot of show of what um guests may see or you also want to have a production timeline you want to know what uh your entire team of collaborators are working on behind the scenes this is something that is um oftentimes done without anybody noticing in terms of guests so this is done behind the scene so you have production timeline key moment timeline you have a schedule I don't believe click up has it I might be wrong but employee and Staff Schedule Dynamic schedule that allows you to plug your staff into specific positions over over the events we do have a show the document features which I believe clip is offering as well and other task management tools do the same Master calendar for all of your events or different labels on whether the event is confirmed depending I mean look this is a very fragmented space we put on two events per year sasopen.com and founder 500 and we use a combination of sort of air table for run of show click up for task management Google Drive for storing slide decks I mean it's sort of all over the place you know bizibo for selling tickets uh bizibo for the mobile app you're effectively taking all these and trying to put them into one thing good exactly exactly describing the issue that I had to deal with when I learned and blending this make us feel that what did you actually do at wework and most people are going to go say wait what isn't Gil's like super rich wework was worth a lot of money did you own Equity there yeah so now not least um but I had the best five six years you know amazing time working for wework I joined in 2015 and I left a when a coveted hit in May 2020 unfortunately what I did for wework at the beginning was I um I programmed in in streamlined a lot of the experiences that took place inside our facilities inside the we were the buildings and about two or three years afterwards after I began working for wework and they identified an awesome opportunity to rent wework locations for private events not just for offices so taking name unoccupied unmonetized space and rent it for people that are interested to host daily workshops conferences multi-day events and so on and so forth oh what's going on there YouTube good to see you guys now imagine this you love watching these interviews with SAS Founders but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2807 interviews I've done manually saves you a lot of time well we've done this we've built the into the beautiful interface inside of founder path check this out I'll show you how you can access this in a second but you log in you connect your stripe account you see your valuation real time you can see what it changed over the past 88 days and even set goals for evaluation this year 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platform I hope to see you there all right let's jump back into the interview yo were you managing Engineers here were you building software to solve this problem or was it all just project management and spreadsheets there was a pretty to build this uh no I did not take a lot of an engineering team and it was pretty much all uh working using um companies like uh triple seat using the Google Drive using uh multiple tools that enabled me to mobilize the third third people that were under my my team and so 30 people on your team how many events would you say you put on while you were at wework across how many locations so there are different types of events there were external events of companies that are paying money for wework to use the spaces I would say that every week we probably had close to um um 50 to 100 events across the country of folks that rented out the workspace across the United States as the country you're in or somewhere else yes I had an accent I'm originally from Israel but I live in the state for 20 something years but I still didn't lose their accent so that's awesome okay so so 50 to 100 runs per week from wework Members what about external events that was not necessarily just be World numbers this specific service that I managed for rework was open to members and non-membles okay so 1500 events per week in wework locations by members and non-members correct okay and then and then I guess when did you what year did you leave I left it in May of 2020 when public got building wasn't possible anymore so and did you launch run up show right afterwards or when did you write the first line of code for run-up show that's when the ideas spoke to me when I left wework I realized that there is an opportunity there is a gap in the event planning business and that's when I began doing the research to understand what's out there what's missing that's when I hire the developers to start who killed when was that was that 2020 2021 2022 2021 okay so so you launched the company in 2021 correct yes okay so my next question is you've gone now 2021 all of 2022 you told me pre-show your pre-revenue how are you funding this thing how are you paying people with no Revenue um we raise the small amount of the 150 to 200 000 from friends and family that believe in the in me they live in the idea and were interested to join the uh this and that was last year and that was in the last two years that was between 20 21 and 2022. okay I did deal with a lot of stock as managing and switching and changing development teams um I'm not sure you know how much you've seen that over the you know in your you know experience but finding the winning a team of Engineers wasn't easy for me and that's probably one of the reasons why it took me a little while to get to where I'm where I'm at today well let's come back to that in a second but first the 200 000 you raise in 2020 on the pre-seed round I mean most people sell 20-ish percent of their company in the pre-seed round I mean was that at what like a million dollar cap or a 5 million cap or something uh that what that was about uh 650 000 okay 600 3 000 okay so you sold about thirty percent of business something like that um um yes okay would you do it again was that the right move no why do you say that what would you do different well I am I I want to say that I'm an entrepreneur I've launched different businesses in the past but they I did not launch a startup business that is similar to a lot of show the thing that I kind of didn't pay enough attention