A new exciting start-up called 'Mic Drop' launched in February - Meet the duo behind the idea

UoB Computer Science student Joseph Chotard and Loughborough University graduate Josh Garwood have teamed up to create a new start-up, which aims to connect public speakers with event organisers.

Joseph: Mic Drop is an online independent speaker directory. We help speakers collect real audience feedback which enables event organisers to make informed buying decisions and speakers to gain more sales. Mic Drop has thousands of speakers with various fields of expertise on our platform. These speakers can create profiles for free and collect reviews at events further building their reputation.

If someone is looking to organise an event, they can just go to the Mic-Drop website, find some amazing speakers and directly enquire about them without ever having to leave the website.

How did you come up with your business idea and how did it all start?

Josh and I decided to combine our passion for public speaking and entrepreneurship to build Mic Drop as an all-inclusive solution for speakers and event organisers. The idea initially came from Josh when he was booking speakers for Accenture's Innovation Centre.

He was spending a lot of time flicking between sites, sending emails and making phone calls. It was here that he discovered the speaker industry was relatively old-fashioned, lacked transparency and thought there must be a BETTER WAY of doing things. Josh and I met online during the pandemic and instantly hit it off, we decided to combine our passion for public speaking and make the most of the pandemic by spending all our spare time building up Mic Drop. We coordinated all our work through zoom meetings; planning, researching and even networking with industry experts through the zoom app.

Did you receive any help from the university?

The B-Enterprising team really helped us out on multiple aspects. Their funding really helped us cover our initial development costs allowing us to focus on building the Mic Drop MVP without having to worry about where we would source the money to host the platform. Not only did B-Enterprise provide funding, but with Mohammed Ali's advice, we received a lot of insightful advice about marketing, sales and how to target our initial customers.

What are the best and worst aspects of running a business?

Joseph Chotard

The best aspect by far is being able to see our own vision turn into reality. We have received an overwhelming amount of support and trust from our first users which really encourages us while reinforcing our drive to succeed: if not for us then for our users.
The only downside of this is how small we sometimes feel, it can be lonely, just the two of us to carry our vision. Hopefully, in the near future, we will be able to change that and welcome our first team members into the Mic Drop family.

Name one thing you wish you knew before you started.

Josh Garwood

Build fast, constantly change. As the "tech-guy" I built the platform to scale, optimised every aspect I could think of. As we started growing, we realised we needed to change some functionality here, add some there and remove some others.

I now wish I had put less time on long-term durability and had instead just focused on rolling out as many features to see what would stick. I'm sure there will be more tech-regrets along the journey so stay tuned for updates!

Josh: Finding a passionate technical co-founder was pretty much a necessity. I’m glad I found Joe as soon as I did, or I could’ve spent a lot of wasted money and energy trying to do everything on my own and through agencies etc.

What was the biggest takeaway from your experience so far:

Joseph: You never know what the next-day reserves. As a small start-up, you are extremely vulnerable to any changes in the industry. You need to be ready to update your platform quickly, talk to new people and tackle new issues. Josh: Getting a business degree only half prepares you for running a start-up (if that!). There’s a lot of things that when you come to do in reality, are pretty scary and you only really learn when you get stuck-in. The stand-out examples of this for me are sales and filing company accounts. We are currently exploring growth strategies and are considering whether or not we should look for sources of funding. Follow our journey on LinkedIn or see our Mic Drop website here.

With thanks to Joseph Chotard and Josh Garwood.