Damon Wayans Jr. & Kris Jones On Their Revolutionary, Popular & Talent-Centric “Special Guest” App
Some consider the entertainment industry ripe for disruption. Think about it: The traditional movie studios are now competing with the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Originals, while the recording industry has been redefined by digital downloads on iTunes. So what about talent booking? More specifically, what is being done to leverage technology to help make the process of traditional talent-booking more accessible and democratic for both everyday people and professionals?
Well, a few years ago in 2016, actor and comedian Damon Wayans Jr. joined forces with technology entrepreneur Kris Jones — a best-selling author who notably sold first tech company to eBay — to found Special Guest. Special Guest is a technology platform that makes it easier for all sorts of LIVE performers to get discovered and booked. Special Guest helps talent-buyers by making available talent-for-hire more user-friendly, providing an “A to Z” solution for the entire booking process.
Aforementioned star power aside, Special Guest is venture-backed. It has raised over $2 million from Silicon Valley investors (e.g. Lightspeed Venture Partners) and celebrities (Kevin Hart, Jake Johnson, Marlon Wayans, Lamorne Morris, Damon Wayans Sr.) alike. The start-up company has also received a ton of mainstream press, including accolades from Ellen DeGeneres, as embedded below.
I had the pleasure of interviewing both Damon Wayans Jr. and Kris Jones to get the full story on Special Guest. Only part of my conversation with Wayans is below as the full chat will be part of a future episode of the Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz podcast. In the meantime, more on Special Guest can be found online via its official website at www.specialguestapp.com.
Is the first app you’ve ever been a part of?
Damon Wayans Jr.: This is my first and only, so far… It’s fun. It’s my baby. I thought of the idea and ran it by my co-founder and we built it into something that actually works.
How did your co-founder and you meet in the first place? Did you know Kris from being a tech guy?
Damon Wayans Jr.: I didn’t know Kris but we have a mutual friend… She introduced us to each other here and worked with her on an app… I told her this idea that I had and she was like, “You should talk to Kris.” So I talked to him and I went back and forth with the idea and just built it out.
So how long was Special Guest in development for you?
Damon Wayans Jr.: It took about a year to like get it fully-functioning, and then about another year to get people on-board…
Kris Jones: We started developing the Special Guest iOS app in 2016 and focused mostly on establishing product-market fit with talent in 2017. In January 2018 we started to add buyers into the platform and really focused on building a robust solution for talent buyers to easily find and manage talent at their venues or events. As we add more and more larger venues that use the platform we continue to build out features and tools to help venues save time and streamline the process of managing the entire talent-booking process. In 2019 we kicked off the Android build and have made a bunch of optimizations to our existing iOS app and website.
In terms of my background, I founded a digital marketing and technology platform called Pepperjam, which I sold to eBay in 2019. I started an investment fund in 2010 and I’ve invested in about 25 technology start-ups. Point is that I’ve been building web and mobile apps for nearly 20 years and I’m very disciplined when it comes to building tech. My goal is always to get the product in the hands of users and continuously get qualitative feedback — here’s what I like, I don’t like, what I’d like to see — and quantitative feedback — analyze how people actually use the tech, where they drop off, what parts are sticky — to build great apps over time. The process is ongoing and never-ending, but as I mentioned, we are growing quick and quite honestly both talent and talent buyers that are benefiting from Special Guest absolutely love us.
You do have a lot of famous investors beyond yourself involved with the app. Who is the first one to come onboard?
Damon Wayans Jr.: First one to come on-board… I think it was my uncle Marlon, and he did the [Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz] show, right?
Hey, good memory, yeah. He was on this podcast a couple of months ago. Do you remember the first known entertainer that was on-board with the app that was really behind it as somebody that could be booked?
Damon Wayans Jr.: Yours truly. I hopped on first… I think Marlon came aboard too. He did a couple of shows through the app. It’s been a very collaborative, very positive effort from all sides.
So how would you describe Special Guest to someone not yet familiar?
Kris Jones: Special Guest is a platform to find and book LIVE entertainers, such as musicians, comedians, and circus acts. As said, I co-founded Special Guest in 2016 with Damon. His initial idea was “Why is it so difficult for up and coming, non-managed talent to get discovered and booked?” With the success of companies like Uber and Airbnb, Damon wondered why there wasn’t an app to make it easier for talented people to get discovered and booked. So we built Special Guest.