was the cap table in our shares all distributed how much I should raise and how much sales and Equity I should give in exchange so I do think that I've been a tiny bit um generous at my friends and family around I think I should have given away let's say Equity from the company when I did it yeah so that's kind of um you know one of the things that I would have done differently so talk to me a little bit about your first developer hire there's a lot of engineer business people listening right now trying to find Engineers to help them build their first idea so how much money did you spend or sort of like waste on Engineers that didn't end up building the MVP you needed probably a hundred thousand dollars okay and what did you learn to that process that as a business owner that I was a software Engineers first of first and foremost you have to have full control of the code you have to have full access and ownership of every single line of code that the engineers are liking uh never you know trusts um you know an engineer to eventually pass on the access to a code and product and software that you're paying for the development were you paying an engineer who then didn't give you the software when it was over and got the access to the code but I think that I paid um well I couldn't get a CTO to join for uh equity and not for compensation so I had this a a sort of a staffing team that connected me to developers offshore in Egypt and um I trusted them and eventually it turns out that unfortunately I was sort of a misled by that team and I don't want to get into details but the good news is that I was able to transfer the entire plot of development into a different team of Engineers that are that that are now doing it and storing their job I see okay so how many folks are on the team today both full-time and contractors okay how many full-time four L4 how many contractors full-time Engineers okay very cool now let's talk about revenue and sales right I mean you have a beautiful website um you have pricing up why hasn't anyone purchased yet I didn't promote the website the website is live and available for people to see but nobody knows about it I did not start marketing the this business the goal is to begin a marketing the website on January 15th um just what you see placing but it's not even connected to a payment get getaway so even if you wanted to pay for it you couldn't yep yep interesting okay so when I see like pop shop the makeup show I go Metropolitan Pavilion are they using your free version um yes I mean they Barbed up yes they launched long uh the show dancers yes okay and and what feedback are you getting from some of these early free users I love it but they um they we have a weekly course to discuss feedback features that potentially they would be interesting to see in the application um we get uh first of all I think it's giving us a great reassurance that we're doing the right thing one day using it and using it successfully so two things one is really assurance and two is a awesome valuable feedback those are the two main things that we get from those afo users how many free users do you have today not a lot about four or five four five okay well at least you can stay focused that's great all right so um you got five folks you've got the side up you're launching pricing officially January 15th which is great how do you plan to get your first 10 paying customers interestingly enough I've realized in the last couple of months that restaurants are also Target users that may find one of show useful and valuable so what we're going to do on January 15 is we're going to go after our immediate network of a planners and restaurants and we're going to begin selling the platform again this is not going to be a massive promotion efforts this is going to be more of a you know hand-holding experience with the first users the first clients potentially we're going to extend a free trial uh you know 100 discount code to get everybody to use the platform but the intention is to immediately get in contact with people that in our network of planners and restaurants and stuff Joe you're hedging a lot here with your pricing launcher are you scared to ask people to pay you not uh when I when I'm when I'm happy with the product I'm not gonna be afraid I can tell you there's products that look way worse than your website doing millions of dollars of Revenue I don't know what you're waiting for but I'm certainly rooting for you we're out of time today let's wrap up with the famous five number one what's your favorite Business book um I would say um or the last one you read and I would say that uh it's we'll skip it number two is there a CEO you're following or studying yes studying um I particularly love uh it's funny because you're mentioning it they you interviewed the uh then the CEO of click up which I uh I see as an amazing company that is going exponentially and I love them I love them and what he does right number three what's your favorite online tool for building run-up show leg up number four how many hours of sleep do you get every night six and what's your situation married single kids with a two years old baby oh King King Rocky so one kid two years old and how old are you 48 48 last question something you wish you knew when you were 20. um guys he sold about 30 of his company his preceded around 200 Grand at a 650 000 valuation after he left his job at wework where he was running 50 to 100 events per week and he said oh my gosh I need to build a tool for event organizers to help them build their run-up show that's how he created runoffshowapp.com he's got five free years on it right now getting ready to launch paid pricing I encourage you to check it out we'll see what he does next Jill thanks for taking us to the top thank you thanks Gil one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every Thursday at 1pm Central it's called Shark Tank for SAS we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back-end dashboards their expenses their revenue our poo CAC LTV you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every Thursday 1 p.m Central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central to make sure you don't miss any of that 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