Presenter
Eugene Carr
Founder of Patron
Gene Carr has been working at the intersection of tech and the arts since the inception of the consumer Internet in the late 1990s. A trained cellist, he got involved in arts management and eventually became executive director of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York city in the early 1990s, producing concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and managed several international tours and worked on Grammy nominated recordings. Then after graduating from Columbia Business School and working at American Express, he founded two visionary arts industry focused tech companies. The first, CultureFinder.com, funded by AOL and Comcast’s venture capital arm, which was the first “arts channel” on AOL, and one of the first companies to sell Broadway and arts tickets online.
In the early 2000s, he founded Patron Technology which evangelized the shift to digital marketing in the arts & cultural industry, initially by launching the industry’s first e-mail marketing product, PatronMail, growing a client base of over 1,800 non-profit cultural organizations. They then introduced another product -- PatronManager, (recently renamed Patron Management at Leapevent.tech) a ticketing/fundraising/marketing software system built in partnership with Saleforce.com. By 2017, PatronManager customer base had grown to over 700+ cultural organizations (theater, opera, orchestra, performing arts centers).
During that time he co-authored Breaking the Fifth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century, a book that was sold into the arts industry
and generated over 100 speaking opportunities. The book was also translated into Spanish and marketed in Latin America and Spain.
He became an active member of the NY Angels for several years, and since then has been mentoring/advising several early-stage tech startups. He’s on the board of TRG-Arts, a leading arts audience development and fundraising consulting company. Currently, Gene lives in New York City and Great Barrington, MA, where he is Founder/Executive Director of Community Busk, a non-profit that uses the arts to create community and downtown economic development by producing Berkshire Busk! a 10-weekend summer street performer festival, and consulting with towns and cities across the country that have interest in doing something similar.
Founder of Patron
Gene Carr has been working at the intersection of tech and the arts since the inception of the consumer Internet in the late 1990s. A trained cellist, he got involved in arts management and eventually became executive director of the American Symphony Orchestra in New York city in the early 1990s, producing concerts at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and managed several international tours and worked on Grammy nominated recordings. Then after graduating from Columbia Business School and working at American Express, he founded two visionary arts industry focused tech companies. The first, CultureFinder.com, funded by AOL and Comcast’s venture capital arm, which was the first “arts channel” on AOL, and one of the first companies to sell Broadway and arts tickets online.
In the early 2000s, he founded Patron Technology which evangelized the shift to digital marketing in the arts & cultural industry, initially by launching the industry’s first e-mail marketing product, PatronMail, growing a client base of over 1,800 non-profit cultural organizations. They then introduced another product -- PatronManager, (recently renamed Patron Management at Leapevent.tech) a ticketing/fundraising/marketing software system built in partnership with Saleforce.com. By 2017, PatronManager customer base had grown to over 700+ cultural organizations (theater, opera, orchestra, performing arts centers).
During that time he co-authored Breaking the Fifth Wall: Rethinking Arts Marketing for the 21st Century, a book that was sold into the arts industry
and generated over 100 speaking opportunities. The book was also translated into Spanish and marketed in Latin America and Spain.
He became an active member of the NY Angels for several years, and since then has been mentoring/advising several early-stage tech startups. He’s on the board of TRG-Arts, a leading arts audience development and fundraising consulting company. Currently, Gene lives in New York City and Great Barrington, MA, where he is Founder/Executive Director of Community Busk, a non-profit that uses the arts to create community and downtown economic development by producing Berkshire Busk! a 10-weekend summer street performer festival, and consulting with towns and cities across the country that have interest in doing something similar.
