Ludus

“Born in a theatre, not a boardroom” is the origin story for Ludus, a West Michigan-based tech startup that premiered in 2016. Ludus helps schools, community theatres and performing arts centers to sell tickets in a seamless experience for patrons through its digital ticketing sales platform.

Co-founder and CEO Zachary Collins was inspired to start the company during his freshman year of college at Grand Valley State University.

“My former high school theatre teacher, Kevin Schneider, came to me wanting an easier way to sell tickets online for his high school theatre program,” Collins said. “He knew I could build web applications and I agreed, so I built a very simple way to buy tickets. He ended up selling $40,000 worth of tickets to ‘Phantom of the Opera.’”

As a management and entrepreneurship major, Collins saw a business opportunity and worked on the idea throughout his college years. He officially registered Ludus as a company in 2016, with Schneider as his co-founder.

“Over time, we built Ludus line-by-line simply by working closely with customers to understand their needs, and instead of just copying other products on the market, we did it the way we thought best for our customers,” Collins said.

Today, Ludus offers a unique, tailored approach for the 5,000+ organizations – K-12, higher education, community theatre, and performing arts centers – across the U.S. that rely on them for ticketing, marketing, fundraising, memberships, concessions, volunteer management and more.

An Early Interest in Tech and Entrepreneurship

Born and raised in West Michigan, Collins says he was inspired by Silicon Valley growing up. He participated in the Portland Incubator Experiment in Oregon with a company he co-founded during his junior year of high school, Stublisher. Collins says the social app pivoted its focus to become DotDotDash, a successful creative agency with clients ranging from Nike and Mountain Dew to Six Flags. He eventually transitioned out of the company to focus on Ludus full-time.

“I was able to see other tech and business communities at a young age,” Collins said. “Having those learnings and impressions early on helped me see the power of places outside of Michigan and the Valley for building tech startups. In West Michigan, we have a more neighborly approach to building tech startups, leaning on each other for advice and community. I saw this in Portland as well, which was a smaller, tight-knit group of tech startup builders. Everyone had a drive to prove other places can be tech ‘valleys.’ That's what we're seeing here in West Michigan as well.”

Now as the CEO of his own company, Collins competes to attract and retain tech talent in the region, while contributing to West Michigan’s identity as a hub.

“From K-12 to higher ed, we need to focus on growing students with the latest and greatest understanding of how tech and the world work, which is now changing almost every week with the introduction of AI. This isn’t just for computer science majors either; our business majors need it too. Instead of teaching cost-per-unit, a holdover from our manufacturing roots in West Michigan, we should be teaching tech business modeling. When we have that talent, we then need to build and own tech products that are used globally, not just producing them for other companies. We as a tech community need to find our identity. Once we can start pooling talent around that identity, we’ll achieve our ‘valley’ status.”

The Journey to MEDC-Supported Growth

After the company opened its first office in Holland, Michigan, in 2019, Ludus was forced to pivot in 2020 as the pandemic impacted its main customer base. Ludus stayed afloat and assisted organizations by adding built-in streaming capabilities to their websites, allowing them to continue selling tickets and sharing performances virtually.

Ludus grew to over 10 team members and 2,000-plus organizations supported by 2022, and in 2023, earned the No. 706 spot on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies.

The company’s growth and investment in Michigan continued in February 2024, when Ludus announced plans to expand into a new HQ and office space in downtown Grand Rapids. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) awarded Ludus a $140,000 Business Development Program grant to support its commitment to creating up to 34 new, high-paying jobs and investing more than $300,000.

“The MEDC’s support through the BDP grant directly accelerated Ludus’s growth and it allowed us to expand our team, especially engineering, earlier than planned,” Collins said. “That in turn let us move faster on product development while continuing to build the tech talent base in West Michigan. As the team grew, the grant also helped us establish a centralized office where employees could regularly work together. Before this, the team was more distributed, which made collaboration much harder. Having a shared space improved alignment and strengthened our culture during a critical growth phase.”

The MEDC and its partner The Right Place worked together to ensure the company continued its growth in the region rather than in competing sites in Chicago and Austin. 

“The Right Place has been an incredible resource for Ludus as we’ve scaled, and we’ve leaned heavily on Jen Wangler and the broader team for meaningful connections across the local tech ecosystem, such as talent, service providers and advisors,” Collins said. “Whether it’s workforce development, site selection, incentives or simply navigating the local business landscape, it feels like they always have the right expert or resource to plug you into. As a company scales, having a trusted organization that understands both growth-stage challenges and the local ecosystem is incredibly valuable. Ultimately, they just seem to have an answer for everything!”

“Ludus is exactly the kind of company our 10-Year Tech Strategy was built to support—innovative, fast-growing, and choosing to scale in Greater Grand Rapids,” said Jen Wangler, Vice President of Technology at The Right Place. “When we set the goal of adding 20,000 tech jobs and growing tech to 10% of our regional workforce, we knew success would come from companies like Ludus choosing this region over places like Chicago and Austin. Their continued growth here shows that our focus on talent, ecosystem, and business growth is working.”

Growth in Stages

Nearly two years after receiving grant support from the MEDC, Ludus continues to experience growth at a rapid pace. The company moved into a new space in Ada after it outgrew its Grand Rapids office and closed a $12 million raise in 2025. With nearly 70 employees to date, Collins anticipates that number to surpass 80 people by the end of 2026.

The company will also celebrate its 10-year anniversary in July 2026 and has no plans to slow down its run.

“We look forward to inviting the community to celebrate with us at our new office in Ada,” Collins said. “For our company, we are going to continue hiring and expanding our product offerings, creating new opportunities to create and launch exciting new things for an underserved but massive market.”

Learn how the MEDC provides five-star treatment to startups like Ludus.