Fast Company is running a feature on Coran Capshaw, the 48-year old Deadhead behind Musictoday, the company that partners with performing artists to sell more than $200 million worth of concert tickets, CDs, merchandise, and fan-club memberships.
Capshaw’s long, strange journey from fan to mogul began in the late 1970s while a student at University of Virginia. He was inspired by Grateful Dead. “I went to a lot of their shows,” he says, “and was exposed to the do-it-yourself model.”
He began booking bands for frat parties in Charlottesville, then got into the venue business. Today he owns office buildings, an amphitheater, various apartments, several restaurants, a club and a microbrewery. C-Ville Weekly once called Capshaw “the Donald of Charlottesville.”
Fast Company calls Capshaw “notoriously media shy.” Apparently, it took more than a year to arrange the interview.