{"id":36644,"date":"2023-10-20T14:45:22","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/enchanted-week-spells-a-lot-of-work-for-ticket-fairys-ritesh-patel-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:45:22","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:45:22","slug":"enchanted-week-spells-a-lot-of-work-for-ticket-fairys-ritesh-patel-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/enchanted-week-spells-a-lot-of-work-for-ticket-fairys-ritesh-patel-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Enchanted week spells a lot of work for Ticket Fairy’s Ritesh Patel – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/div>\n

Ritesh Patel has been awake for nearly 24 hours when he answers the phone. It\u2019s fast approaching 2am in London, but he\u2019s still hard at work. <\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been a big week for the co-founder of events marketing and analytics platform The Ticket Fairy<\/a>, after pitching at the renowned Y Combinator Demo Day<\/a> early last week and then almost immediately hopping on a plane to the UK.<\/p>\n

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The YC pitch is prestigious and highly valuable, regarded as one of the most important pitches a startup will ever do, with most of the biggest investors in the world present.<\/p>\n

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Two and a half minutes to shine<\/b> <\/h2>\n

Patel says a whole lot of work goes into those brief 150 seconds on stage.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou consult with YC for two weeks prior to demo day to focus it and narrow down the content,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou go through geometrics and the key points you think will resonate with the audience \u2013 to not confuse them but have them wanting to ask more.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Despite having delivered innumerable pitches before this, Patel admits he was \u201csuper nervous\u201d beforehand, but says the YC team does everything they can to make the entrepreneurs feel relaxed.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen you\u2019re about to go on stage they prep you, put their hands on your shoulders and say \u2018this is how you\u2019ll walk up on stage\u2019,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey make you feel like you\u2019re the centre of attention at all times and not just a number.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Incentivising ticket sales<\/b><\/h2>\n

The Ticket Fairy aims to reduce the risks involved in promoting an event and increase ticket sales through incentivising word-of-mouth transactions and automated ad campaigns.<\/p>\n

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Patel knows these risks all too well, having run over 400 events since 2000. He says he once lost the equivalent of a year\u2019s rent on just one event.<\/p>\n

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The Sydney-founded San Francisco-based startup is a ticketing, marketing and rewards system that Patel says can increase revenue by 15-25% through incentivising word-of-mouth sales and creating intelligently automated advertising campaigns using a host of demographical data.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOur business is really complex, but we get pigeon-holed into the likes of Moshtix,\u201d Patel says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhat we actually are is a full service marketing company and data platform that happens to have an ecommerce front-end.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There are four main aspects to the business model. Referral marketing involves incentivising people to convince their friends to also buy tickets to an event by giving them a monetary reward.<\/p>\n

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The service also collects demographical data on the customers, and tracks where each purchase is originating from in order to spend marketing money most efficiently.<\/p>\n

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It also offers to run an entire ad campaign for a promoter, utilising the range of information it has to allocate the money in different channels.<\/p>\n

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The Ticket Fairy was able to boast some impressive stats in the pitch as well, with $3.3 million in ticket sales, $1 million in Q2 already, and $200,000 in just the last week.<\/p>\n

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For every $1 a promoter is spending on rewards through the platform, $30 in additional revenue is generated.<\/p>\n

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\u201cNowhere else can they get this return on investment,\u201d Patel says.<\/p>\n

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The Ticket Fairy takes a 5% commission on sales, and with a $50 billion global market there\u2019s huge room for growth.<\/p>\n

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The back story<\/b><\/h2>\n

The startup was founded in Sydney in November 2011, but only really started to get off the ground last year.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAlmost all of the traction has been since June last year. The last 13 months have been when the business has taken off,\u201d Patel says.<\/p>\n

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It has received $605,000 in investments , including from Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as the startup looks to incorporate eSports into its offerings.<\/p>\n

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Although the last week has been non-stop for Patel and he\u2019s often found himself working long into the night, things are set to get even busier.<\/p>\n

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The startup is still delving through emails they received following a TechCrunch<\/i> article<\/a> earlier this month, and a lot investor interest following the YC pitch.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe next few months are really big,\u201d Patel says.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou can see everything take shape, and you need another 36 hours in a day to take care of it. It focuses your brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As the conversation ends it\u2019s nearing 2.30am, but Patel says he isn\u2019t about to get some much-needed rest. He\u2019ll be going straight back to work.<\/p>\n

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Raising your <\/i>first round of capital<\/i><\/a>? Starting a <\/i>crowdfunding campaign<\/i><\/a>? Want to grow your business <\/i>with Instagram?<\/i><\/a> StartupSmart School can help.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ritesh Patel has been awake for nearly 24 hours when he answers the phone. It\u2019s fast approaching 2am in London,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,13,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36644"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}