Sustaining Arts with Digital Solutions | Matt Yau from CultureSuite

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Alright everyone, welcome to today’s episode of Pathmonk Presents. Today we are joined by Matt Yau, the marketing manager at Culture Suite. Matt, welcome to the show.

Matt Yau: Hello. Thank you for inviting me on.

Rick: Of course. Let’s get to the basics for a second. Matt, I just want to talk about Culture Suite and maybe understand a little bit more — what’s the big idea behind your company? I know we talked about the company itself a little bit offline, and you said it’s quite niche. If you were explaining it to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what you do?

Matt Yau: I might be quite verbose here, because there’s some context I need to explain first that I feel would be helpful. Culture Suite operates in the arts and culture sector, primarily targeting ticketed cultural organizations. Many people will know this already, but the arts and culture sector is under attack a bit. In recent years, we’ve seen governments around the world slash funding or say that culture is a luxury for the elite, generally undermining the value of arts and culture and saying that it has minimal economic value.

I won’t go into the politics of why all of this is not just wrong but also dangerous to human existentialism, but at Culture Suite, we feel these challenges very deeply. We worry — to be honest, I worry — about the sector. I walk in there because I access culture all the time, and I want to be able to continue to access that culture. If we don’t help fix these problems, it’s entirely possible that arts and culture will one day genuinely be limited to only the affluent and elite audiences.

You only have to look at the increase in festival and concert prices to see how they’re completely out of touch with the cost-of-living crisis. One of the big challenges in the sector is definitely the economic landscape. As I mentioned, funding has consistently been cut over the past decade. Culture Suite is tackling this by making digital more sustainable for arts and culture organizations.

But before I go into that, there’s more context — it’s not just about the external economic challenges. We’ve also noticed some ways of working within the sector that we felt needed to be addressed and updated. Culture Suite was born out of a merger between two agencies in arts and culture: previously it was Peppered, based in Rotterdam, and After Digital, based in Glasgow. These were two agencies building websites for arts venues.

Over time, we recognized a common problem: venues were spending large sums every few years on complete website rebuilds, which simply isn’t sustainable in a sector where funding is being cut and where they have economic pressures. As web development agencies, we were also spending large sums rebuilding the same web components for each project due to differing tech stacks. So we might be building a ticketing integration on WordPress, and then someone changes to Drupal or Ghost, and we have to rebuild that integration again — very costly. That cost gets passed on and builds financial pressure in the sector.

We noticed that arts and culture organizations don’t do this when it comes to other technologies like their ticketing system — they don’t rebuild it every time. So we asked, why should each website be painstakingly built from scratch every time?

To solve this, we created an all-in-one digital platform called Peppered (we kept the name from the Rotterdam agency). Peppered is specifically designed for arts, culture, and entertainment venues. It comes with everything these organizations need right out of the box — integration with ticketing systems, flexible content blocks, personalization tools, accessibility, compliance — all of it available through a subscription rather than an upfront cost.

Previously, arts and culture venues used generic CMSs like WordPress and reconfigured them to fit their unique needs. Not only is that expensive, but it’s also under-optimized.

What truly makes us different is our community approach. Venues have a direct influence over our development roadmap. When one venue suggests a feature and we build it into Peppered, all other Peppered-powered websites can use that feature at no additional cost. We don’t hide it behind a paywall. This creates a virtuous cycle where collective knowledge grows with each adoption and strengthens the cultural ecosystem.

A recent example comes from the National Opera and Ballet in Amsterdam. They discovered that one person would often buy four tickets and share the other three with friends or family. In effect, they didn’t know anything about up to 75% of their audience — only the buyer. This makes audience development difficult.

They came to us with this problem, and we collaborated in workshops to develop a ticket-sharing solution within Peppered. Now, they can track who those additional attendees are. Other platforms do ticket sharing too, but this shows how venues have control over Peppered’s future — how it looks and functions — and we improve it together as a community.

Again, none of this is locked behind a paywall. It’s available to all of our venues. We have many examples like this over the years. This is just one way we’re democratizing technology in arts and culture.

Rick: That’s pretty cool. So the way I understand it, you’re making it more accessible for these organizations to promote themselves, their events, and culture, right?

Matt Yau: Absolutely. Part of it is the sustainability of the funding model, which I’ll explain more, but another part is making their work and life easier — easier website management, event promotion, all of that.

Rick: Makes a lot of sense. That’s pretty cool. I’m curious — how much of a role does your website play in pulling in those organizations? If you could share what you’ve learned about what really works for your site or your clients’, that’d be great.

