Hosting guide

This is for someone hosting their first event. It follows the order you will actually do things in: work out what you are hosting, decide how it is paid for, find out whether anyone wants it, write the listing, fill the event, and run the door on the day.

Hyperbukit does the listing, the tickets, the door and the money. The venue, the suppliers, the paperwork and the people are yours. Where this guide says you do something yourself, that is not a gap being glossed over — it is a thing the site does not do, and knowing which is which is most of what a first event needs.

Contents

1. Decide what you are hosting
2. Decide how it is paid for
3. Find out whether anyone wants it
4. Who is helping you
5. The listing is your advert
6. Getting the word out
7. Filling the event
8. Materials, suppliers and paperwork
9. The week before
10. On the day
11. Afterwards
12. If it does not come off

1. Decide what you are hosting

Answer these before you open the hosting form. They decide every field in it.

• Who is it for? An age group, a crowd, a bucket list item. “Everyone” is not an audience, and an advert aimed at everyone reaches nobody.
• What is the point of it? What a guest should be able to say happened afterwards. If you cannot say it in a sentence, the listing will not either.
• How many people? Two numbers: the fewest that makes it worth running, and the most the venue, the boat or the bus can take. Both go on the form, and both are counted in tickets.
• When? Pick the date early — everything else hangs off it.
• Where? A venue, or online. If the venue is not confirmed, do not publish the date.
• How long? Anything over about two hours needs a schedule, a break and somewhere to sit down.
• What could stop it? Weather, a permit, a minimum spend, one supplier who has not replied. Write them all down and sort each into solvable or show stopper. A show stopper you have not solved yet is a good reason to run the free RSVP version first — see section 3.
• How does it end? People have to get home. Parking, a taxi at that hour, somewhere to go on to. Guests ask this, and the Additional details field is where you answer it.
• Who is helping? See section 4.

2. Decide how it is paid for

The hosting form asks how guests pay, and the choice you make decides the rest of the form.

Free

Guests reserve a spot and get a QR ticket. No money anywhere. An email account or a wallet is enough.

Dollars

Card tickets through Stripe. You set up payouts once before tickets can go on sale — set up payouts. An email account is enough.

BUKIT

An on-chain bucket guests deposit tokens into. Needs a Phantom wallet, because creating the bucket is a transaction and only a wallet can sign one.

Both

One event, one capacity, one minimum — paid by card or in BUKIT. Needs a wallet and payouts.

If you already sell tickets somewhere else, host the event free here and tick Tickets are sold elsewhere: add the ticket link and, if you like, the price there. Guests RSVP here (“I’m going”) and buy their ticket on your link; we issue no QR and there is no check-in here. There are then no Hyperbukit fees at all, and whatever the other site charges stays between you and it. The switch is fixed once someone has RSVPed; the link and the price can change any time.

“Do I need a down payment?”

Not from your guests, and not from you. Instead of taking money up front and hoping, you set a minimum, and nothing settles until it is met:

• Minimum attendance — the fewest tickets that make the event worth running.
• Minimum cost to fill ($) — optional: the money you need in hand.

Both have to be reached by the funding deadline. If they are, the event fills and you are paid. If they are not, every guest is refunded in full, processing fee included, and Hyperbukit absorbs the card processing fees. You are never asked for money back, because you were never paid.

Leave the minimum blank and cards are charged as guests buy. It is the one setting where money moves before you know the event is on, so only use it when the event is happening whatever the numbers.

Keep selling after the minimum is met — on every paid event, Dollars included. Off, the moment the minimum is met the cards are charged and the event closes to new guests. On, it keeps selling until it is full or the deadline passes: the cards are charged at the minimum and the rest as they come.

When the money actually moves

Depending on how close the deadline is and who pays you out, a guest’s card is either charged now and refunded in full if the event misses, held on the card and only charged once it tips (the hold is released if it doesn’t), or saved and charged only when it tips. “Tips” means it reaches its minimum by the deadline — the bucket tips over. The button tells the guest which one applies before they confirm, so you do not have to explain it.

