Let’s Raise a Glass to Evopass
In one way it’s tough to say goodbye, in another it’s even tougher to keep pivoting and trialling new variations of the product. For the reasons below, we have unfortunately had to cease operations and close Evopass.
It’s no news to you now that the ticketing industry is dominated by a couple of major players. The Ticketmaster/Live Nation group has attained a highly dominant and controlling position in the market. Rendering our best efforts to disrupt current practices futile. We know that ticket touting is an issue and continues to be, but getting significant traction to stay in the sector proved it requires more than just a good idea, strong team and customer validation.
Alas, we were up against overarching competitors with extensive marketing budgets and long-lasting industry connections. Even as recently as the 13th of August, Ticketmaster has announced the closure of their services Seatwave and GetMeIn, replacing them with a product very similar to the Evopass offering.
However, time was not wasted, that’s for sure. But it’s best to leave now, rather than struggle on flogging something which we cannot bring to commercial scalability.
As many of you are aware we tried many different angles to get the ball rolling. There were definitely glimmers of hope and certainly some impressive results over the last year, which we will take great pride from. Namely, that we managed to over €100,000 worth of tickets in our first three months of operation through the mobile application.
Our favourite event that we ticketed?
Tough one! Has to be a spectacular tie between Trinity VDP’s Pantomime (Maybe personal bias here!), Pirates of the Caribbean, and TMT’s performance of Evita. These were both in the O’Reilly theatre in Belvedere College, both multi-day events and very early on in the Evopass journey.
Thanks to all the early adopters of the platform, your assistance and patience, in the beginning, was really appreciated. Both events had very niche specifications, leading us to come up with a novel ticketing voucher code generation system and a real-time venue capacity management tool. At the end of these two brilliant shows, we looked back as a team (tired as) but very proud of our work, especially from a development point of view.
These events in Belvedere were during the period of the Evopass journey when we operated as a primary ticketing agent. A couple of months later, we pivoted to concentrate on the secondary market (peer-to-peer) for several reasons. Namely, scalability, highly competitive primary sector and resources or connections needed to capture these larger venues and events. The transition to secondary was tough, but we coped extremely well.
We developed the new version of Evopass quickly, and crucially, in time for the NDRC investor pitch day. This lead to some of the highlights during our time at Evopass. Including people buying and selling tickets for All Together Now, Harry Styles, Longitude and lots more!
Longitude, a music festival in Marlay Park Dublin, itself generated 3,672 visitors to the site and 199 accounts created. Our blogs even have 5,423 views which surpassed any of my expectations for sure (people went crazy for our Ed Sheeran ‘Top Tips’ blog series!). Although these are reassuring figures, blogs views, likes on posts and comments can be seen for the most part as vanity metrics.
Vanity metrics
For those unversed in entrepreneurship, vanity metrics are considered titles, prizes, stats and awards which look great, but may not actually increase sales. Vanity metrics are certainly something worth acknowledging, as startups, people and media are interested in the performances of companies and often they can add a degree of validation. However, in many cases these will not increase sales at all, and are merely “Linkedin-post worthy”. Don’t concentrate all your efforts on entering every competition under the sun.
Think:
Facebook likes are cool, but if these people don’t interact with your product and aren’t eventually either buying your product or referring customers and acting as ambassadors, then is there value in sinking a marketing budget into FB? Or any social media for that matter. Granted, in many cases and businesses this is very important, which is why each spend requires significant prior thought and the forecasting of results mapped against commercial returns.
Winning competitions is great craic but if your users aren’t in the audience, or the significance of the competition means nothing to them, then is there value for you? Often financial incentives are incorporated into competitions — and that’s fantastic — but is the time spent making that video, writing that application and preparing for the pitch deterring you from proactive business development? At times, we certainly found ourselves down this rabbit hole having entered every competition and startup programme Dublin has to offer!
HYPE, HYPE, HYPE
With vanity metrics considered, it is nice to look back at the cool events we’ve spoken and pitched at! The Pitch in London, Accenture Leaders on our Level, NDRC, Launchbox Alumni panel talks and I even got the opportunity to Lecture to DIT Staff with Tadhg!
What did we learn about the best way to reach customers?
We thought about this for a while… actually near on a year, trying several different approaches. We tried broadcasting our product on the radio, talking on many of the biggest radio stations in Ireland. This was really exciting, but ultimately wasn’t the correct customer acquisition strategy unless our presence was to be very constant and consistent. Our radio appearances were under the pretence of being the new Irish company aligned with incoming legislation, therefore they were less focused on spurring new users to try the platform.
We linked up with event organisers. This was successful to begin with, but eventually, we realised the difficulty in scaling this model was a substantial roadblock. We found once we targeted events and venues over a certain capacity, that they were contractually obliged to use certain ticketing providers. Hmmmm, how do we get around this?
We knew that the product was a consumer need, but attaining the position to provide this service was tough. The most recent attempt, and what we believe to be the correct approach, is to partner with the artists and their managers. Artists can then endorse your product as the official resale service! Great, we knew what we needed to do, but just couldn’t quite pass the baton all the way around.
