Just last year, the three co-founders of Speakeasy, Paul Stacek ’23, Tamas An ’23, and undergraduate Alex Manavi met on campus. A software-as-a-service company assisting venues with payments and booking optimization, the startup has acquired a client portfolio boasting some of the biggest names in hospitality across eight major cities.
The Maroon spoke with Manavi and Stacek. Manavi declined to share his class year.
The primary purpose of Speakeasy is to assist venues in optimizing their operational efficiency. The streamlined software offers a platform to manage online, at-door, and in-venue sales, which, in turn, allows venues to draw in repeat, high-value patrons. Clients maximize their revenue by consolidating access to premium entry, cover payments, and bar tabs all through the Speakeasy website or app.
“Our goal is to make live entertainment, the entertainment industry, better off… if [our clients] can extract better value from their resources… we help them save in the areas they shouldn’t be losing in and hoping that with these efficiency improvements, with the value Speakeasy creates, the industry as a whole improves,” Stacek said.
“With Speakeasy’s door product, there really isn’t something similar that uses the technology we use, and we keep our fees low and focus on adding value upfront,” Manavi said. Despite being in the first year of operation, the three co-founders have already secured over 20 prominent venue clients, including TAO Group Hospitality, Groot Hospitality, and Forward Hospitality.
The founders credit the rapid success of their startup to the close relationships they forge with their clientele. “We are very much building around the needs of our clients. We are in very frequent communication with venues and the people who we work with, asking for feedback… that allows us to really understand the needs of each venue better and then add more value,” Manavi said. And indeed, the startup has added value to the venues they operate with. Stacek said, “The annualized value we are driving can be upwards of $750,000 for a single venue.”
“If you’re an owner or operator and you want to streamline your operations, increase revenue monthly, and increase the data you have, that’s the sell,” Manavi said.
Another key aspect of the startup is the founders’ business philosophy—a model that prioritizes the financial success of their clients before their own profit. “We don’t charge a monthly fee. We really only make money if our clients make money. I think that’s how all software service should be—your client does well, you do well,” Stacek said.
Speakeasy is “currently closing a strategic investment round from several prominent entrepreneurs and key names in entertainment, some of which are professional sports team owners, UChicago alumni, and prominent founders of PE [private equity]-backed companies” Manavi said.
Looking ahead, Speakeasy is helping their clients launch in Las Vegas, the startup’s ninth city. “The Las Vegas launch is big for us—that’s with two of the biggest hospitality groups in the world,” Manavi said.
Additionally, Speakeasy just released a new feature designed for direct payments—patrons can purchase tickets, bar service, and expedited entry all from a QR code outside the venue, with no app download required. On the venue side, the platform allows them to change prices in real time.
In imagining the future of the company and their long term plans, Stacek has ambitious goals.
“However, many years from now, if you’re running a live entertainment venue, Speakeasy is a core part of the operations and is a key part in how the guests interact with the venue.” Furthermore, Manavi said the ultimate goal is to be “consistently adding value and optimizing on several different fronts, whether that be venues, features, maybe even tangential industries.”
While the Speakeasy product certainly changed as the idea developed, the people pushing the startup have remained constant. The three co-founders all credit each other with the product’s success. Speaking about Stacek, Manavi said, “He is the smartest person I’ve ever met—in analysis, in understanding the drivers behind results, both in the industry and outside of it.” In a similar vein, Stacek said, “Alex [Manavi] brings the creative side, that deep understanding of the industry, having been someone who succeeded in it early on himself,” referring to Manavi’s experience organizing concerts and events in the past.
Besides the three co-founders, Speakeasy has been helped along by senior advisor Morgan McMeel since the startup was a mere idea in late 2019. McMeel, who is currently director of VIP marketing at Tao, has been involved in the live entertainment industry for over 20 years. One of the clients that Stacek and McMeel pitched to referred to McMeel as a “Chicago institution.”
The co-founders also discussed the role UChicago played in forming their team and making connections with key individuals like McMeel. “The UChicago name was a very key factor for why he [McMeel] even followed up with us. He said had we not gone to UChicago, he probably wouldn’t be talking to us,” Stacek said.
“There are so many amazing people at this school. I was lucky enough to be around two of them, who pushed me, motivated me, and took a chance on me,” Manavi said of his co-founders.
