There’s no shortage of shining stars in Tinseltown, and with social media platforms like TikTok growing in popularity, more creative personalities have begun their ascent to fame. While these emerging starlets have thousands of people in their respective fanbases, the artists themselves tend to be relatively isolated.
Networking is the road to success for individuals in the creative industry, but finding like-minded professionals in the space is often easier said than done. LA startup Tavrn was created to provide artists with the infrastructure to forge real-life connections with others in their industry and grow their inner circles.
Tavrn launched the beta version of its social networking mobile app that exclusively serves influencers, actors, singers and similar creative professionals in September. On Wednesday, the company announced it raised a $1.4 million pre-seed round from lead investor Hummingbird Ventures.
The platform allows up to eight users to connect over brunch or dinner meetings at restaurants across Los Angeles. Upon signing onto the app, a user is presented with a date and time for an upcoming event and can select whether they’d like to join or check out future events. Should they join, the platform’s matching algorithm will find seven other attendees who are looking to go to that event. After no more than 16 hours, Tavrn will tell users where they’re going and who they’ll meet.
While the company strives to eventually establish a partner network of local restaurants, for now, it hosts its events at central locations where attending members can comfortably convene.
Currently, Tavrn only allows artists to apply if they have more than 500,000 followers on platforms like YouTube, TikTok or Instagram, or work in product and creative roles at Snapchat, Meta, Netflix, Disney and HBO. New users can also join if they’re invited to the platform by an existing member.
Paulino said he came up with the idea for Tavrn after several transformative networking experiences as a college intern. Additionally, he worked at startups including financial institution Kalshi and music company Pearpop in their early stages, helping shape their businesses and products. He ultimately decided to drop out of Harvard University’s liberal arts program to pursue his own entrepreneurial vision.
“I, myself, as a person, grew the most when I was meeting great people in various industries with various different backgrounds, and I just wanted to replicate that at scale for other people,” Paulino said.
Within the entertainment industry, in particular, much industry knowledge is gatekept, according to Paulino. Tavrn members get the chance to freely discuss industry best practices and more. Paulino’s goal is for Tavrn to be a platform that is socially, emotionally and professionally uplifting for those who use it.
Some of Tavrn’s members include Dayna Marie, a singer and model with 1 million Instagram followers, Josh Sadowski, a singer and creator on TikTok with 4.5 million followers, and Thomas Petrou, founder of content creation collective The Hype House.
“Tavrn is an app that represents a true social network — an opportunity to meet other like-minded creators without having to go through directly reaching out to 20 different people and enjoy a nice night out on top of it,” Petrou said in a statement.
While in beta, Tavrn aims to keep its current member base within the low thousands and gradually grow from there. Currently a team of four people, the startup plans to build out additional platform capabilities, including a way to help users manage the new connections they make at Tavrn events.
