“We have event managers tell us they couldn’t do their job without GateStaff. We build software that actually makes people giddy for their jobs! And if you can make people happy in the hospitality industry while they are serving other people, you’ve got a win!”
Robert Reddick and his co-founders at Gate Staff, Inc., the company behind the GateStaff software, should know. Between them, they have more than 20 years of experience in the festival, music venue and sports arena marketplace – and they are putting that experience to work on the latest version.
GateStaff is a software-as-a-service [SaaS]-based application that enables easy, mobile check-in and management of the very large volunteer teams that it takes to smoothly run sports and music festival events. It has already been used at over 8,000 events, including at an NFL stadium and a pro-Golf tournament.
A quarter of a million people have successfully used GateStaff to check into work. Robert sees that – and the ongoing positive feedback from event managers – as a sign that they have carved out a highly-desirable niche.
“There is a lot of existing software within the HR technology marketplace, particularly in the time and attendance space. But while it is a busy category overall, there isn’t much in the festival and volunteer management subset. The few legacy providers are primarily out of Europe and their offers are very expensive and cumbersome. We saw an opportunity to simplify the volunteer hiring and check-in process and provide a much better user experience.”
Robert and the team are now working on the next generation of GateStaff, aiming for expansion of their offer across the United States and perhaps beyond. They had been randomly adding features one-off as clients requested them, but now want to offer a robust platform with customizable, oft-requested solutions to common issues event managers face.
“For example, we know that some States – or countries for that matter – have different regulations regarding things like employee break time and other requirements that event managers struggle with documenting. While we can add a line of code to address that for one client, we want to get to the point where all of the dynamic regulations are already pre-loaded and will meet each client’s specific need with minimal training.”
Easy-to-implement training and easy-to-use software are critical requirements for the end-user, and the reason behind GateStaff’s success thus far, according to Robert.
“One manager who used our application for the first time was almost in tears because of how simple it was to do. She had spent days compiling staff information before and now she could do all that reporting by basically pushing one button. It’s like that out there. Out in the environment, the managers are struggling with basic requests.
With GateStaff, we are able to provide relief to the people who are hiring and the people who use it. We help resolve field management challenges, and provide a good and positive experience for the volunteers who use the software. Both parties really like being able to send and receive notifications about their work schedule. When you are a temporary worker, it is just awesome to get an email asking you to work and confirming the details!”
Thanks to his extensive development and entrepreneurial experience, Robert knows that keeping GateStaff elegant, simple, and reliable is important. It is something that is always top-of-mind.
“Experimentation is part of this team’s lifeblood. So doing this isn’t a leap of faith as much as it is a measured opportunity. The software business is a very dynamic target and sitting still is a bad thing. In fact, I believe it is a bigger risk to not do anything, especially in the middle of today’s AI [artificial intelligence] environment. Sitting still isn’t an option.”
After all, Gate Staff plans to check-in to even more opportunity and success!
Biz Beginnings 