Leadership in tech
Mir Hwang on leading GigFinesse: Running a tech company like a band
On March 11, we will host a leadership event in Austin, Texas. I’ll be moderating, and we’re thrilled to have Mir Hwang joining us as our featured speaker.
When I first read Mir’s answers and learned more about him, I immediately thought about what we do at Thunder. The way he and his co-founder built GigFinesse felt so familiar. They focused on solving a real problem, creating something that matters, and taking full ownership of it.
Mir started GigFinesse to connect artists with venues, a platform that actually makes booking shows easier for everyone. The way he went after a problem he cared about is really inspiring for us. The same sense of ownership we aim for at Thunder every day.
I encourage you to take a moment and read this interview. There’s so much depth in his answers. It’s inspiring not just for people in tech, but for anyone who believes and works for their dream.
How is leadership actually defined at GigFinesse?
Leadership at GigFinesse isn’t a title. It’s ownership. My Co-founder Ryan and I started this company doing sound, working the door, and showing up to every single show we booked. That scrappiness never left our DNA.
Today we power over 1,000 shows a month across the country, and the only way that scales is if every person on the team operates under the ownership of outcome, standards, and impact.
I think about it like a band. Every member knows when to lead and when to support. The drummer sets the tempo but listens to the room. The guitarist takes the solo but reads the energy.
We run GigFinesse the same way, where leadership is contextual. The person closest to the problem owns that problem. Whether you’re on our curation team in Austin or our engineering team in Seoul, you’re expected to think about the “why,” not just the “what.” The best idea wins, regardless of who it comes from.
Was there an important time when you swapped from “I need to do this myself” to “I trust someone else to carry this”?
Yes, and it wasn’t graceful. Early on I was at every show, vetting every artist, handling ops, doing door-to-door sales, fundraising, all of it. When COVID wiped out everything we’d built, that instinct to control only intensified. The stakes felt existential. I felt personally responsible for my team and my co-founder, whose lives and careers were on hold for something that looked like it might not survive.
The turning point was packing a suitcase and a backpack and moving to Austin as a last-ditch effort. That move forced me to trust the people around me as I physically couldn’t do everything anymore. We were spread across cities and I had to internalize that hiring is the most important thing a founder does, and then actually let those people run.
The moment I shifted from trying to be the best individual contributor to building the best team and culture, that’s when the company slowly started compounding.
Surround yourself with people who are exceptional at what they do. Create the space, remove friction, and step back. Step in when they need support, context, or air cover.
How do you build a technical culture where engineers think like product owners, not just code contributors?
It starts with who you hire. My co-founder Ryan left Google to build this with me. Not to write code, but because he also believed in the mission of fixing a broken industry.
Practically, we make sure every engineer understands the pain we’re solving. Our platform handles everything from smart booking recommendations to 1099 processing to custom generated marketing assets. When an engineer sees that venues are still processing payments by hand, or that an artist is cold-emailing hundreds of venues to land one gig, that context fundamentally changes the way they build.
We expose everyone to the full loop: artist feedback, venue feedback, what a successful “show” actually means operationally. When you close the gap between the code and the customer, engineers start thinking in outcomes, not outputs.
We also put our money where our mouth is. Our product team flies from Seoul to the U.S. at least once a year, sometimes twice, to spend time with the domestic team and see firsthand the impact the platform is making both in the artist and the venue community. That investment in context is what separates engineers who ship features from engineers who solve problems.
The other piece is that we’ve been forced to run lean from the beginning. When you don’t have the luxury of layers between product and engineering, every engineer has to think like a product owner. That constraint became our culture.
If Mir, the high school drummer, walked into your office today, would you hire him? What part of him still shapes the way you lead?
Would I hire him? Not immediately as he would need to prove he can show up consistently. But would I bet on him? In a heartbeat.
Being a drummer shaped me more than people realize. Drummers are the backbone of the band.
You’re not in the spotlight, but if your timing is off, everything falls apart. You learn to listen: to the room, to the musicians around you, to the energy.
As a CEO, the job is the same. I set the tempo, keep everyone in sync, and make sure the people who deserve the spotlight get it. The best shows I played weren’t the ones with a flashy solo. They were the ones where the whole band and the crowd was locked in.
High school Mir used to think, someone is going to build the platform that makes booking a gig as seamless as calling an Uber.
No one did. So I decided I would.
The mission was simple: empower artists to stay focused on their craft, enable venues to deliver exceptional experiences, and build the infrastructure in between that makes it all effortless.
I still lead with that same conviction and the same fire that started it all.
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