How Tagvenue Built a Six-Country Marketplace Without a Single Funding Round
Two Lancaster friends spotted a gap the accommodation giants had ignored. A decade later they run a global venue-hire platform — financed entirely by commissions, not capital.
In 2015, Maksim Kondratjuks was working at the London Stock Exchange when he ran into the same wall twice. Once while organising a conference, and again while planning his wedding, he found there was no simple way to browse, compare and book an event space without personally visiting each venue or handing the job to an agent. When he described the frustration to his old university friend Artur Stepaniak, the gap was suddenly, blindingly obvious.
"Immediately, we both realised that there were loads of websites for booking accommodation, but none for booking venues," Stepaniak recalled. "The opportunity was clear." Neither had run a business before. In March 2015, they launched Tagvenue anyway — and in doing so began a decade-long experiment in whether a global marketplace could be built without ever asking an investor for a cheque.
The First SignalThe demand was already there
The clearest evidence that Tagvenue was onto something arrived before a single pound of marketing had been spent. Venue owners and managers began listing their spaces on the platform without being asked; event planners followed the supply. "Despite no advertising, customers were finding us on their own, so we knew we were onto something big," said Kondratjuks.
"Despite no advertising, customers were finding us on their own, so we knew we were onto something big."
— Maksim Kondratjuks, co-founder & CPOThat organic pull became the founding thesis, and the reason Tagvenue never needed to buy its way to growth. Within a few years the platform had spread from London to 16 cities across five countries, drawing more than 200,000 unique monthly visitors. For most startups, that traction is the moment to raise a war chest and pour it into paid acquisition. Tagvenue did the opposite: it kept the marketing budget small and let the marketplace's own economics do the compounding.
The EngineCommissions instead of capital
The model is deceptively simple. Listing a venue is free. Event planners pay no booking fees and no admin fees. Tagvenue earns a commission only when a booking actually completes — money that arrives precisely because a venue has just made money. That single revenue stream funded the entire expansion. There was no burn rate to defend, no board to satisfy, no dilution to swallow. Every new city, every new hire, every new market was paid for by the commissions the marketplace generated the quarter before.
Two roads to scale
The VC route
- Raise rounds to buy growth
- Subsidise demand, burn runway
- Answer to a board
- Dilute ownership each round
- Race the clock to the next raise
The Tagvenue route
- Grow on booking commissions
- Demand arrives organically
- No investors, no board pressure
- Founders keep 100%
- Each city funds the next
The best-price guarantee kept planners loyal. The free listing kept supply flowing. And the commission — payable only on success — aligned Tagvenue's interests exactly with the venues it served. It is the rare marketplace whose growth costs and whose revenue rise and fall together, which is precisely why it never needed an external cushion.
The DisciplineHire slowly, choose carefully
For a bootstrapped company, people are the one genuinely expensive bet — and Stepaniak treats them accordingly. Without venture money to absorb a bad hire, the margin for error is thin, and he is unsentimental about it.
"The most important decisions are who you start the company with and who you hire. A good employee can either make or break a business — so invest in recruitment, don't settle for average."
— Artur Stepaniak, co-founder & CEO"It's crazy how many businesses fail mainly because of personal issues in the founding team," he added. That caution built a workforce of more than 80 people — grown not on a fundraising runway but on the marketplace's own cash flow, one deliberate hire at a time.
The MapSix countries, one playbook
Having proven the model in the UK, the founders simply exported it. Tagvenue now operates across six countries, listing more than 22,000 venues spanning over 40 space types — from yachts and lofts to castles, churches, restaurants and ballrooms. It leads the UK, Australian and Singaporean markets, and carries more than 100,000 verified reviews from real event planners.
Growth on revenue alone
The Next ChapterBuilding its own tools
In 2025, Tagvenue moved beyond matchmaking. It launched Tagvenue Pro, an AI-powered event management suite for the venue managers who make the marketplace work: automated client replies and follow-ups, calendar syncing, lead and task tracking, and real-time analytics. It is a deliberate deepening of the relationship with the supply side that got the company off the ground in the first place — turning listings into a fuller operating system for the venues themselves.
A decade after two friends spotted a gap the giants had ignored, the mission Stepaniak states hasn't changed: make venue booking easier. What has changed is the proof. Tagvenue is now a global, profitable business spanning six countries and a million monthly visitors — and it got there without ever cashing a single investor's cheque. "We will continue bringing our excellent venue hire marketplace to more cities around the world," Stepaniak said. On the evidence so far, it can pay for that itself.