StageKeep

Market position

StageKeep positions itself as professional choreography software for the live performance industry and has been used by the Toronto Raptors dance team and by choreographers associated with major artists. The founder estimated a market of nearly 70,000 dance studios in the United States, each employing three to five choreographers and working with up to 300 dancers, with additional opportunity among cheerleading squads, K-pop performers and large entertainment conglomerates such as Disney, Universal and Sony Music Entertainment.

StageKeep combines formation design with music synchronization, stage dimension awareness, advance sharing with performers and in-platform team communication, aiming to replace pen-and-paper planning and dispersed email and group-message threads.

Technology

A formation management application, available on mobile and through a web performance interface, in which users create named formations on a timeline, position performers on a grid representing a stage of a given size and shape, apply presets and custom stages, and use playback to review transitions synchronized to music. Formations and choreography can be shared digitally with dancers, and team members can comment within the platform.

Go-to-market

Early customer acquisition relied on direct, in-person demonstrations: a team member attended classes taught by touring choreographers and showed them the app immediately afterward. The company leaned on visibility from its Toronto Raptors relationship, with StageKeep branding displayed in the arena during dance routines and its logo shown at halftime shows, and on media exposure including Dragons' Den and interest from Discovery Channel's Daily Planet. Distribution is via a self-serve website with a free trial, supported by tutorial content and video walkthroughs on the company blog.

Choreographers, producers, stage managers, directors, coaches, lighting designers and other production team members working on dance productions, stadium and arena performances, tours, cheerleading, theatre, marching bands and live performance television; dance studios, professional sports entertainment teams and dance crews.

Geography

Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, with the product reported in 2021 as used in 13 countries, from Canada to China. The founder has cited cheerleading squads in the United States and Japan and K-pop performers in Korea as target markets.

History

The company was started in 2017, when Axel Villamil teamed up with classmate William Mak to develop StageKeep at the University of Toronto Scarborough's incubator, The Hub, one of nine U of T entrepreneurship hubs. After roughly two years in beta testing, the app was officially launched in 2019; the same year the founders pitched on CBC's Dragons' Den but left without a deal amid concerns about early revenue and a small user base. Also in 2019, founder Axel Villamil demonstrated the product to producer Timbaland at the Collision Conference, and Amberley Caroli, Manager of Entertainment & Talent at Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, brought the tool in for the Raptors' North Side Crew. StageKeep reported doubling monthly revenue within three months of its 2019 hard release, became what it describes as the first technology company to sponsor a dance crew, and began work on version 2.0 using feedback from the Raptors and other clients. The company later announced an investment from Sunstone Management.

Risks & controversies

The founders appeared on Dragons' Den in 2019 and did not secure an investment, with the panel citing the startup's nascent revenue and relatively small user base. The founder has also acknowledged that the product's value is difficult to convey in the abstract, particularly to non-dancers, making sales dependent on hands-on demonstration, and has described the entertainment industry as reliant on trust and endorsement from established gatekeepers.