A few hard edges worth knowing before someone asks you:

• Card sales close 15 minutes before the funding deadline.
• A saved card that fails when the event fills gives the guest 48 hours to pay another way; after that the ticket goes back on sale.
• Purchases are capped at $2,000 per person per event.
• Card money reaches your bank through Stripe on Stripe’s normal payout schedule once the event fills. BUKIT is sent to your wallet automatically the moment the bucket fills.

The fee

• Card tickets: a 5% processing fee, charged per ticket. By default it is added at checkout, so you receive the price you typed. Tick I’ll cover the processing fee and the guest pays exactly the price you advertise, with the fee coming out of it. Roughly 3% of that 5% is what Stripe and the card networks charge to take the payment.
• Free events: no fees.

As you type a price, the form shows what a guest pays, what you receive per ticket, what you receive at the minimum and at capacity, and what the same tickets would bring in BUKIT. Read that block before you commit to a price; it is the quickest way to find out that a $12 ticket does not pay for the van.

3. Find out whether anyone wants it

The most expensive mistake a first-time host makes is guessing the numbers. Book the venue for sixty, forty people come, and the gap is yours.

So do not guess. Put up the free RSVP event first, let people say they are interested at no cost to them and no risk to you, and hang the real event off it. On the hosting form this lives in Add-ons, as the Bucket Domino chip and the Starts after… field.

1. Publish the free event. People reserve a spot; it costs nothing and commits them to nothing.
2. Create the paid event and chain it to the first one. It is created straight away and listed as “next up”, but it sells nothing — no tickets, no deposits.
3. When the first event has happened, you get an email with the number: “32 people said they’re interested.”
4. You set the price and the capacity against that number and press Publish. It goes live the moment you do.

Two events, two bucket event cards, the whole way through. Nothing merges.

The settings around it:

• Open it for me automatically — off by default, and worth leaving off: reading the number and deciding is the entire point of chaining.
• Head start — for the hours you choose, only the people who RSVP’d to the first event can get a ticket to the second. The default is 48 hours and the most is two weeks. It is first refusal, not a reserved ticket: capacity still applies and tickets go in the order people take them.
• If the first one doesn’t fill — call the second one off too (the default) or run it anyway. Nothing was ever sold on it, so there is nothing to refund either way.
• The chained event’s deadline has to be at least an hour after the first one’s, so the first can finish before the second closes.
• Chaining works on every kind of event. A token-funded one is created shut on chain, so it cannot take a tip before its turn — opening it is one more wallet approval, yours, or ours if you asked for it to open itself.

The rule of thumb: assume about half the people who RSVP will actually turn up. Set the minimum against the half and the capacity against the whole, and a quiet night still clears.

4. Who is helping you

Be honest about this early. A two-hour picnic is a one-person job. A bus, a boat or anything with a supplier is not: somebody has to answer messages, somebody has to buy things, and somebody has to stand at the door while you do the other two.

You can add up to five co-hosts to an event, by email address or wallet, from Edit on the event’s bucket card. Each one is emailed to say so.

A co-host can:

• edit the event,
• add and remove its photos,
• download the attendee list,
• check guests in at the door,
• publish a chained follow-on once it is ready.

A co-host cannot cancel the event, issue or refund tickets, create discount codes, change the co-host list, or touch your payout account. Those stay with you, and so does responsibility for the event.

Two things to weigh before you add someone:

• The attendee list they can download carries your guests’ email addresses. Give it only to people who should have it.
• Co-hosts are not told about each other. You hold the list; if they need to coordinate, introduce them.

The site has one co-host role and does not split it into jobs. Split it yourself, out loud, before the week of the event — money and purchasing, word and messages, door and check-in — and tell each of them which one is theirs.

5. The listing is your advert

An advert that works answers five questions. Your listing has a field for each of them.

Who is this for?

Title and Additional details

What are you doing?

