Eventnoire
Techstars '21Techstars '21Chicago, US · Founded 2017 · Delaware corporation · 18 employees on LinkedIn · 3 known investors
Eventnoire is a ticketing and event management platform built for event creators and organizations focused on community building, particularly serving Black-owned and culture-centered events. The platform provides ticket sales tools, payouts, mobile event management, and marketing features to help event organizers grow their events and audiences.
Also known as EventNoire
Founders & leadership
Eventnoire was founded in 2017 by Oluwafemi Masha.
Investors · 3
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements$1.5M disclosed across 1 of 3 rounds · 2018–2024
▶$1.5MraisedMay 2025 · 29 investors · OtherRule 506(b)
- Onyewuchi OsujiExecutive Officer
- Offering amount
- $2M
- Amount sold
- $1.5M
- First sale
- May 2024
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
▶$150KofferedSep 2018 · OtherRule 506(b)
- Peter JideonwoDirector
- Oluwafemi MashaExecutive Officer, Director
- Onyewuchi OsujiExecutive Officer, Director
- Offering amount
- $150K
- Minimum investment
- $10K
- Incorporated
- Corporation, Delaware, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06b
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Eventnoire operates a consumer event discovery marketplace and an event management/ticketing product aimed at event planners, organizations, and marketers that center Black culture. On the consumer side, the platform lists and sells tickets to categories including live music, nightlife, festivals, business, comedy, food and drink, sports, theater, wellness, and virtual events, with browsing filters by city, date, category, and organizer. Organizer-facing tools cover online event registration, event page creation, custom URLs and share/affiliate links, venue selection, mobile apps for events, email and SMS marketing, and an organizer app with a ticket scanner for door check-in.
The company positions itself as a ticketing partner that returns part of its economics to hosts: it advertises commission rewards under which organizers and community organizations earn a share of ticket fees, flexible ticketing-fee structures, a negotiated commission structure for high-volume or large-scale organizers, and dedicated human support. Payments are processed through Stripe, which the company says pays organizers out every two to three days. Eventnoire also sells advertising and brand activation packages (digital campaigns, SMS marketing, custom activations) to brands seeking to reach its audience, publishes a blog covering cultural events and festivals, and produces "Art of the Party," a podcast about launching and scaling event businesses and cultural events, which it also offers for sponsorship.
Beyond software, Eventnoire has built adjacent programs for its organizer base, including a partnership with Urbane Venture Fund that made project-based investment capital available to event organizers on the platform, and a retail/commerce placement promoting the Pronghorn portfolio of spirit brands.
Founding story
Jeff Osuji and Femi Masha, friends and entrepreneurs based in Chicago, previously founded an event curation company, Events by Pyramid, in 2008 while studying chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The idea for a ticketing platform emerged as they looked for ways to scale that business, but they lacked the capital to build it at the time. After roughly a dozen years working in advertising (Osuji) and law (Masha) while running the events business on the side, they used its revenue to fund the technology venture, founding Eventnoire to address what they saw as mainstream ticketing platforms' failure to serve Black social events and creators of color.
Business model
Eventnoire monetizes event ticket sales through ticketing and service fees, sharing a percentage of those fees back with event hosts and community organizations via a commission-rewards structure, with negotiated commission terms for frequent or large-scale organizers. Card payments run through Stripe, with organizer payouts every two to three days. The company also sells brand advertising and activation packages (digital campaigns, SMS marketing, on-site activations) and podcast sponsorships, and has stated plans to launch Eventnoire Premium, a creator-first SaaS product connecting brands with event curators.
Ticketing and service fees on tickets sold through the platform (partially shared back with organizers), plus advertising/brand partnership revenue and podcast sponsorship; a subscription-style SaaS offering, Eventnoire Premium, was announced as a planned product.
Traction
Reported traction includes 1.2 million event lovers worldwide and more than 55 markets served, over one million tickets sold, and over 3,000 event curators served (up from over 1,500 organizers cited in October 2021). The company says it has recycled more than $5 million back into its community and circulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in service fees to creators. Featured listings include multi-city tours such as a Destiny's Child tribute show and the #CareFreeBlackGirl Cookout Tour, along with festivals and summits in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Savannah.
Latest developments
Eventnoire's site promotes multi-city 2026 programming, including a Destiny's Child: Iconic Reimagined Tribute tour with Chicago and Detroit dates, CareFree Fest ATL, #CareFreeBlackGirl picnic and cookout events, Black & Bronze: A Bronzeville Music Fest, the Maconomics Wealth Summit Weekend 2026, and a company-hosted Principles of Investing Panel in Chicago. It also runs a commerce placement for the Pronghorn portfolio of spirit brands, offers brand advertising and activation packages, and publishes editorial coverage of events such as Essence Festival, WNBA All-Star Weekend, and the Chicago Culture Ball.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Eventnoire describes itself as an event platform focused specifically on Black culture, differentiating from mainstream ticketing platforms where culturally relevant event information was harder for Black consumers to find. It reports 1.2 million event lovers worldwide, presence in more than 55 markets, over one million tickets sold, and more than 3,000 event curators served, and frames its addressable opportunity around the roughly $94 billion global ticketing industry and the buying power of the US Black population.
