People of the Sky,
In my previous note, I marked the priorities for this year as improving the platform, funding events, and building the Curator’s School. Little did I know that skybookings would achieve all of last year’s revenue in just two months.
While this is good news, it brings several new dynamics. We had to upgrade our infrastructure, refine the brand and offering, and solve new operational challenges as they emerged. Now we are in the throes of reimagining skybookings to accommodate growth while preserving our DNA.
Making Magic
Skybookings is a home for curators. It must feel like a place where curators go recharge, get inspired, build in a safe space and get support on their journey.
Skybookings is home for those who painstakingly imagine and craft magical experiences. Through their work, culture evolves, new tastes emerge, and an inter-generational discourse finds resonance. With their curated experiences we discover new aspects of ourselves, we explore our cities and countries, all the while creating meaningful bonds through shared moments. This is what we call making magic.
Our role is to assist curators on their journeys of making magic by providing robust technology, deep support, curated capital, and a conducive environment for shared growth. Each of these promises are a fully-fledged business in themselves that will only grow in complexity over time.
This is why we have made two important decisions.
The New Group
Skybookings is evolving into a group structure with three subsidiaries.
skybookings.com remains the operating system for curators. This is technology and operational support component — the engine room that powers all other initiatives. It is where curators list events, sell tickets, manage their patrons’ experiences, get data, and get paid. The offering will grow to include vendor and supplier management, escrow services, and other tools that curators need to make magic. This is also where we invest most heavily in infrastructure, reliability, and scale.
Skybookings Capital is the accelerator. It identifies promising curators and funds them to realise their potential with capital structured around the realities of the events rather than the assumptions of traditional finance.
The Curator’s School, which launches in April, will be fertile soil for established curators to educate the next generation, share their secrets, and build powerful bonds. When it opens, it will be unlike anything the local events industry has seen.
The role of Skybookings Group is raising capital, forming meaningful relationships at corporate and government level, all in the name of building the ecosystem and making magic.
Growth through Partnerships
We cannot do everything by ourselves. More importantly, we do not believe the events ecosystem can be owned by any single entity — it is an ecosystem that thrives through shared participation.
Our role is to invest in the ecosystem and curate its components to add sustainable value. In this spirit, we will be rolling out several partnership and initiatives designed to bring more capacity, more expertise, and more reach into the skybookings community. Details on these partnerships will follow shortly.
The Bonsai Tree
Building skybookings is like nurturing a bonsai tree. While the team shapes it, it also takes on a life of its own, which presents new challenges to solve. These are our immediate priorities.
Scalable capacity for skybookings.com. The engine room is growing faster than we anticipated. In keeping with the bonsai tree analogy, we have been transplanting skybookings.com into a larger pot while keeping its roots in tact. We are building the operational and technical capacity to serve more curators, more events, and more patrons without compromising the quality of experience that defines us.
Fulfilling our mandate at Skybookings Capital. We have already deployed funding to pilot Skybookings Capital. To date, we have successfully funded curators to the tune of R170,000, and we are working towards R250,000 to complete the pilot. The successful completion will unlock a larger funding round from our investors to roll out Skybookings Capital at scale. Therefore, if you are a curator with a compelling property that needs support, apply at info.skybookings.com/capital. The opportunity is real and the capital is ready.
Raising working capital for skybookings. To build at the pace the market demands, we need capital behind us. We are pursuing several options, including discussions with funders and possible initiatives that may allow some curators to share in the long-term growth and value of skybookings. These will be communicated in due course as they take shape.
A Final Thoughts
The platform is growing. The capital is deployed. The school is coming. And the ecosystem we are building together is taking shape.
Importantly, we are not out to disrupt the events industry or compete with existing ticketing companies. We are building an ecosystem for curators with a shared belief — that curated events transform culture, stimulate personal realisation, and form powerful bonds amongst people.
So, watch this space closely.
Let’s Make Magic.
Vusi Sindane
Founder & CEO, skybookings
