After playing in bands and finishing college in Seattle, Ben moved to LA to work in music. He landed as an A&R guy/song plugger at BMG Music Publishing where the first song he pitched and placed received a Grammy award nomination. Ben started signing artists to pub deals, one of which signed to RCA Records and asked him to manage them full time. He took the opportunity and for the next 8 years owned and operated an artist management company and indie record label overseeing the careers of 9 artists signed to both major and indie labels. Ben spent the first 4 years on the road tour managing and selling merch all over the world. After 12 years in the industry it was clear touring merch revenue was critical to an artist's career, yet existing systems didn't allow for better management of this business. Ben co-founded atVenu in 2012 to address this issue. In 16 months, atVenu's touring merch software is used by over 1200 artists and settled over 26,000 shows.

Karl Hensel is a proud University of Minnesota business school drop-out and has run Kings Road Merchandise since 2009. Originally a division of the Epitaph and Anti- Records family, Kings Road became a wholly independent company in 2011 . With offices in Los Angeles and Germany, they manage online, retail, fulfillment and touring services for everyone from Dropkick Murphys to Macklemore and from Rise Against to Tim & Eric.