From One Instagram Promo to The List Access: Sebastian’s Story Author: Reinout te Brake Published: 2026-10-15T21:59:51+02:00 Updated: 2026-10-15T22:02:46+02:00 Canonical: https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/from-one-instagram-promo-to-the-list-access-sebastians-story Source: https://reinouttebrakecom.wordpress.com/2026/10/15/from-one-instagram-promo-to-the-list-access-sebastians-story/ My son Sebastian is 18. What started with sharing an event promotion on Instagram has become a business he is building himself. He saw an opportunity in something he already enjoyed: discovering events, sharing them and bringing people together. He started approaching organisers, building WhatsApp groups and finding people who wanted to take part. Over time, those individual connections became The List Access. Today, The List Access has more than 3,600 members in its WhatsApp community and over 9,200 followers on Instagram. It connects young people aged 18–25 with club nights and dance festivals across several Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. Collaborations include Club Roto, Overbruggen, A Day at the Park and Rooftop Tapes, with guestlist opportunities, ticket sales with also discounts and promotional campaigns that he coordinates with organisers. I have watched that happen up close. I have also watched him come close to giving it all up. Twice. That is part of this story too. The work behind a guestlist spot The basic idea is easy to understand. Event organisers want to reach people who might actually come. Young people want to discover events and get access to guestlist places, ticket deals and nights out with their friends. Sebastian brings them together. Through The List Access, community members can share agreed event promotions on Instagram in exchange for a guestlist place. Organisers get their event in front of people through the accounts of the community itself. Making that work takes considerably more effort than sharing a video. He approaches organisers and discusses collaborations. He sets up event groups, distributes the promotional material supplied by organisers and explains what participants need to do. He follows up, checks screenshots, keeps track of who has completed the promotion rounds and coordinates guestlists. There are questions to answer, reminders to send and expectations to manage on both sides. An organiser needs to know that the agreed promotion happened. A participant needs to know whether their place is confirmed. And all of that we are now in the process of automating it, so he can scale further. He is also learning the commercial side: negotiating campaign fees, earning commission on ticket sales and showing organisers what a collaboration delivered. The List now brings together event discovery, guestlist opportunities, ticket offers and giveaways. The website includes an events calendar with line-ups, information and direct ticket links. Alongside the WhatsApp community, he works on Instagram and TikTok, with event videos and highlights on YouTube. Behind all of that is a growing amount of coordination, administration and follow-through. Twice, he nearly stopped Building a community sounds exciting. Chasing people who have agreed to share a promotion and then fail to do it is less exciting. That frustration nearly made him stop twice. People wanted the guestlist place, but some were considerably less enthusiastic about doing their part. His own generation can test his patience quite effectively. I understand why that got to him. He had made commitments to organisers. When participants did not follow through, he was the one who had to deal with it. He kept going. He continued following up, setting expectations and working out how to make the next campaign run better. That persistence is one of the things I admire most. I have seen the moments when he had had enough. I have also seen him get back to work. Working together has its moments I help him with advice, and we build the website together. It is an honour to be involved in something he cares about so much. It also leads to arguments. We disagree about design, wording, priorities and how things should work. Sometimes those disagreements are calm. Sometimes they are father-and-son disagreements, with everything that comes with that. We talk it through until we reach agreement. He has strong opinions. He questions my advice and pushes back when he thinks I am wrong. Having spent more than 20 years building, funding and advising businesses does not automatically win me an argument at home. Nor should it. He knows his community, speaks to the organisers and deals with the consequences of the decisions. I want him to think for himself. I also occasionally have to remind myself of that while he is doing it. Why I am proud The WhatsApp community he built matters. So do the organiser relationships, the campaigns and the business taking shape around them. What makes me proud is seeing how much of it came from his own initiative. He started conversations, asked for opportunities and took responsibility when people said yes. He is learning how to sell, negotiate, organise, communicate and deliver while doing the actual work. Some days that goes well. Other days it is frustrating, and he has to work out what to change. He is stubborn. Anyone who has worked on the website with him can confirm that. That same stubbornness helped him carry on when he nearly stopped. It makes him defend his ideas, try again and keep building something that is his own. I am proud of you, Sebastian. And it is a privilege to help. Explore what he is building at The List Access (https://thelistaccess.nl/).