Client Spotlight – GigBoss
HOUGHTON, MI – April 2, 2025 – The Innovation Journey, powered by MTEC SmartZone, is a series that highlights our standout clients. This week, we focus on one of our newer clients who developed an app to make musicians’ lives easier. Musicians live a fast-paced life, jumping from gig to gig, and it can be hard to stay organized.
Adam Meckler’s story of founding Gig Boss is fueled by decades of personal experience in the music industry. Before moving to the Upper Peninsula, Adam was a full-time trumpet player, composer, songwriter, and recording artist for 10 years in Minneapolis. He moved to Houghton in the Fall of 2019 to become the Director of Jazz Studies at Michigan Tech University.
While in Minneapolis, Adam was trying to organize his career as a bandleader, freelancer, and manager of 5-6 bands. “I was trying to organize it all,” added Adam. “I was forgetting to get paid, I was forgetting to pay others, and I wasn’t great at keeping spreadsheets. So, my wife said ‘hey, we should start a company that solves this problem”. Adam’s wife, Jana Nyberg, is a co-founder of Gig Boss. She is a vocalist, flutist, and band director who appeared on Season 10 of America Idol, and has been leading her own band for three decades.
Gig Boss is an app designed for musicians to internally manage their schedules and finances. As experienced musicians, Adam and Jana know what it’s like to struggle to manage gigs. There are a lot of logistics that go into making sure every musician shows up at the right place at the right time for the gigs. Gig Boss provides a central location for all the details of those gigs.
Key features include:
- Calendar Integration: have all your gigs in one place, with color coding to indicate if you have been paid or not
- Gig details: time, venue contact, personnel, directions, and PDF and MP3 uploads
- Track Payment: mark things as paid and unpaid, set reminders
- Track Mileage: Automatically track the mileage to each of your gigs on the books page
- Track your Finances: track your money in and money out, and itemize by time frame and by group.
These features are constantly evolving, “we’re in the process of building our base right now,” added Adam. “Learning about what our customers want, it’s exciting to see what industry needs are.” Gig Boss was originally developed as an app for musicians, but consumers are quickly expanding the market for the app. Photographers and dance companies have started using the app to support their businesses. It’s exciting to see how Gig Boss will shape and grow.
Although Gig Boss is nailing an untapped need right now, every journey faces challenges. For Adam one of his biggest challenges early on was coding. Adam had the personal experience of knowing what features to add to the app, but not the skills to develop the app. The solution was to find freelancers with expertise and who were willing to work with a growing startup. Over the past 6-7 years, Adam developed these relationships. He learned how the coding world works, what tools they use, and most importantly how to pay them a fair rate.
Gig Boss has recently joined the MTEC SmartZone community, and we are very excited to help them along in their journey. Jason Mack, Vice President of Business Development saw the potential in GigBoss and Adam.
“From day one, Adam just got it—he understands the musician’s struggle in his bones because he is one himself. That’s what makes Gig Boss so spot-on. Additionally, he pays attention to who uses his solution. That’s a founder who doesn’t just have vision—he’s actually listening to what his customers need and is responding in kind. This isn’t just business savvy; it’s genuine leadership. Adam is exactly the kind of innovator worth supporting.”
Adam expressed his experience with MTEC SmartZone so far, “I’ve been enjoying my sessions with Patrick and Jason. Their leadership and expertise have been valuable for me as I build my company. It’s also been great to have some people who’ve built their own companies that I can bounce ideas off of, and who can speak from their experience when offering guidance.”
MTEC SmartZone is eager to see how we can continue to help GigBoss grow and develop into a million-dollar app.
For more information on GigBoss check out their website https://www.gigbossapp.com
For Adam Mecklar work go to https://www.adammeckler.com/
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About MTEC
Michigan Tech Enterprise Corporation (MTEC) is one of 21 SmartZone Incubators in the State of Michigan. MTEC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization working with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), its mission is to facilitate the creation and ongoing success of high-tech value propositions in conjunction with the local entrepreneurial ecosystem. Since 2003, the MTEC SmartZone has provided mentoring, technical support, and other services to local companies that have led to the creation of over 800 high-tech jobs in the Houghton and Hancock Michigan area.