Book live acts — drag, cabaret, bands, DJs — with payment held securely until the show goes on.

why we built it

Booking live entertainment mostly still runs on DMs, deposits paid into personal accounts, and trust with no backstop. Organisers hope the act shows up; performers hope the balance arrives after they have. Both sides deserve better than hope.

what we built

• Escrow payment via StripeCard payments are held securely, not paid straight to a stranger’s account.
• The Performance PINPayment is released when the organiser hands the performer a unique PIN at the event — proof the show happened.
• Performer-set termsPrices, packages and cancellation policies are set by the act and enforced automatically. No haggling, no surprises.
• Double-blind reviewsNeither side’s review is revealed until both are written, so ratings stay honest in both directions.
• Verified performersIdentity verification is handled through Stripe when performers connect their payouts.

the founders

Performr is built by two people who have spent their careers on opposite sides of the same problem: one as a professional athlete and public figure whose living depended on turning up and performing, the other as the person small businesses call when the commercial side is the thing holding them back.

Co-founder

Keegan Hirst

Keegan played professional rugby league for sixteen seasons, from 2007 to 2023, making more than 320 appearances for six clubs: Dewsbury Rams, Hunslet Hawks, Featherstone Rovers, Halifax, Batley Bulldogs and, in Super League, Wakefield Trinity. A prop forward who came through the Bradford Bulls academy, he was part of the Dewsbury side that went through the 2009 season unbeaten, and he captained Batley Bulldogs to the club’s first Championship Grand Final in 2013 and, in 2016, to a third-place finish and the Super League Qualifiers — the part-time club’s best season in the modern era. That season earned him a Super League contract with Wakefield Trinity, where he played three seasons.

In August 2015, as Batley captain, he became the first British professional rugby league player to come out as gay. The story made front pages worldwide. It earned him the Attitude Editor’s Special Award and an Attitude cover, a place on The Independent’s Rainbow List in 2015 and again in 2016, and a top-ten place in the British LGBT Awards’ Sports Personality category. In 2022, at 34, he came out of retirement to play for Batley again in direct response to the Manly Sea Eagles pride-jersey boycott — because, in his words, the best answer to thinly-veiled homophobia was to lace his boots back up.

Off the pitch he is a keynote and inclusion speaker whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group and Morgan Sindall, and his TEDx talk A Talk about Hope is hosted on TED.com. He has appeared on Channel 4’s Celebrity First Dates, W’s Celebrity Haunted Hotel, ITV’s Real Stories with Ranvir Singh and Good Morning Britain, and was profiled in Sky Sports’ Rainbow Laces series. He has backed Stonewall’s Rainbow Laces campaign and the Super League players’ Tackle the Tough Stuff men’s mental-health campaign with State of Mind and Rugby League Cares. He co-hosts the Happy Healthy Homo podcast, hosts The Hirst Locker, founded Gay Man’s Coaching, and reaches an audience of several hundred thousand across Instagram and TikTok.

That audience is where Performr began. A decade close to the UK LGBTQ+ scene — the drag, cabaret and club circuit that keeps it running — meant watching the same conversation play out again and again: performers taking bookings on trust, chasing payment weeks after the show, and handing a slice of their fee to whoever made the introduction.

• 320+ professional appearances across 16 seasons and six clubs
• Three Super League seasons with Wakefield Trinity
• Captain of Batley Bulldogs; Championship Grand Finalist
• First British professional rugby league player to come out (2015)
• Attitude Editor’s Special Award; Independent Rainbow List 2015 & 2016
• TEDx speaker; Channel 4, ITV, W and Sky Sports
• Podcast host, Happy Healthy Homo (75+ episodes)

“I’ve spent my whole career around people whose living depends on turning up and performing. The admin around that shouldn’t be the hard part.”

Co-founder

Stephen Cheevers

Before co-founding Performr, Stephen had spent his whole working life in sales — in it since he was 18, with his name at the top of the leaderboard everywhere he worked. At Vodafone he closed what was then the biggest deal in the region’s corporate history, a single contract worth more than £5 million, at 24 years old.

He left the corporate safety net that same year. First came a fitness start-up app; then a marketing agency for fitness professionals that reached a high six-figure run rate within eight months. That led to The Coaches’ Mentorship, which he co-founded and ran to teach fitness coaches to sell without the sleazy tactics the industry was known for. Over its lifetime it ran programmes from an entry-level membership to an invite-only executive mastermind for businesses already past £15,000 a month, and helped hundreds of coaching businesses scale to six and seven figures. He took it from a standing start to a seven-figure run rate in eighteen months and expanded it from the UK into the US. Today he also runs Trojan Horse Sales Consultancy, training sales teams and high-ticket closers worldwide in the Trojan Horse method, alongside the AI-powered sales simulators and KPI tooling he builds for clients.

At Performr, Stephen is the founder who made the company real. He secured the Enterprise Ireland grant funding that got the business off the ground, and he designed and built the application you are using today himself — the marketplace, the escrow and Performance PIN flow, the performer profiles, the booking and payout engine. He leads product, technology and the commercial side of the business day to day, from Northern Ireland, where Performr Technologies Ltd is registered.

Every business he has built or advised had the same shape: someone excellent at the thing they do, left to fend for themselves on pricing, contracts and getting paid. Performers are the purest case of it. Performr takes that off their plate — real prices published up front, terms enforced automatically, payment released the moment the act shows up.

• Secured the Enterprise Ireland grant funding that launched Performr
• Designed and built the Performr application himself
• Leads product, technology and commercial strategy
• In sales since 18; closed a £5m+ corporate contract at Vodafone, aged 24
• Built a fitpro marketing agency to high six figures in eight months
• Scaled The Coaches’ Mentorship to seven figures in 18 months; hundreds of coaches scaled
• Founder, Trojan Horse Sales Consultancy: sales teams trained worldwide

“The best acts shouldn’t need to be the best negotiators.”

as seen in

Attitude · The Independent · Sky Sports · ITV · Channel 4 · TED · Sunday Mirror · The Guardian · PinkNews

the company

Performr is operated by Performr Technologies Ltd, company number NI690934, registered in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, and founded in 2022. Questions? Visit the help centre or email info@performr.io.