Project 91 produces events in New York, including Tiësto shows. Every show runs on people who send a bill afterward: DJs, sound technicians and audio engineers, ticket scanners, photographers and multicam video crews, plus gear rentals down to Pioneer CDJs.
A note up front: Duncan Abdelnour, Cleo Pay's founder, is a partner in Project 91. Before Cleo, he was the one keeping up with its payments, on top of the venues he is part of. We are telling the story with that tie up front.
The switch
Project 91 opened its Cleo account in April 2025 and paid its first 10 invoices that month. The volume follows the event calendar. In June 2026 it paid 147 invoices, its busiest month so far.
What runs on Cleo now
The payees do most of the typing. 805 of the 975 invoices Project 91 has paid were sent in by the DJ, technician or vendor, not entered by Project 91's team. The line items read like a show budget: "DJ set," "sound technician, 2p to 12a," "ticket scanning," "multicam clips," "Pioneer CDJ 3000."
Seven people at Project 91 work in its Cleo account. They review and approve, and the median invoice is paid 4.3 days after it comes in. 151 of its 352 payees have been paid more than once.
At a conservative 10 minutes saved per invoice, that is at least 162 hours of processing Project 91 did not do.