We built PLEC because planning a celebration should never feel like a second job.

PLEC started with a conversation. In May 2025, Nicolas Munoz and Allan Elson, friends from the University of Pennsylvania, were talking about Allan's old startup. Somewhere in that conversation, an idea took shape in Nico's mind to complement Allan's startup: a marketplace for venues. It was a good idea, but for a few months it stayed just that, a dormant thought.

In August 2025, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in May and while working through a handful of business ideas, Nico comes back to it and realizes he had already lived the problem. As treasurer of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, he had spent hours trying to book venues for events. Helping plan his sister's quinceañera, he saw it again: endless phone calls, quotes that never lined up, and payments made through whatever method a vendor happened to accept, with little protection if something went wrong. Behind every celebration was a planner nobody was building for.

He wrote a business plan, built a first website, and started talking to people on both sides of the problem: the planners booking events and the venues and vendors serving them. The answers were consistent. Planning was painful, providers were stuck with outdated tools, and an industry this large had seen remarkably little technology. The opportunity was real.

In September 2025, a close friend and early believer wrote PLEC's first check, and the dream became real. Nicolas set out to build a founding team. Developers Danny Tran and Joseph Turcios joined from UT Austin, alongside Blake Taranto (Head of Onboarding) and Allan Elson (CMO) from Penn. Lorcan Cheng came on as Head Mobile App Engineer. And to lead go-to-market in Austin, PLEC's first market, Nicolas brought on Luke Alexander, a UT alum and a friend since they were seven years old growing up together in Houston.

Building the product was an exercise in iteration and listening comprehension. The platform had to be flexible enough to serve everyone from a nightclub to a solo magician, from a corporate events director to a parent who just wanted one simple place to plan their child's party. What began as a marketplace for venues grew into a marketplace for every part of a celebration. Catering was brought into the marketplace. A party package feature was built so users could book everything at once. Ticketed events for public gatherings was added to the roadmap.

Building supply was a different kind of challenge. In the early months, with no live product and no reputation to point to, the team cold-called, cold-emailed, and sometimes simply walked into local venues hoping to talk to an owner. The value proposition was not a hard sell, providers immediately understood why a platform like PLEC would help them reach more customers. What took time was trust. PLEC was new. There was no track record. But the team stayed relentless, and slowly, the supply grew.

PLEC opened its doors in April 2026. That summer, the team moved to New York City together to bond, build, and grow the brand, and Pedro Sanchez joined, soon stepping in as CTO. Back in Austin, the work kept compounding: by August, PLEC had secured more than 100 venues and vendors, new marketing partnerships, additional capital, and over 50 bookings.

Along the way, we learned that the people who make celebrations happen need more than a place to be found. They need tools to run their businesses. The industry runs on relationships and trust. In October 2026, we launched a CRM for hosts, an automated outbound email engine that helps providers find and reach new clients, and two mobile apps on the App Store: PLEC., the marketplace on your phone, and PLEC Host, which lets any owner or manager run their entire private events business from their phone. What started as a marketplace for venues became a marketplace for celebrations, and is now the tech stack for events.

PLEC stands for Plan Literally Every Celebration. But to us, it means more than that. Celebrations matter. They mark milestones, bring people together, and create the memories that stay with us longest. The world we live in sometimes blinds us with seeming division, when in reality, we all bleed the same and seek peace and happiness for our loved ones. We built PLEC to help produce positivity and happiness. A moment away from reality, a moment to celebrate each other. We built PLEC to make sure that pulling one off never gets in the way of actually enjoying it. Whatever you are celebrating, however big or small, PLEC is here to help you plan it. We the people, for the people.

Stay relentless.

— The PLEC Team