Alumni Spotlight: Kevin Hubschmann (B’13), Founder of Laugh.Events

Interview by Genesis Ramirez (B’25)

Meet Kevin Hubschmann (B’13), Founder of Laugh.Events. Learn more about how Kevin is using humor, laughter, and play as tools for professional development and team bonding in the workplace.

Was there any specific aspect of your time at Georgetown that influenced you to pursue entrepreneurship?

Being in the McDonough School of Business was helpful to narrow down my choices for declaring a major, but I still didn’t know what box I fit in. When it came time to declare, I went with Marketing simply because I found that those classes stimulated my creativity and I loved the qualitative approach to business. That said, I found it hard to find internships that I cared about. My friends were getting these great finance internships and I thought I was falling behind. When Georgetown launched the Entrepreneurship Fellowship Program, I finally felt passionate about a speciality I could dive into.

All this time I was trying to fit into a box, but this fellowship taught me that entrepreneurship is for those who fit outside of the box. Learning about starting your own business felt like a taste of every major that I couldn’t decide on. When I took our first class of the fellowship with Professor Will Finnerty, I was hooked. The lectures were amazing, the guest speakers were inspiring, and the assignments were outrageous. I remember one of them was to interview someone you could never get an interview with, and I chose Steve Jobs. Believe it or not, Steve…never got back to me. Even though I never got the interview, it was my first taste of going for it and failing and realizing that the failure really wasn’t that bad. 

The program also required us to enter entrepreneurship competitions, so I entered Rocket Pitch where I got to do a two minute pitch to a room full of people in the Lohrfink Auditorium. My legs were shaking from the adrenaline, but I found my footing and got the crowd into it. I won third place and the People’s Choice award. My friends may have come in droves to vote for the People’s Choice, but third place was voted on by the judges so that was a great confidence boost.

What inspired you to create Laugh.Inc?

While living in New York City after college, I was one of the first 10 employees at a company called Splash, an event marketing software. Although those first couple of years were hard, mainly because they didn’t pay me at first, it was an amazing experience looking back. I did everything for the company including customer support, project management, and eventually sales. When they saw I had a knack for sales, they slotted me in as the first sales person and I eventually built out the sales and customer success teams.

I also got to experience a company from a seed stage to raising for Series A and B, and the ever-changing culture. Our CEO is and was an absolute character, and I got to watch him navigate all of this as well as make our culture incredible and going to work was so fun. My friends would hear me talking about what our office was like, the crazy events that were thrown for employees, and for sure thought I was making it all up. Working at Splash showed me that work can and should be fun.

Throughout all of this, I immersed myself in the NYC comedy scene and got involved with the Upright Citizen’s Brigade, did stand up around the city at places like Gotham Comedy Club, and eventually started hosting comedy shows at the Splash office featuring the best comedians in NYC. We called it Laugh.Events. Eventually, I only went into the office to throw comedy shows, and that’s when I realized that my flame at Splash had gone out and I needed to move on full-time to comedy. 

In February 2020, I moved on from Splash to run Laugh.Events full time, which at the time was comedy shows in company offices. Then the pandemic happened, offices shut down, and this leap I took looked like a total disaster. But by April, the Splash CEO reached out and encouraged me to host some virtual corporate events. So, I put all of my energy into virtual comedy shows and they became a huge hit. I reached out to all of my comedy friends who were out of work, and frankly hit the hardest during the pandemic, and had them join these Zooms. These were some of the biggest names in comedy who should have been doing theaters and arenas, and I had them working alongside me on Zoom shows. It was amazing and received incredibly well, with people reaching out that we really were changing their lives with the laughter we were giving them. From there, I knew I wanted to sell Laughter as a Service (LaaS).

What role do you think comedy can play in the workplace? How does it impact corporate culture?

As we found ourselves emerging from the pandemic, there was a pause on spending across every company for travel and entertainment. We literally went from doing 13 events the previous month with Google to now being shut out from working with anyone like that indefinitely, at least in an entertainment capacity. 

It was at this time that I started to think of humor’s role in a learning and development capacity, because while companies may stop spending on entertainment, they will always be looking for ways to level up their team. We found that improv was the best corporate event that a company could do because it focused on listening, communication, working together as a team, and an insane amount of laughter. It was the perfect blend of entertainment, professional development, and team building.

We started working with Dr. Natalie Dattilo, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and former director of psychology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to help us understand the psychology of laughter and why it was a valuable tool for managing stress, as well as creating bonds between teammates. It was really cool to dive deep into this topic with a true expert in the field and validate the work we had been doing.

What does a day in your life look like?

I try to ease into my days and take advantage of being in control of my own schedule. I try not to use my phone or any devices for the first hour of the day and warm my body up with some yoga and movement. Since I work from home and my wife and I run the business together, we grab some coffee and take our dog for a nice long walk – ideally taking her off leash in the park and watching her play and have a huge smile across her face. It’s the best.

I start working around 9:30 a.m. and go until however long the day takes me. Every day is different because we are managing and growing our existing events business, while also launching our creative agency Laugh.Studio (a comedy based creative agency for brands looking to infuse comedy into their marketing and advertising). I collaborate with other comedians and write scripts and jokes, and ideate on concepts to pitch to clients. 

I also perform stand up comedy at night, whether that is at our Afterwork Comedy Shows or elsewhere.

My driving force behind running this business is that I love comedy and while I grow these businesses, I also want to get better every day at the craft of joke writing and performance.

What is the hardest part of your job? 

The hardest part is probably the anxiety that comes with relying on your own business to support yourself financially and professionally. When some things go wrong that are out of your control, you don’t really have anyone to point to except yourself. You have to pick yourself off the ground or rely on the people who care about you to lift you up by your bootstraps when you start doubting yourself – shout out to my wife. There is a ton of failure, but that makes the wins feel really good.

What is your favorite part of being an entrepreneur?

Not to be the guy that says the hardest part is his favorite part, but I love the challenge that comes with solving problems. Being an entrepreneur is a constant solving of the Rubik’s Cube – sometimes you can do it in record time and other times it’s gonna take a bit to get out of a pickle (note: I have never solved a Rubik’s Cube in my life).

Is there anything you wish more people knew about your industry?

Humor is a tool that everyone should be using on a daily basis. I don’t mean cracking a joke or repeating a joke you heard on a stand up special, but I mean using the tools that stand ups and improvisers use on stage to make a big impact in your daily life. Listening, pausing, communicating, supporting, and tons of other lessons that I have learned through stand up and improv can be used in everyone’s daily lives to make them better co-workers and co-people.

Finally, what is one piece of advice you would give to any Georgetown student who might be interested in entrepreneurship?

Use the first part of your career to work in a fast-paced environment like a startup or something similar. If you are really passionate about growing a company or working for yourself one day, watch someone do it first and learn as much as you can from that experience. Not only do you get to see what it is like to grow revenue, raise money, and engage with clients, but you get a lot of friends and mentors along the way. One of my favorite things about working at Splash in those early days were the people that I got to meet whose skill sets were so wildly different from mine. It gave me an incredible perspective on all the pieces that make the machine run.

Also, fail and fail often. In both stand up and business, the more you fail, the better you get and the less scared you are to take another swing. You learn way more from your failures than your successes.

Closing Notes

Georgetown was instrumental in getting me going toward the path I am on and I’m super grateful and honored to call the Hilltop my alma mater. Connect with me on LinkedIn to follow us on our journey to help humor, laughter, and play be a staple of the workplace.