The System We Needed to Build First

Why Discovery Wasn’t the First Problem to Solve

LiveLink originally started as a discovery problem.

The idea was to help people find local events, understand what was happening around them, and make it easier to decide where to go out. The assumption was that if events were easier to discover, audiences would show up more consistently.

What I learned quickly was that discovery depends on something much more basic.

Venues already have audiences. They already have followers across social platforms and places where people look for information. The issue was not demand or interest. It was how much work it takes to keep event information accurate and visible across all of those channels.

I was trying to solve discovery downstream, without fully accounting for how much manual effort happens upstream just to keep events posted week after week.

That gap is what forced the shift.

Why Promotion Became the First Step

Most venue events are recurring.

Live music rotates. Trivia repeats. Game nights run weekly. The structure stays the same while the details change. A new performer. A new theme. A small update.

But even small changes require a full rebuild of promotion. New posts, updated captions, refreshed graphics, reminders across multiple platforms. Every week. Without fail.

This work is not optional. If it doesn’t happen, the event suffers. Not because the event isn’t good, but because people never see it.

Over time, this turns event promotion into a constant operational burden. A recurring task that has to be done, but doesn’t actually grow the venue’s audience.

That’s when the pivot became clear. Discovery cannot work if promotion is fragile. The first step had to be making it easier for venues to get their events out reliably, so discovery could exist at all.

Competing in the Same Feeds as Massive Teams

One of the biggest challenges I kept seeing was not effort. It was scale.

Local venues are competing in the same social feeds as massive corporations with dedicated social teams, content calendars, designers, and ad budgets. These companies never miss a post. Their information is always clean, on time, and polished.

Most venues do not have that luxury.

Event posts are necessary, but they are not what bring people to follow a venue in the first place. Short-form video, behind-the-scenes content, storytelling, and personality are what actually build an audience.

The problem is that event promotion eats up the time and energy needed to do that work.

The shift became clear. Take the repetitive, operational side of events off the venue’s plate. Let event information flow out automatically and reliably. Give venues the space to focus on marketing that actually drives engagement.

If event promotion can run in the background, discovery becomes possible again.

That is the foundation LiveLink is focused on building now.