One of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival's top venues, The Gilded Balloon is the brainchild of artistic director and managing director Karen Koren, a serial innovator in the field of comedy and event production for over 25 years! The Gilded Balloon's 2013 season was another fantastic success, with over 100 shows per day staged in its nine venue spaces during the Festival. One of the highlights involved a Scotsman Fringe First Award for a brand new comedy commissioned by Karen, entitled "Kiss Me Honey, Honey!" – the first for the Gilded Balloon team. The show's debut met with great critical acclaim and sell-out shows.

The Spin team caught up with Karen in the middle of August, at the midway point in the manic three weeks of the Fringe season. We asked her for an insight into the Gilded Balloon's recipe for success.

"I set up The Gilded Balloon in 1986, in recognition of the need for a new type of venue that would give artists somewhere different and exciting to perform. The Festival venues at this time were very much theatre-based, and we felt we could offer a real alternative. We started with a 150-seat venue in Cowgate, staging seven shows a day, which rose to fifteen venues at its height there, just before the fire in 2002. We had set up in Teviot Row House in 2001, thankfully, in the light of what happened the year afterwards, and despite the devastating consequences of the Cowgate fire, we were able to keep going and rebuild.

"Today, we have nine venue spaces, ranging from a 350-seat theatre to just 50 seats. The Gilded Balloon sits at the centre of the Fringe today, and we have worked hard to make it the real hub of activity. I get an amazing amount of applications each year, and try and see as many performers as possible before putting together each year's programme. For example, we have a track record for giving lots of Australian comedians their first opportunity.. I discovered Tim Minchin in a small venue in Melbourne. He then spent two years performing at the Gilded Balloon before moving over to the UK, and he is now enjoying huge success after composing the music and lyrics for the hit show, Matilda the Musical. It is very rewarding to be able to encourage new talent – it's part of what we try to do at The Gilded Balloon, on the basis of supporting the performer and helping to set them on the path to success. We love to welcome back old friends too – Jenny Eclair and Alistair McGowan, for example, have been great supporters over the years.

"A lot of our success is down to how we are organised. We have a terrific technical team, all of whom take great pride in their work. There is a regular team of five working all the year round. with the Technical Team rising to around 30 during the Festival period. Support is also very important to us – we have been working with Orbital since 1992, and they do a very good job for us. Our production manager, Stephen Arnold, has been here for three years now – he focuses on what it takes to maintain Gilded Balloon as a professional space at all times, looking at what's best for the company and how to evolve it. With audiences hitting around 145,000 during this year's Festival, we have a huge responsibility to do things really well. We pride ourselves on innovating across the board – from the programme itself, through to how the venue works and the whole audience experience.

"As for the future, we anticipate seeing a rise in the amount of TV and web-based work, including our own programme production. We are also planning to announce a new venue for next year – maybe taking us back to our roots in Edinburgh – an exciting prospect. It's quite simply a wonderfully entertaining and rewarding job – tough and challenging at times, but also totally addictive!"