The company's principal differentiators are revenue sharing of ticketing/processing fees with event hosts and community organizations rather than retaining those fees, flexible fee structures that let organizers control the attendee experience, fast Stripe-based payouts every two to three days rather than post-event settlement, dedicated human support, an explicitly Black-owned and culture-first positioning that its curators cite as a reason for choosing the platform, and access to project financing for organizers through the Urbane Venture Fund partnership.
Technology
The platform includes a web-based event creation flow that the company says takes under five minutes, custom event URLs, share and affiliate link generation from mobile, email and SMS marketing tools, mobile apps for attendees on iOS and Android, and a separate organizer app with QR/ticket scanning for check-in. Payment processing and payouts are handled through Stripe.
Go-to-market
Eventnoire acquires organizers through self-service event creation, demo requests and one-on-one onboarding sessions with its team, and referral/word-of-mouth in the Black event-curation community, supported by testimonials from repeat curators. Consumer demand is driven by a curated discovery marketplace, featured multi-city tours and festivals, iOS and Android apps, an email/SMS newsletter with early access to curator events, blog content, and the Art of the Party podcast. Ecosystem participation — accelerator and grant programs such as Google for Startups' Black Founders Fund, TechRise, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and 1871 — plus press coverage in outlets including WTTW, Essence, Forbes, and ChicagoInno have supported visibility.
Event creators, curators, community organizations, promoters, and marketers producing Black-culture-centered and community-building events — including concerts, festivals, nightlife parties, conferences, and picnics — as well as consumers seeking culturally relevant events in their local markets, and brands seeking to reach those audiences.
Geography
Headquartered in Chicago, Eventnoire lists events in more than 55 markets, concentrated in US cities including Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Miami, with additional listings in Canada (Toronto, Montréal, Abbotsford) and international locations such as Singapore, Auckland, Rio de Janeiro, Bridgetown, and Negril. The company has stated intentions to expand into Africa and London with the goal of serving the African diaspora.
History
One press release dates the founding to 2018. Osuji left his job in 2019 to work on Eventnoire full time, and the founders hired a web development firm to launch the platform's first iteration that year; a 1,500-person Black Alumni Ball in Washington, DC in 2019 served as an early scale test. The pandemic in 2020 disrupted both the ticketing platform and the founders' events business, and Osuji pivoted to online events and real estate work to sustain them. In 2021 Eventnoire won a share of the $1 million prize in Mountain Dew's Real Change Opportunity Fund Competition, and in October 2021 it announced a strategic partnership with Urbane Venture Fund. It was a 2022 Google for Startups Black Founders Fund recipient and also received TechRise funding. By early 2023 the company had a five-person team and planned to close a seed round by February 2023, launch a consumer mobile app in the first quarter, and expand internationally. In April 2023 it announced it had raised over $1 million to date and opened a StartEngine equity crowdfunding campaign to the public.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 6
by search overlap
Companies competing with Eventnoire for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 5
launches, deals, and filingsEventnoire announced it had raised over $1 million to date and launched a public equity crowdfunding campaign on StartEngine, open through the end of May, with proceeds intended to launch Eventnoire Premium, a creator-first SaaS platform connecting brands with event curators.
$1M source ↗
Eventnoire was named a recipient of Google's Black Founders Fund in 2022; the company also received funding from TechRise.
Eventnoire announced a strategic partnership under which event organizers on its platform gained access to over $250,000 in project-based investment capital from Urbane Venture Fund, an entertainment and hospitality micro-investment fund, effective October 1, 2021. The inaugural fund was set to run until December 31, 2022 and included advisory support alongside capital.
$250K source ↗
Eventnoire won Mountain Dew's Real Change Opportunity Fund Competition, receiving a share of the $1 million prize.
After Osuji left his job to work on the company full time, the founders engaged a website development firm and launched the platform's first version in 2019.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
Legal entities · 1
corporate structureIn the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Eventnoireeventnoire.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Eventnoire do?
- Eventnoire is a Chicago-based ticketing and event management platform for Black culture-centered events and organizers.
- Who founded Eventnoire?
- Eventnoire was founded by Oluwafemi Masha in 2017.
- Who are Eventnoire's investors?
- Eventnoire's investors include Cleveland Avenue, LongJump Ventures, Techstars.
- How much funding has Eventnoire raised?
- Eventnoire has disclosed $1.5M raised across 1 of its 3 known rounds.
- Where is Eventnoire headquartered?
- Eventnoire is headquartered in Chicago, US.