A founder who built a booking platform for rehearsal studios while juggling freelance contracts and late-night coding sessions has turned his side project into a thriving business, now serving over 150 creative spaces across 17 countries.
Andy Callaghan was a freelance web developer and hobby drummer when a conversation at his local rehearsal studio in York sparked the idea for Jammed, an online booking and payments platform designed specifically for creative venues.
The 37-year-old had been trying to book rehearsal time with his band at Melrose Yard studios in Walmgate when he was told by the owner, Sam, that there was no suitable software for managing bookings.
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“Sam had tried seven systems up to that point, and found generic software doesn’t suit how creative studios operate in many small but meaningful ways,” Andy told Founder Insights.
“Trying to book a space that we wanted to book as a band, and having to negotiate our schedules on WhatsApp at 1am, then having to phone or email and wait back for a response, this is how most studios operated before Jammed was around.”
Andy, a keen musician since his school days who achieved grade 8 in drums and trumpet, began building a prototype application with Sam that would eventually become Jammed.
But for the first few years, the business was entirely self-funded through Andy’s freelance work, including contracts with the UK government from 2023 to 2024 and the Labour Party during the 2024 general election campaign.
“Until 2024 Jammed was fully funded by my freelance development work, and the busiest time during its development was due to the fact of keeping two jobs,” he said.
“The day job freelancing and then in the evening taking phone calls with prospective studios and coding until the early hours.”
The biggest hurdle wasn’t technical, it was mental.
“The biggest hurdle personally was the temptation just to give up with only a handful of customers,” Andy admitted.
“I keep a paper journal and to-do list, and in an early journal I in fact wrote ‘Don’t give up’ in block capitals to myself.”
That determination paid off. Andy found his first customers by picking up the phone and cold-calling rehearsal spaces across the UK, in Leeds, Peterborough, Bristol, Bath and Liverpool. His first paying customer came during the 2020 lockdown, based in New Zealand, requiring video calls and asynchronous communication to make it work.
The breakthrough came when a studio owner in Brixton Hill, London, began recommending Jammed to his wider network of peers.
“I think things really started to work when I was having demo calls with prospective studios and they’d already heard of Jammed,” Andy said.
“The hurdle for a lot of companies is just to be seen or noticed in the crowd and the fact that I was on anyone’s radar through word-of-mouth was amazing.”
Jammed now serves over 150 creative studios across 17 countries, offering booking and scheduling tools, automated invoicing and payment systems, and detailed analytics to help venues maximise space usage and increase revenue.
Growth has been steady but manageable. Andy crossed £1,000 a month in subscriptions after three years, then reached £3,000 per month within the following year.
“I’m now at the point where Jammed is paying me a wage and I’m able to sustain my lifestyle as it was when I was a freelancer, which is amazing,” he said.
“I never thought this would be possible.”
Beyond the revenue, Andy values the freedom entrepreneurship has given him. His wife is a doctor who works shifts at the hospital, often over weekends, so being able to work flexibly allows them to spend time together when she’s off.
“I mostly value the freedom to work on what I’d like, but also the freedom to not work Tuesday and Wednesday for example,” he said.
“Being an entrepreneur allows me to work all weekend but then take time off when we can both be around.”
Looking back, Andy admits his biggest mistake was spending too much time coding and not enough time marketing.
“I learned pretty early on that I have to make myself do other things,” he said.
“It’s a mistake a lot of other tech founders of software companies make — you believe ‘build it and they will come’. They won’t. They will come if you are putting in the effort of marketing, making case studies and taking testimonials and positioning your brand to the market.”
Andy’s ambition now is to make Jammed the industry leader for creative spaces and to expand into larger venues like art galleries, stadiums and museum spaces. He’s already in early talks about mergers and acquisitions with a competitor and is considering raising funds for a second version aimed at a different market.
His advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple: don’t give up too early.
“I’m a big proponent of bootstrapped companies, I think it produces a better and more profitable company in the long run,” he said.
“You listen to only your customers and you account for every penny of expense in a way that doesn’t happen when you take investment.”
When asked to describe his leadership approach in one word, Andy laughed: “Laid-back?! That’s one word right?”
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