Lisa Simpson began her journey in the music industry as Co-Founder of the snow sports and music festival Rise Festival in Europe. Frustrated by the myriad of IT tools they had to use to manage Rise, Lisa and her Co-Founder Ben created Easol as an ‘Experience-Commerce’ platform. Easol is designed to put the technology, ownership, and possibilities in the creator’s hands, from bookings, to payments, marketing, and more.
Describe a day in your life as Co-Founder of Easol.
My day typically starts around 7 a.m. I wake up, make a coffee, and maybe light some incense or a candle. I love starting the day with a journaling practice called Morning Pages, where I write three pages of whatever comes to mind. It helps clear my thoughts and prepares me for the day ahead. After that, I take a walk to our office in Hackney, London—our Easol House! We’re lucky to have such a great space to come to every day to work in with our amazing team.
My job as Chief Brand Officer is incredibly varied, which I love. I get to work with all the teams at Easol, whether it's brainstorming with the marketing team on a new campaign, finding creative ways to launch a feature with our product team, or sharing stories to champion our global community of Experience Creators.
I try to squeeze in a quick gym session at lunch, then afternoons often involve meetings with different Creators, reviewing design concepts , maybe even working on a new podcast. Evenings are for winding down—I love yoga, then early to bed and repeat!
How did your early experiences in the festival industry influence the development of Easol?
Before Easol, my husband and Co-Founder Ben and I started a snow sports and music festival called Rise in the French ski resort of Les Deux Alpes.
In the early days, growing the festival was challenging because we had to use six or seven different platforms to manage everything—one for the website, another for ticketing, payments, accommodation, transfers, equipment hire and more. This created what we describe as a "Frankenstein" of tools, stitched together under the hood. It was messy for us as the Creator and even worse for our customers, who had to navigate multiple channels to book everything. These challenges really highlighted the need for a better solution, which led us to building Easol’s all-in-one platform for your experience business. We wanted to empower Experience Creators by giving them control over every aspect of their business in one place.
Why did you believe there was a need for a platform like Easol in the experience industry?
When we were using so many different platforms to run our festival, we realized that these platforms were taking control over crucial aspects of our business—everything from our brand and the journey for our customers online, to our data, payments, and supporting our customers often, they even used our data to promote rival events!
We got increasingly frustrated and felt like we were losing control of our own business, and we knew something had to change. We believed there was a need for a platform that would allow Experience Creators to run and sell their business in one place, where they could have full ownership and take back control over every aspect of their business,
What was the biggest hurdle you overcame when transitioning from running a festival to launching a tech platform?
Transitioning from running events and building real-life businesses to starting a technology SaaS business was a massive learning curve for us. However, in 2018, we were fortunate to be backed by Y Combinator, which is an accelerator programme for early stage start-ups in San Francisco and the first investors in businesses like AirBnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. We spent six months living and working together as a Founding team in Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, where we learned how to be laser-focused on the problem we were trying to solve, the importance of talking to your customers, understanding their needs, and how to build and launch your product. It was a critical stage to set Easol on the path to success.
Tips for staying grounded on a tough day.
One of the values we created at Easol is about finding a constant rhythm of ‘Play, Push, Pause’. The goal is to find a balance in the middle—creating a rhythm where you find enjoyment your work, know when to push harder, and understand when and how to pause. The goal of being in this ‘equilibrium’ of the rhythm is how we can really learn to thrive.
For me, I like to find ways to change the energy if I’m having a tough day . If I’m frustrated or receive challenging news, I’ll go outside, put on some music, get up from my desk and talk to somebody about their weekend, or light incense or a candle to change the atmosphere or the energy around me.
One piece of advice you'd give your younger self.
Looking back, I think I was too focused on where I would end up and long-term goals, rather than enjoying the moment and appreciating that I really was enjoying the work I was doing and the people I was working with. My advice to my younger self would be to trust yourself, find things you love doing in the moment, and don’t worry about the end game. Focus on finding people you want to work with, who energize, motivate, and inspire you, whilst doing something you really love.
What are you listening to at the moment?
Anything by Sault particularly the no.11 album . Childish Gambino’s new album is also on heavy rotation. And I’ve been listening to Barry Can’t Swim for working out which I can recommend!
