We built PLEC because planning a celebration should never feel like a second job.

Nicolas Munoz and Luke Alexander have been friends since they were seven years old. They grew up together in Houston, Texas, went through school side by side from first grade through their senior year, and even after parting ways for college — Nicolas to the University of Pennsylvania, Luke to the University of Texas at Austin — they stayed close. They visited each other on campus. They kept the conversation going. And they always knew they would build something together.

The idea for PLEC came on an ordinary night in June 2025. Nicolas and Luke were sitting on Luke's couch, catching up the way old friends do, when the conversation drifted toward business ideas. Nicolas brought up the headache he had experienced as treasurer of his fraternity, Beta Theta Pi, trying to book venues for events. Luke knew the feeling. He shared stories from his time with Kappa Sigma: venues double-booked at the last minute, prices renegotiated right before events with no leverage to push back. The frustrations were different in detail but the same at the root: planning an event should not be this hard.

What started as a conversation became a brainstorm that lasted most of the night. They talked about what a better version of this experience would look like. Somewhere you could compare venues and spaces without relying on Yelp and word of mouth. A place where you could book not just a venue but every service you needed for your event — DJs, caterers, photographers, equipment rentals — all in one place. A platform that worked for everyone: a college student throwing a party, a company planning a team happy hour, a parent planning a five-year-old's birthday. A site where you could bring the party to you, not just go to it. One by one the ideas kept coming. By the time they finally decided to call it a night, they had the outline of something real. Neither of them slept much.

In August 2025, a close mutual friend and early believer gave them the capital to get started. They used it to build a founding team: developers Danny Tran (now CTO) and Joseph Turcios, both from UT Austin, joined alongside Blake Taranto (Head of Onboarding) and Allan Elson (CMO), both from Penn. Together, the six of them got to work.

Building the product was an exercise in iteration. The platform had to be flexible enough to serve everyone from a nightclub to a solo magician, from a corporate events director to a mom who just wanted one simple place to plan her child's party. Features were added, reconsidered, and refined. Catering was brought into the marketplace. A party package feature was built so users could book everything at once. Ticketed events for public gatherings were added to the roadmap.

Building supply was a different kind of challenge. In the early months, with no live product and no reputation to point to, the team cold-called, cold-emailed, and sometimes simply walked into local venues hoping to talk to an owner. The value proposition was not a hard sell — providers immediately understood why a platform like PLEC would help them reach more customers. What took time was trust. PLEC was new. There was no track record. But the team stayed relentless, and slowly, the supply grew.

The four cities that PLEC is launching in — Houston, Austin, Dallas, and Philadelphia — are not a coincidence. They are the cities where our team lives, went to school, and has real relationships. We know these markets. We have people there. We are starting where we have the deepest roots because that is the right way to do this.

PLEC stands for Plan Literally Every Celebration. But to us, it means more than that. Celebrations matter. They mark milestones, bring people together, and create the memories that stay with us longest. We built PLEC to make sure that pulling one off never gets in the way of actually enjoying it. Whatever you are celebrating, however big or small, PLEC is here to help you plan it.

Stay relentless.

— The PLEC Team