Last month we paid talent almost $400,000. We expect that monthly payout number to exceed $1 million by the end of the year. The way it works is the platform is FREE for talent. We make money by charging talent buyers — music venues, comedy clubs, bars, restaurants, nightclubs, event planners — a fee to use Special Guest to find talent and manage the entire process from discovery to payment… Talent, or buyers, can sign-up for a free account www.specialguestapp.com or download our app for IOS Our Android app will be released in a few weeks.
We also encourage talent or buyers to call us at 877-81-TALENT or email us at [email protected] and we’ll answer questions and provide white-glove service getting talent profiles set-up or recommending potential talent to fill open dates at venues or events.
Functionality-wise, how does Special Guest now compare to where you are hoping it will be? For example, do you hope it ultimately have thousands or millions of entertainers? Or is it looking to be more specialized?
Kris Jones: Great question! I feel that building an awesome app and platform requires that you are constantly working to improve it. That said, we are very proud how easy it is for new talent to join the platform. For instance, we have about 300 new talents join every day and the majority of them create talent profiles that include a bio, pics, videos, and social media with no problems — I’d say less than 5% percent of new users actually have to call us because they are having a problem — which tells us we are doing a great job on boarding new talent!
On the buyer/venues side, I’d say this is where the platform has taken a life of its own and has really gone above and beyond anything I thought we’d originally build. What’s happened is that instead of just being a place for talent buyers to find talent, Special Guest has become a full-on enterprise level talent booking management solution. Talent buyers can manage the entire talent booking process on Special Guest from discovery to communication to legal to data collection to payment. It’s really bad-ass and is only going to get better over time as we listen to our users and make improvements.
Oh yeah, and with regard to your question about market focus and ambition, we see ourselves more like “America’s Got Talent in your pocket” — meaning we have an eclectic, broad base of talent options — versus just serving the music or comedy industry. We want to be a solution for anyone, anywhere looking to hire LIVE entertainers. That said, in 5 years when anyone thinks of hiring LIVE entertainers, they will think of Special Guest.
Special Guest aside, do you have any other projects you can talk about?
Kris Jones: On a daily basis I focus most of my time as CEO of Special Guest. That said, I’m writing the 4th edition of a book called SEO Visual Blueprint that I originally wrote back in 2008 with updates in 2010 and 2013. Hoping the book is complete sometime in late July or August. In addition, I recently acquired a 5-story building in my hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and turned it into a technology accelerator. It’s a super-fun project and since Special Guest has one of its offices there, I get to spend a lot of time at Special Guest’s PA office, while also being part of the excitement of the building.
By the way, I’m also an investor in the wildly-popular and highly-inappropriate app iFart. Not kidding. My kids think I’m a total rock star because Daddy owns the world’s #1 fart app.
Finally, any last words for the kids?
Kris Jones: Everyone is born with a crazy level of God-given potential. The key is to nurture your talent, believe in yourself, and stay committed to things you care about. Along the way always challenge yourself to set the very highest expectations and standards possible for achieve, experience, and impact. Never give up. Every day is a baseline.
Damon Wayans Jr.: Stay in school. Unless you don’t like it.
About the Author
Darren Paltrowitz Darren Paltrowitz is a New York resident with over 20 years of entertainment industry experience. He began working around the music business as a teenager, interning for the manager of his then-favorite band Superdrag. Since then, he has worked with a wide array of artists including OK Go, They Might Be Giants, Mike Viola, Tracy Bonham, Loudness, Rachael Yamagata, and Amanda Palmer. Darren's writing has appeared in dozens of outlets including the New York Daily News, Inquisitr, The Daily Meal, The Hype Magazine, All Music Guide, Guitar World, TheStreet.com, Businessweek, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, and the Jewish Journal. Beyond being "Editor At Large" for The Hype Magazine, Darren is also the host of weekly "Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz" series, which airs on dozens on television and digital networks. He has also co-authored 2 published books, 2018's "Pocket Change: Your Happy Money" (Book Web Publishing) and 2019's "Good Advice From Professional Wrestling" (6623 Press), and co-hosts the world's only known podcast about David Lee Roth, "The DLR Cast."
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