How Ballet Ignited my Startup Journey

I trained hard for 10 years, attended stressful job auditions, and landed my job at Nevada Ballet Theatre.  6 months later, the world shut down due to Covid.  The entire dance industry was on pause, no one could work, train, or perform.  I had nothing to do, but I had just worked so hard to get to where I was.  I wasn’t going to let that time go to waste.

That’s when I started to think: “What if there was a way to find training, auditions, and jobs as the world comes out of the pandemic?”.  I started gathering data and BalletScout started.

I teamed up with two software developers from Penn State and started creating an MVP.  One of the few benefits of the pandemic was that Penn State started offering their entrepreneurial programs via Zoom.  Even though I was an online student in Las Vegas, I was able to zoom into mentorship sessions and even pitch competitions.

We won the pitch competitions and were invited to participate in the Summer Founders program where we got further mentorship and investors.

From there, we scaled and continued to grow to where we are today: Over 40,000 users, a digital presence reaching over 1,000,000 people for month, 10 employees, and partnerships with over 50 dance organizations.

While I had the idea for BalletScout because of my experience in Ballet, the mindset of Ballet made me very entrepreneurial.  In dance, we choreograph, we strive for perfection, and we learn to market ourselves every day.  With my experience on stage and in auditions, giving pitches to crowds was just another day in the books.  With working for hours and hours on one little step, sitting down to grind out a business plan wasn’t the worst thing I'd done.  With learning hours of choreography on short notice, learning Quickbooks, excel, and other business skills came quickly.

Because of the skills I developed through Ballet, I was able to excel as an entrepreneur.  Of course, we failed many times, and are continuing to learn and strive for better.  However, if it wasn’t for Ballet, I don’t think the spark of entrepreneurship would have ignited!

Penn State Summer Founders Progrma