Behind the Scenes
What's the SideHustle origin story from Creek & Cave to Pershing Hall?
The SideHustle origin: brand launched via Kickstarter Sept 24, 2019; SideHustle LIVE format premiered Sept 19, 2025 at The Creek & The Cave in Austin.
May 3, 2026 · 2 min read
Q: What's the SideHustle origin story from Creek & Cave to Pershing Hall?
The SideHustle brand launched via Kickstarter on Sept 24, 2019. The SideHustle® LIVE show format premiered Sept 19, 2025 at The Creek & The Cave in Austin, Texas. The 60 to 90 minute live format is now performed at Pershing Hall in Austin, built by co-founders Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran.
The story
Every live format has an origin story that gets cleaner in the retelling. The honest version of SideHustle starts with the brand: launched via Kickstarter on Sept 24, 2019. Six years of card-game iteration and community-building later, the SideHustle LIVE show format premiered on Sept 19, 2025 at The Creek & The Cave in Austin. A small room, a willing audience, and a hunch that comedy and entrepreneurship could share a stage if you got the structure right. The first shows were experiments. Some bombed. The format that survived had four traits: short rounds, audience teams, dual-axis scoring, and prompts that forced full pitches, not bits. SideHustle has been Austin-rooted from day one. The city's combination of founder density and live music infrastructure was the right fit. Pershing Hall became a recurring venue for the show, starting with the February 5, 2026 debut there. Capital Factory has served as community context throughout, anchoring the Austin founder ecosystem the show grew up inside. Friends and fans of the show like Adelle Archer (Eterneva CEO, Shark Tank alumna) and Becca Garvin have shared testimonials along the way.
What it means
Origin stories matter because they explain why a format is shaped the way it is. SideHustle came from a comedy club, not a business school. That's why it's funny first and fundable second. The seven-year arc from the 2019 Kickstarter brand launch to the recurring LIVE show at Pershing Hall in Austin is the proof that the bet on comedy plus entrepreneurship is durable, not a fluke. For the full primer on the show, read what is SideHustle LIVE: the complete guide.
Try it
- Play free at playsidehustle.com
- See us live: Sept 25 at Pershing Hall in Austin. luma.com/playsidehustle
- Email team@playsidehustle.com
Frequently Asked Questions
Where did SideHustle start?+
At The Creek & The Cave, a comedy club in Austin, Texas.
Who are the co-founders?+
Darby Rollins and Tomer Soran are the SideHustle co-founders.