Title, photos, video

Where is it?

Venue name and Address, or the Online tick

Why should anyone care?

Additional details, photos

How do they take part?

The Reserve or ticket button — that one is built in

The rest of the fields, and what they are for:

• Photos — up to ten. They are resized in your browser before they are sent, which also strips the camera metadata, GPS included. One real photo of the last one beats any amount of description.
• Card icon or emoji — the small picture at the top of your bucket card: upload one (any image, a logo included) or pick an emoji.
• Bucket event card flier — the one picture your event is advertised with: the icon, a photo, the video or the title, glowing. Left on Auto it is a photo, then the video, then the icon, then the title. Everything else you added shows as a slideshow under “Show me more”.
• Additional details — what to bring, the running order, how it ends, and the contact for the day. Put a name and a number here if you want guests to have one; nothing on the site hands out your phone number for you.
• Questions guests ask — a short FAQ that folds up under the bucket card. Do I need a life jacket? Is there parking? Every question you answer here is one you do not answer twenty times by message.
• Venue name and Address — guests get a Google Maps link, and the address is what lets people nearby find the event on Explore. Worth filling in even for a well-known venue.
• Online event — no location and no capacity needed.
• Video — a YouTube link or a direct link to an .mp4.
• Event link — the event’s own website, your own ticket page, or your waiver.
• Group chat link — a Discord or WhatsApp invite. Only guests holding a ticket ever see it; it is never on the public page. This is where the day-of chatter belongs, and it saves you being the switchboard.
• Private event — hidden from the public list, reachable only by the link. The share link still works, and it is how you find a private event again.

6. Getting the word out

Send the first advert three to six weeks before the event, and a reminder a week before. Hyperbukit does not send either of those for you.

The site emails guests when they reserve, when you move the time or the place, and when you call the event off. Advertising and reminders are yours, through your own channels and the event’s group chat.

What the site does do:

• Explore lists events near a location, within a radius you choose, and people can search and sort by distance. This is why the address field matters.
• Bucket list matching: an event whose title shares words with someone’s bucket list item is pushed up what that person is shown. Name the thing plainly — “Northern Lights trip” finds people whose list says northern lights; “Operation Aurora” finds nobody.
• Your profile page at /u/<your handle> lists what you are hosting. Over a few events that page is the closest thing you have to a reputation here, so use the same handle each time.
• The share link on every bucket card works for private events too, and carries the sharer’s referral code when a guest shares it.
• Comments on the event, which anyone signed in can post — on a link-only event, only the host, their co-hosts and people holding a ticket.

Then do what the site cannot: post it where the people you described in section 1 actually are, more than once, through more than one channel.

7. Filling the event

Capacity is counted in tickets, not reservations. One guest can reserve up to four tickets in a single go, for themselves and three friends, and a party of four counts as four against both the minimum and the capacity.

The tools, all under Incentives on the hosting form unless noted:

• Tickets you’re holding back — crew, comps, friends you will add by hand. They count against the total and only show as reservations when you send them, so the bucket card does not advertise tickets you have already promised.
• Comps — on a ticketed event, Ticket tools on the event’s bucket card hands a free ticket to an email address or a wallet. It comes out of the tickets you held back, and the guest gets a normal ticket and QR.
• Discount codes — three to twenty letters or numbers, a percentage or a flat amount off, with an optional expiry and a cap on uses. Created with the event, and managed afterwards from Ticket tools. There is no automatic group rate; a code is how you do one.
• Total $ per referral — a dollar amount split between the friend who shared the link and the one who books: $4 = $2 off each. It can be added or raised after the event is created, from Edit on its bucket card, while the event is open. Earned before a card is charged it simply comes off; earned afterwards it is refunded to the same card. Nobody can refer themselves.
• Head start — covered in section 3: first refusal for the people who RSVP’d to the event you chained this one to.

8. Materials, suppliers and paperwork

Hyperbukit does not issue purchase orders, hold invoices, or collect waivers. This part is yours, and it is where first events go wrong.

