To help people show up for each other.
We believe the best moments in life happen in person and that finding, creating, and attending those moments should never be complicated, expensive, or gated behind confusing platforms. showUp exists to fix that.
A city full of events nobody could find.
In 2022, Leinyuy Partemus was living in Buea, Cameroon — a city with a genuinely vibrant creative scene. Concerts, tech meetups, food festivals, open mics. The events existed. The problem was you only found out about them afterwards, from a friend's Instagram story, a day too late.
The discovery infrastructure simply didn't exist. Global platforms like Eventbrite and Meetup worked well in San Francisco and London. For everywhere else, there was a WhatsApp group and a prayer.
He built a single page listing local events. Within two weeks, 200 people were using it. Organisers reached out to list directly. showUp had found its purpose: a platform that works for the whole world, not just the parts that already had one.
"The world has more live experiences than any platform is showing you. We're here to close the gap between what's happening and who finds out."
Leinyuy Partemus
CEO & Co-founder, showUp
Built for both sides of every event
Find what moves you.
showUp surfaces concerts, community gatherings, tech conferences, food festivals, and everything in between — near you or anywhere in the world. Search, browse by interest, and book instantly with no hidden fees. Your ticket lands in your pocket in seconds.
Explore eventsBuild something people show up for.
Whether you're running a 20-person book club or a 5,000-seat music festival, showUp gives you the tools to create, promote, and manage your event — for free. Real-time analytics, instant payouts, and a discovery engine that puts your event in front of the right people.
The events are happening. People just can't find them.
We're in a loneliness epidemic. Studies consistently show that in-person community is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing — yet the platforms designed to surface it are geographically limited, fee-heavy, or optimised for clicks over genuine connection.
Independent organisers — the people running the most interesting, most human-scale events — are priced out or overlooked by platforms built for enterprise clients. Attendees pay booking fees on top of ticket prices. Discovery is broken outside of major cities.
showUp is built on the belief that the internet should make it easier to get off the internet — and into a room full of people you'll actually enjoy.
Our values
Not a poster on a wall. These are the decisions we make when nobody's watching.
Community over clicks
Events are how people find their people. Every product decision starts with one question: does this bring someone closer to a live experience they'll remember?
Radical transparency
No hidden fees. No surprise charges. No dark patterns. The price you see is the price you pay — for attendees and organisers alike. We think honesty is a product feature.
Globally inclusive
We built showUp from Africa, for the world. That means we design for connectivity constraints, local currencies, and diverse communities — not just the markets everyone else defaults to.
Speed as respect
Slow platforms waste people's time. Fast booking, instant tickets, and real-time updates are not nice-to-haves — they're how we show respect for the people using our product.
Independent-first
The most interesting events in the world are run by independent creators, not mega-corporations. We build for them first, always, even if it means slower growth for us.
Accountability
We make commitments in public and keep them. If we change something, we say why. We don't hide behind terms of service or bury the important stuff in small print.
Small team, strong opinions
A small, distributed team united by one obsession: making it easier for people to show up for the things that matter.
Leinyuy Partemus
CEO & Co-founder
Sam Chen
CTO & Co-founder
Maya Patel
Head of Design
Jordan Kim
Head of Product
Find your next event
Concerts, conferences, community nights, and everything between. No account needed to browse.
Browse eventsHost your own event
Free to list. No monthly fee. Your first ticket sale takes under five minutes to set up.