Matt Yau: To be honest, our website doesn’t play a particularly big role in attracting prospects compared to other channels. The arts and culture sector is quite traditional, and word of mouth is one of the most reliable and biggest channels. Venues often ask their peers who they should use for suppliers.

SEO performs, but it’s not our biggest lead generator. The sales cycles are long — venues typically renew their websites every three to five years. But the website plays a key role in converting prospects. It delivers all our messaging, case studies, promotes events and webinars.

Right now, I’d say our main weaknesses are a lack of human touch and lack of video demos. Even though we provide digital technology, we hate being seen as just a tech company. The tech is just a tool. What we care more about is the people — our team, our venue community.

We often say we’re a collective of thinkers and arts and culture enthusiasts. Everyone on our team spends their free time thinking about these problems because we’re also frequent users of the sector.

One of our current strengths is the content — the copywriting and messaging. I’ve noticed that in B2B, especially in arts and culture, companies often talk too much about themselves. Too much “I,” “we,” “us.” There’s a great book, Nobody Wants to Read Your Sht* by Steven Pressfield. It’s for copywriters, but honestly for anyone trying to reach prospects.

The book teaches that no one cares about your story until you connect with them. That’s why “I/we/us” language falls flat. Businesses constantly do this — talking about themselves too much — and it just doesn’t work. Instead, we need to place our audience at the center of the story.

The slightly uncomfortable truth is that we’re all just trying to make sense of things. Everyone wants to feel heard and valuable. Businesses think their product is the next best thing — but that’s rarely the case. What people want is meaningful connection, and the way to do that is with empathy.

You need to understand people’s problems and speak to those problems tangibly. Saying “we do this” isn’t helpful, especially at early touchpoints. Later in the funnel — sure. But early on, focus on your prospects and their pain points.

Rick: It’s about them, right? Not about you. But it’s about you — the reader, not the business.

Matt Yau: Exactly.

Rick: Let’s switch gears a little. Tell us about you — what’s a typical day like in your role?

Matt Yau: It varies a lot, but I’ll try to distill it. I work remotely, so the first thing is usually catching up on Slack messages. Then I check my calendar and Asana for the day’s priorities. We work in sprints, so every Monday we have sprint planning and every Friday a review.

A lot of my time is spent writing — content for the site, sales decks, webinar emails, case studies. I do user interviews, talk to clients. Then I also work with our product team on messaging for new features and releases. Sometimes it’s customer success work. Sometimes it’s webinars or partnership calls. I also do sales enablement, SEO research, and manage freelancers or our agency partner.

It’s a wide-ranging role, which I love. But honestly, it’s a lot. In a company this size, you wear a lot of hats, and every day is a mix of deep work and context switching. My calendar can fill up fast if I’m not careful, so I block time to focus. And I try to go for a walk most days to clear my head.

Rick: Makes sense. Sounds like a lot of spinning plates, but very rewarding. Now, I’d love to jump into our rapid-fire round — quick questions, quick answers. Are you ready?

Matt Yau: Yep, go for it.

Rick: Cool. Reading or watching?

Matt Yau: Reading.

Rick: Last book or article you picked up?

Matt Yau: I reread This Is Marketing by Seth Godin. There’s a quote I love: “People like us do things like this.” It’s a reminder to speak to identity and belonging.

Rick: That’s a good one. Okay — if you had a magic wand and could instantly fix one frustrating thing in marketing, what would it be?

Matt Yau: Lead scoring. It’s always guesswork and takes forever to get right.

Rick: What’s one repetitive task you’d love to put on autopilot forever?

Matt Yau: Google Search Console error resolution. It’s like an endless game of whack-a-mole.

Rick: If you could give your past self a pep talk at the start of your marketing journey, what would you say?

Matt Yau: Stop trying to be clever — focus on clarity.

Rick: I love that. Finally, if someone forgets everything we talked about today, what’s the one thing they should remember about the work you’re doing at Culture Suite?

Matt Yau: That we’re using technology to protect and democratize access to arts and culture. It’s not just about websites — it’s about sustaining the cultural sector for everyone.

Rick: Beautifully said. Matt, thank you so much for being on the show today. Where can people go if they want to learn more?

Matt Yau: Just head to culturesuite.com — you’ll find everything there. Or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Rick: Awesome. We’ll link it all in the show notes. Thanks again, Matt. Hope to speak again soon.

Matt Yau: Thanks, Rick. This was great.

Rick: Thanks, everyone.