• Work backwards from the date. Decide when each thing has to be in your hands, not when it has to be ordered, and have everything together two to three days before — not the night before.
• Get one named contact at the venue, with a number that works on the day, and confirm in writing what you have booked and what it includes.
• Send the purchase order, get the invoice back, keep both. Note that your card payout arrives through Stripe after the event goes ahead, while supplier deposits usually do not wait. Plan for that gap, or set the minimum high enough that you are not funding it yourself.
• Waivers. If the activity needs one, it belongs to you and to the operator — the ticket is not a waiver and nothing on the site collects signatures. Link the form from the Event link field, say in Additional details that it has to be signed, and collect them yourself. For a bus, a boat or a similar hired service, the operator’s own terms apply alongside Hyperbukit’s.
• Tips, food, drink, prizes and swag come out of the same money as everything else. If you want them, they belong in the minimum cost to fill, not in the hope that the event overfills.

9. The week before

• Send the reminder. A week out, through the same channels as the advert, plus the group chat.
• Edit what changed. Presentation fields can be edited at any time. If you move the time, the date or the place, everyone holding a ticket is emailed automatically with what changed — their ticket and QR stay valid.
• Know what you cannot change. A ticket price is fixed once the event is open, because guests have already seen it. A token-funded event’s minimum, funding deadline and guest limits live on chain and cannot be edited at all. A chained event that has not been published yet is still fully editable — that is the point of it.
• Download the attendee list from the event’s card and keep a copy somewhere that does not need signal.
• Remember card sales close 15 minutes before the funding deadline.
• Decide your identifier — the thing that tells a stranger they have found the right group. A sign, a flag, a color of shirt. Put it in Additional details and in the reminder.

10. On the day

• Get there 30 to 60 minutes early. Earlier if anything has to be carried, set up or parked.
• Be findable. Stand where the identifier can be seen from where guests will arrive, not where it made sense when you were setting up.
• Check people in. Every ticket has its own QR code, so a party of four can hand one to each person. Scan it with any phone camera: it opens the check-in page, which shows Verified with the ticket code, and you — or a co-host, signed in — tap Mark arrived. Arrivals are recorded per ticket.
• Do not leave anyone behind. The attendee list shows who has arrived. Before you move, leave or start, go through the list and account for everyone who committed: arrived, or told you they were not coming. Chase the rest.
• Write a timetable and hand it out. One row per role — who is doing what, from what time, and who they answer to. There is no timetable template on the site; a sheet of paper with four rows on it is enough, and it is the difference between three people helping and three people asking.

11. Afterwards

• The money. Card takings reach your bank through Stripe on its normal schedule once the event has filled. A filled BUKIT bucket pays 97% to your wallet automatically.
• Add the photos. You or a co-host can add them to the event afterwards, and they show on the bucket card and on the share page. They are the advert for your next one.
• Read the comments, and answer them. They stay on the event.
• Chain the next one. An event that just happened is the best RSVP list you will ever have, and it is already in the Starts after… menu.

12. If it does not come off

• It did not reach the minimum by the deadline. Every guest is refunded in full, processing fee included, automatically. You owe nothing and are asked for nothing. A BUKIT bucket that did not fill refunds its depositors on chain.
• You need to call it off. A free or card event can be canceled by the host while it is open. Card tickets are refunded in full; free ticket holders are emailed, and their tickets stop checking in. A token-funded event cannot be canceled from the site — once its funding deadline passes, refunds unlock on chain.
• A chained event that never opened can be called off at any time, and because nothing was ever sold on it there is nothing to refund and nobody to tell.
• It happened, but badly. You are an independent host, not Hyperbukit, and the event is yours — but tell us anyway. We would rather hear it from you.

Getting help

Write to Outreach@hyperbukit.com. Say which event, and what you need. If it is the day of the event and something is on fire, say that in the subject line.

The rules that govern all of this are in the Terms of Service.