Bandwagon

Post-pitch story

Harold Hughes pitched Bandwagon as a better way to run ticketing for sports and live events: a fan-identity platform that tied tickets to the real people holding them. After the show, Bandwagon raised $147,000 from everyday investors through an equity crowdfunding campaign on Republic in 2018, and it kept experimenting with blockchain-based ticketing. When the pandemic shut down live events in 2020, the company shifted toward helping event organizers understand their audience data. The ticketing market never came back the way Bandwagon needed, though, and Hughes closed the company in 2024 because it couldn't reach the scale it needed. He didn't slow down. Hughes now leads Divi, an AI-driven investing platform, along with NFNTE Capital, and he's an active angel investor in more than 30 startups. Bandwagon is gone, but its founder turned the lessons into a second act backing other founders.