Tristan Le Corre’s Post

10 Years, 10 Stories 🎂 This year, Shotgun celebrates its 10th anniversary. Over the next few days, I’ll be sharing 10 stories that shaped our journey Story #2: From App to Platform When Lucas, Romain, and I first launched Shotgun, we were at the peak of the app era. Snapchat, Uber or Instagram were still fresh. We weren’t 25 years old yet, our drive was simple: to have our app in the pockets of millions, injecting a little more fun into their daily lives In those early days, Shotgun was just that: an app. No software, no SaaS, no platform. For the first 2 years, our only focus was creating a cool app that people used to discover events and to party. But then came that one call One afternoon, our biggest clients scheduled what we thought was a routine call. As things were going well for them, we were expecting them to share how we were boosting ticket sales. But instead, they dropped a bomb: "We have to stop working with you. It’s become too hectic. We can’t keep calling you at 10pm every Friday and Saturday to stop a gauge, change a price, or tweak something on our ticketing page”. We were stunned. We were doing literally everything to help them. We didn’t have any backend then: our clients’ backend was Lucas. We were down for a few days, but then it hit us: we weren’t just an app anymore. We had become something else, a ticketing platform; and we needed to build the missing component: a software solution that scaled beyond late-night phone calls from our clients. The question quickly became “how?” How could we build something truly different? Our biggest fear was creating just another ticketing commodity. Deep diving into that question, something unexpected caught our attention: we realized that more than half of the events on Shotgun were being organized by people who had started out as party-goers. They weren’t just users anymore; they were evolving into creators. We began having conversations with them, just like we had done to create the best app UX. This time, we were listening to them as organizers. What we discovered was game-changing: their goal wasn’t just to throw events, it was to build event brands. Brands so powerful that when you heard the name, you instantly knew the music, felt the crowd’s energy, saw the lights, and understood the values they embodied. These were brands that made buying a ticket - often a risky decision - an easy, exciting choice. We then asked ourselves: how could Shotgun help build brands? The answer was clear: by doing what we knew best, aka helping to build, engage, and grow a community. Our true role was to empower organizers by transforming their communities into organic, self-sustaining distribution channels. That realization became our North Star, driving us through iterations as we developed tools that enable organizers to engage their audiences and grow their brands. Today, Shotgun is no longer just an app. It’s a platform that helps creators build lasting brands, not just one-off events.