“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”
This blog was or originality posted by Maarten — GUTS on his blog.
As Rahm Emanuel explains; Although the situation is horrific you should not waste an opportunity to do things you could not do before. We need to take responsibility and do what we can to solve this crisis as soon as possible, but we need not forget that opportunities arise …
A quarantined perspective from GET Protocol CEO Maarten Bloemers.
From an empty office and amidst the chaotic and dramatic developments going on in the world, I’d like to share some insights and outlooks from where we stand and what is to come.
Everyone is affected
Needless to say, these are extraordinary times. The impact of the virus outbreak on society has already been significant. Without a doubt you will have noticed the ripple effects of the virus in the equity, bonds and crypto markets. The event industry is particularly affected as group gatherings are more or less forbidden — for good reason.
As nearly any other business worldwide, we are seeing a severe decrease in revenue for the foreseeable future. Regardless our outlook on the future remains positive.
Doing things right
A big part of the GET Protocol proposition is innovation that actually benefits users. In a way this unfortunate crisis allows us to demonstrate what smart ticketing can do, beyond ‘just’ anti-scalping.
Last year we have observed several of our direct competitors copy several of our innovative smart ticking features. We regard this is a huge compliment. However, as to maintain their old business model and infrastructure, these changes were always done in a superficial manner — only putting the ticket in an app with a changing QR code for example.
In the wake of the virus regulations with mass rescheduling and cancellation refunding, it has become clear that our top-down smart ticketing approach is superior to that of those that have half-assed it. The dynamic nature of our smart ticket provided flexibility for adjusting prices, rescheduling and our clients could communicate directly to the actual ticket holders. Refunds are executed with the click of a button without having to worry about what tickets ended up in the secondary markets.
It’s good to see that our system has taken away some of the stress and hassle that usually comes with postponement and cancelation.
Meanwhile we are using this time to focus on building and tweaking more out-of-this-world features. There is a good chance the event industry and our economy will be very different once this crisis is under control and we will be ready for it.
Prepping for greatness
In the months leading up to the outbreak we have actively started marketing and promoting the GET Protocol proposition to the market. In light of current market conditions we have decided to save up our gunpowder for when the smoke clears.
This means that we will be saving our resources and large announcements until we are certain we can hit the ground running.
We have discussed this new strategy with our listing partner in Korea as well as with the getTicket team. All agreed to postpone our full-fledged marketing campaign and listing for when the ticket sales would start in Korea.
The upcoming listing will occur in accordance with the ticket sale of one of Korea’s largest K-Pop events.
Fortunately, it is starting to look like South Korea is winning the fight against the virus. We are hearing positive sounds from our partners there. The getTicket team is working in full force to prepare for when things return to normal.
As soon as the bans are lifted, we will be first out of the gate.
In the meantime
For now, we will continue improving our ticketing product as we have been doing for years. We have the opportunity to allocate more of our development efforts to improve our system and work on extending our innovative edge over our competitors. Times are tough for all, but we believe less so for our organisation. From this crisis opportunity shall rise and we will seize it.
The GET Protocol back-end team is doing the same, as they are working on adding features such as GET staking and continuous burning.
There is a lot to look forward to, and we are more focussed now than ever. We are monitoring all developments in this crazy world we live in, and can’t wait to roll out what we have prepared.
