BandsOnABudget

BandsOnABudget started in 2006, when Danny Croak and I went looking for something to build together. Danny has been my business partner ever since. We both came out of the music industry, and between us we knew a lot of bands, promoters, and agents. I wrote the software and built the website; the network did the rest.

The business made custom merchandise for bands: the shirts and tour merch that pay for the van and the tank of gas, priced for groups still funding everything themselves. Because the ordering happened online, a band anywhere could work with us the same way a local one could, so a company built for the local scene ended up operating nationally almost from the start.

Over the years that followed we worked with tens of thousands of bands, national and international. Later on we moved into managing tour merchandising directly for artists including The Front Bottoms and River City Extension.

We sold the company to a larger merchandise business that was rolling up companies like ours. It was the first time I built the software and ran the operation it served at the same time, which turned out to be the pattern for most of what came after.