Staples Grads Give Rave, EDM Fans A CrowdVolt

Do you want tickets to see Timmy Trumpet, Four Tet or Mura Masa?

Interested in a show at Terminal 5, Knockdown Center or Under the K Bridge?

If those artists and venues are incomprehensible to you, you’re not part of the rave and EDM* scenes.

But if you are, you know how hard it is to exchange tickets.

Fortunately, you’re about to get a jolt. A CrowdVolt, in fact.

That’s the name of a new start-up. Two of the 3 founders are Staples High School grads: Max Hammer and Josh Karol. Carter Bassler is helping out as an intern.

If successful, they’ll create a solution to the hassle of buying tickets off Facebook Marketplace, Reddit, or paying high fees on other sites. Right now tickets sell out early, and can’t be traded easily.

There’s no guarantee of success, of course. But they’re backed by Y Combinator — the most prominent start-up accelerator in the world.

From left: Josh Karol, Max Hammer and Aria Mohseni, at Y Combinator headquarters in San Francisco.

It’s funded 4,000 new enterprises — including Airbnb, DoorDash, Instacart and Stripe — at $500,000 each. Their combined valuation is $600 billion.

Every 6 months, over 10,000 companies apply to participate in Y Combinator’s next “batch.” The acceptance rate is 1.5 to 2 %.

CrowdVolt cleared that hurdle at the end of last year. When they got news they were accepted, Staples Class of 2016 grads Hammer and Karol quit their jobs — investment banking at UBS and software engineering at Millennium Management, respectively — and headed to San Francisco.

Since then, they’ve been immersed in intense work with the accelerator. They’re learning about the start-ups world, and meeting a network of already successful Y Combinator founders. When they and their fellow start-ups’ “batch” is done, they’ll head back to New York, and really try to fly.

CrowdVolt’s third co-founder currently in San Francisco is Aria Mohseni. A DJ and friend of Karol’s from Emory University, he was a roommate with Karol and University of Pennsylvania grad Hammer in New York.

Carter Bassler

Bassler, meanwhile, works remotely. The 2020 Staples alum is a senior at the University of Virginia, finishing his work as a computer science major. He met the others through his Staples friend Zach Karol, Josh’s brother.

“What StockX did for sneakers and streetwear, we’re doing for tickets,” Hammer promises. (The CrowdVolt name conveys the idea of large audiences, and electric excitement.)

Existing rave and EDM markets “claim to be 2-sided” for ticket buyers and sellers, he says.

“CrowdVolt wants to give more power to buyers. And when sellers know what they’re willing to pay, there will be more accurate pricing.”

Buyers can either “buy now” or bid. Sellers can “sell now” or ask for a higher price. All transactions are publicly viewable.

Furthermore, CrowdVolt says, “concerts are communal events meant to be experienced with others. So we’ve made buying and selling a social experience, with social media integration and messaging.”

The founders know the rave and EDM scene well. They attended over 80 shows last year alone. “We know the marketplace experience through the existing mediums is poor, so have opted to rebuild it ourselves,” they say.

Their time in San Francisco has been a whirlwind of activity. Working on a start-up can be isolating, so Y Combinator brings groups together. They learn from each other, and those who have already been through the process.

It’s a big adjustment from the structure of corporate life to starting a start-up, Hammer says. Y Combinator keeps them focused.

“They keep stressing: If you’re not coding or talking to customers, you’re wasting your time,” says Hammer.

The 3 founders in San Francisco do the back-end work. Bassler, in Charlottesville, takes care of the front-end.

CrowdVolt’s look is rave-inspired.

The youngest members of the current batch are still in high school. A few are in their 40s. Most, however, are the CrowdVolt founders’ age: 20somethings.

Hammer and his crew see rave and EDM as the beachhead to other genres, and markets beyond New York.

Since CrowdVolt’s February launch, they’ve handled $26,000 in transaction volume. Five thousand users have visited the site. Those numbers should soar, as spring and summer events come online.

Marketing has been through social media, street posters and word of mouth. CrowdVolt plans to host in-person events too.

Returning to New York will be exciting. They won’t be far from Staples — where all 3 were first inspired on the road to today.

Karol was introduced to coding as a freshman in Dave Scrofani’s class. Bassler’s freshman year programming teacher was Dr. Nick Morgan.

The hands-on skills they learned were some of the most important lessons from high school, the founders say.

For which all the Timmy Trumpet, Four Tet and Mura Masa ticket-buying fans in the tri-state area should be grateful.

*Electronic dance music. Duh.

(To see the app, or sign up in the New York area, click here. To join the waitlist for your city, click here. For more information, email founders@crowdvolt.com).

(Rave and EDM fans — and those of every other type of music — have a home at “06880.” We cover the entire local entertainment scene, and much more. Please click here to support our work. Thank you!)