Today we’d like to introduce you to Karan Ram.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When I was younger, I was far from the “academic type”. Between the multiple suspensions, drugs and skipping classes every day, to be honest, I barely made it through high school. I only made it into San Jose State with a 2.2 GPA because of the radius they have to help allow students in the area to get in.
Not that I wasn’t smart, I just never tried or put my efforts toward school work. While my efforts were not going to school work, they were, however, going towards trying to show my friends a good time. Since I can remember, I just loved the feeling of showing my friends a good time so I was always the one throwing the parties and making the plans.
Thus, when I was a freshman at SJSU I helped throw a philanthropy concert for my fraternity and it helped spark an idea to throw college events. My girlfriend at the time went to USC so when I visited and saw that their parties weren’t just your typical red cup frat party, they were full-on productions, I decided to partner with some mutual friends from LA to start a company called The Drop Factory and host college events at USC.
After a little over a year with TDF when I was driving down to LA/USC every weekend, I came to the realization that my side of the team and I were doing 99% of the work while the other partners were not reciprocating, so decided to leave and start my own company, Moment Entertainment. During this time, I also knew I had to go to USC for my own benefit and my companies benefit so I also decided to balance my time a little better to do so. Throughout the week, I would hide in the library in San Jose and study as hard as I could, and during the weekend, go to LA and run events. In two years, I had close to a 4.0 GPA at SJSU and was able to transfer to USC.
As I got older, the company evolved with me as well. When I turned 21, I realized that kids get over college events and they want to go to Hollywood/Vegas etc. At that time, my older brother ran a promotions company in San Diego so we decided to partner up, have him move to LA and have him run/create the promotion sector of Moment.
While the company was continuing to grow year after, going to school full time and running the company with multiple employees was taking a toll on my personal life and my health. In April 2014, my heart went into overdrive due to stress and I had an atrial fibrillation where I passed out at the gym. At that point, the dean of the music school told me “the opportunities you get today may not be there tomorrow, but USC will”. At this point, the company was doing close to a million dollars in sales a year and although I was in my 4th year of college, with transferring and switching majors, I was technically only a sophomore, so I decided it’s in my best interest to leave SC and pursue the company full time.
This benefited us a lot as most of my friends were graduating at that time so with my brother getting ou promotional sector booming, our business model really expanded… come to college at the age of 18, experience the best event with Moment, turn 21, we take you out to Vegas for your 21st and then you continue to go out with us to LA clubs after that. As our clients started graduating and started working for bigger companies, they then came to us to start planning their companies events. We pivoted to a relationship built a base model where we grow with our customers and help them with their event needs through whatever stage of life they’re in.
We then realized most college graduates move to West LA and every weekend we were dragging the masses across the 405 so we decided to move our promotional push to Santa Monica. We started programming (booking the DJ’s, running the marketing and hiring the promoters) a venue called 41 ocean, which at the time was a private members lounge, and helped take it to one of the top venues in LA in just 2 years. We now program (3) venues in Santa Monica (shore bar, 31ten and 41 Ocean) and specialize in West LA.
Now, 5 years later after founding Moment, we have done over 5 million in sales, utilized our promotional/event management experience to throw and sell out our own festival completely in-house, start a concert series where we bring some of the worlds best talent to Santa Monica as “unannounced special guests” such as Dada Life and Gryffin, throw some of the largest collegiate events throughout the U.S and throw the #1 sold New Years event in LA at the W hotel the last 2 years running.
Our end goal is to one day own a hospitality company which has multiple restaurants/lounges and maybe even hotels under it but there’s no exact plan as our demographic keeps grow older, our company grows too.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been far from smooth. No matter what classes you take, there is no one that can truly teach you to run a business until you do it yourself.
Most people only see the good things we put on social media etc, but I’ve made more mistakes and have had some of the lowest points in my life with this company. What started as a bootstrap startup with (5) guys living in one apartment, as expanded, I made a very common mistake from inexperienced CEO’s and expanded too fast. Our overhead jumped from 4k a month to 45k in just a few months making it impossible to keep in the green especially since our college events were seasonal.
From lawsuits (that we won) to making terrible hires due and running the companies finances wrong, I got ourselves into crazy debt where I was forced to approach friends/family for thousands of dollars to stay alive. Many times I even considered just cutting our loss and closing down the company.
On a personal note too, I wouldn’t change anything but it definitely took a toll as well. When you start a company, especially at my age, you think it’s your lifelong dream.
You’re going to retire with it and that’s all you are going to do in life. With that said, I would choose to work instead of hanging out with friends and gf’s which affected a lot of my relationships. Through the lows though, I was able to learn a lot about myself and from it grew as a CEO and a person.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Moment Entertainment – what should we know?
Moment is a turnkey event management and promotions company that specializes in a one-off, pop-up events.
While we do weekly promotions at various venues and are hired out by companies/organizations to host events for them, we stand out when we merge the sectors and throw our own event in-house (promotions and event management), like our 6000 person festival, FRDM Fest.
There are plenty of promotions companies and plenty of event management firms, but rarely is there a company who does both. This allows us to do different/unique events for our demographic so we don’t oversaturate our demographic and also keep our costs down since we are doing the event side of stuff in-house.
Thus, instead of doing Cinco de Mayo or new years at a venue people go to all the time, we do stuff like rent out parking lots and hotels where we throw 1000-2000 person pop-up events. One of our biggest advantages, we also do all our production/audio/visual in house. We own a lot of our own gear so can set up lighting/staging for a decently low cost.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
While it may be my biggest weakness as well, I think my ego is something that has helped me succeed. As more and more people doubt me and tell me I can’t do something, it helps fuel me to push through the doubt and make it happen.
In addition, one of the biggest tools to my success is how much of a mama’s boy. I owe my mom for everything. My brother and I don’t have a dollar value in to which we think we’re successful, the only goal we have is to one day buy my mom a house in hope that she will no longer have to work. She’s worked hard for us and now we have the ability to, we are working every day for her.
Pricing:
- We create custom platforms based on whatever budget you have. We’ve done events for $1000 and events for $100,000
Contact Info:
- Address: 5792 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90016
- Phone: 4088577951
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @youarethemoment
- Facebook: @momententertainment
Image Credit:
Matt Miller, Jorge Meza
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