Although we spoke to some of the largest artists managers in the world from Deadmau5 to LCD Soundsystem, who were delighted to see people attempting to disrupt the current ticket touting fiasco, we were unable to proceed any further. Ultimately, we realised we just couldn’t provide the same financial kickback to all stakeholders in events as our major competitors could, nor could we underwrite the insurance needed to cover an event cancellation. These were risks big artists and promoters couldn’t take.
Where is ticketing at now?
Every time I told someone about Evopass and what we aim to do I always hear “Thank God, that’s so needed, why doesn’t something like this exist already?!”. The answer is easy, there is simply too much money made now in current resale methods for so many stakeholders. Legislation for change will only do so much and artists can only go so far without entirely inconveniencing their fans with ridiculous restrictions.
In my opinion, change will come through consumer behaviour. If fans refuse to buy anything priced above face value, then you remove the incentive for anyone to sell inflated tickets by eliminating their market. Simple. Will this happen? Probably not, as for a number of people, and indeed large companies, greed and a chance for a relatively easy money making opportunity will trump behaviour idealisms. If someone will buy an Electric Picnic ticket for 400 euro, there will always be someone to sell it to them for that.
The biggest mistake we made?
This is a nice prising and blunt question, but the one anyone looking to start their own business will learn from. Our failures were not entirely due to external factors, as we did indeed made mistakes along the way. Definitely, occasionally the blinkers can come on when receiving feedback. It’s really easy for you to think inside your head: “No they don’t get it, what they are proposing is silly, they don’t know the market like we do”. When in reality, their view mirrors the masses, importantly that of your potential customers.
We were guilty of designing a product based on the positive feedback of one company and their requirements. When, if we had adhered to feedback from all parties we spoke to, we should have sooner realised this was a need of a minority of potential partners. These types of errors lead to setbacks in terms of time lost, ultimately impacting on first mover advantage.
Just lump it on the back burner…
Another misjudgement we made was underestimating the effort and expertise required to rebrand a company, and importantly the time this took us. ‘Ticketchain’ was a placeholder name. Ticketchain represented where we started from, as a blockchain ticketing company. A name which stood for 11 months (sigh) before we finally devised a suitable alternative. As we iterated away from a blockchain solution we knew the name and entire branding needed a refurbishment as well.
In the end, we were fortunate in reaching a rebranding solution which you can read about in a previous blog post. Thanks for Lukasz for helping us out here, we moved on from a brand which looked like a college project, to one which propelled us to a trustworthy international ticketing exchange. The power of branding, don’t underestimate it!
We learned so much, from how to start a company and register with the CRO, to finding out who Evopass’ top chess player is (that title belongs with me). As well as how to operate a company on a shoestring, finding every free to use service around. Including: Trello, Slack, Bullet HQ, Breezy.hr and Medium, among many others!
We’re proud to walk away knowing that we gave it our best shot! Some things didn’t go our way, but that’s business. Having the opportunity to bring your company through Ireland’s top accelerator and stand alongside our peers pitching at the NDRC Investor showcase is something which will last long in the memory.
Would we recommend that everyone have a go at this?
Not necessarily, but if you want to and have the drive and passion to learn how to, then we absolutely do! Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone but it is indeed an incredible journey and learning curve starting with nothing but an idea and building something from the ground up.
For anyone interested in the potential of pursuing a startup opportunity, please do get in contact with us. We’d love to hear about any new ideas and try and help where possible. However, if we cannot personally help we’d aim to connect you with someone we know who can. No matter how early you believe your idea is, we were all there at one point, so do reach out.
You never know, someone may get back to you someday and say “Thanks, your service was excellent, clear to use and efficient.” Those days make you smile!
Our Support Network
Thanks to everyone who supported us along the way, whether you are a parent, friend, advisor, a fellow Irish startup, colleague or mix of all the above! We are truly grateful for the support. From where it all started at the Chainsmiths Hackathon 2016 with the original Ticketchain team of Lucas, Jean-Luc, Aiden, John and ourselves!
We are very proud to have progressed through a series of entrepreneurship programmes and met some fantastic people along the way. From John, Stu and Alison in TCD Launchbox, Colm in New Frontiers, James, Darren, Tommy and Jen in Google Adopt-A-Startup, Helen and Angela with the NDRC Pre-Accelerator and Dermot, Delia and all the VILs in NDRC Launchpad.
It’s been a sensational journey, and each and every one of you has contributed hugely in shaping the progression of Evopass. Thanks to all the teams we have worked with in each program, the advice we got, friends we made, and stories shared over coffee and lunches. They have contributed more to this experience than you could ever imagine.
Most of all, the biggest thank you must go to the core team of Jake, Zach, Geoff, Dean and Tadhg with Anne joining in later months. I’m so proud of what we did manage to achieve together but even happier to call you friends whom I know will stay in touch for years to come.
Thanks to everyone for following and supporting us on this journey, I hope to be able to do the same for as many of you as possible in the future!
Let’s Raise a Glass to Evopass,
Kevin
