Livestream Startup Bright Bets on Ticketed Beauty Events

It's basically a facial that you'd get in the spa, although unfortunately, you have to do everything to yourself, she said. The personalized analysis, which she calls a skinterview, will be conducted via email ahead of the event. While this is her first time on Bright, she has been using Zoom for her virtual facials since the start of the pandemic. The feedback that I get from it is that women really learn how to take care of their skin, and they learn what they're doing wrong and what they can do better. It's really more educational than just coming to the spa and having one done to you.

Founded by Guy Oseary, Madonna's and U2's manager, and former YouTube executive Michael Powers, Bright features events with a high-caliber list of celebrities including Madonna, Ashton Kutcher, Naomi Campbell, Amy Schumer, Charli and Dixie D'Amelio, and Laura Dern, among others. These big names help to attract users to the app by promoting their upcoming events on their social channels. Attendance for events is typically capped at around 100 attendees, who have the opportunity to ask questions directly to said celebrities. Bright takes 20% of the fees from the tickets.

Beauty is one of the hot topics for events on the platform. In addition to Xian, other upcoming beauty speakers include Kylie Jenner BFF and lash artist Yris Palmer, and celebrity makeup artist Denika Bedrossian. For beauty founders, the platform is another digital solution to earn virtual revenue as the salon industry has taken a major hit this year.

Covid really taught us to have multiple streams of income, said Palmer, whose L.A.-based salon, Star Lash, was closed for eight months during the pandemic and is now reopened at 25% capacity. I just went more online.

The main benefit of this is being able to reach so many more people, said Palmer, whose in-person classes host 10-15 people. The livestream, meanwhile, is much larger, capped at 95. I can't wait for them to go international, because a lot of my audience is from Central America.

Beauty is a huge vertical for the app, said Sadia Harper, head of user and product strategy for Bright.

The platform sells tickets through its site and mobile app and is integrated with Zoom's API. It is currently curated with planned events organized by Bright's staff, but the plan is to expand to allow people to host events independently.

Our ultimate goal is to have a platform where creators can come on and create a session that really works for them, said Harper. Being so early in the moment, we're just doing a little, bit by bit, testing it out, making sure our tech works great. But we are going to be expanding to really let creators have this be a platform they can use.

While other platforms offer free, unlimited access, Bright's ticketed format is more conversational, said Harper, as ticket limits allow attendees more opportunities to ask speakers questions directly.

As businesses open back up and the possibility of in-person events begins to return, Bright is betting on the staying power of the format.

Live video was happening before the pandemic, and we saw live chat being an active part of people's lives, but really what the pandemic taught us is that it can be a permanent and engaging part of how we interact with each other, said Harper.

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