The Instagram for events: How Dojour is reviving event promotion

by Doug Pitorak
June 9, 2016

When told that he missed an epic food truck battle at his roommate’s brewery, a devastated Timmer O’Phelan replied, “I’m your roommate. I should know about this.” 
 
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t devastated. But to be unaware of a food truck battle at one of his favorite spots in Austin — a place that his roommate happens to work at — was at the very least unnecessary. 
 
The source of his frustration was not his roommate, but with the event promotion industry. Too often he was learning of only the most popular events happening in town, rather than hearing about events he actually cares about. To solve that problem, O’Phelan and his brother Conor began building Dojour in January 2015. 
 

Instagram for events

 
O’Phelan describes Dojour as Instagram for events. It's a platform that allows people to subscribe to accounts of their favorite restaurants, bars, movie theaters, and more. The events posted on those accounts populate a subscriber’s personal feed and the discover page enables users to view all of the city’s upcoming events posted on Dojour.
 
“We wanted to make a system so you don’t find the most popular events, you just find the events that you actually want to see,” O’Phelan said. 
 
According to O’Phelan, about 1,000 users have generated nearly 5,000 subscriptions across Dojour’s two markets in Austin and Minnesota’s Twin Cities. A mobile app is available for iOS, though O’Phelan said it is “rough around the edges” and updating the app is a top priority.
 
Any person, organization, or venue can sign up for Dojour at no cost.
 

Doing more with less

 
With the essential function of Dojour being free, O’Phelan knew he had to find a way to make money — especially since the entire project is self-funded. O’Phelan, the only person working full-time on Dojour, said the solution was to include a self-service ticketing option where they can take a percentage of the sale.
 
However, the most attractive incentive for event organizers to post on Dojour has not been the ticketing service. Instead, O’Phelan has found that organizations and venues love the embeddable nature of Dojour’s event calendars. 
 
“One thing we heard right away from people when we were shopping the idea around was that they didn’t want another thing to post to. That was the biggest deal breaker for them,” O’Phelan said. “They post on Facebook, they post on their website, they post on different forums, and they try to get publications to pick them up. And what we want to do — the pitch that we give people — is around doing more with your one event post.” 
 
When an event is posted on Dojour, it will sync automatically with the calendar on the posters’ website. Additionally, Dojour creates a social-friendly URL that can easily be shared on Facebook and Twitter. Event organizers also need not worry about sending out additional emails, as Dojour automatically notifies subscribers each week about newly posted events.
 
Dojour also collects traffic data from the moment an event is published, which helps organizers see which mediums are most effective for engaging customers.  
 

Making special connections happen 

 
O’Phelan said Dojour was accepted to Techstars Startup Next, a preaccelerator in which fledgling companies receive expert mentorship without giving up any equity. Though the program has not officially started, O’Phelan said the staff has already helped him immensely by forging new connections. 
 
And for Dojour to reach the next stage that O’Phelan envisions, connections will be quite important. 
 
“I think the coolest thing we’ve seen so far is when two of our users — like say a brewery and a food truck that are both on our website — come together,” he said. “That’s something we definitely want to highlight. Our next stage is to try to make more of those things happen where we’re making cool collaborations between people.”
 
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