Jigar is the co-founder and CEO of The Ticket Fairy, a digital marketing, ticketing and analytics solution that helps live events to increase revenue and lower risk, through greater reach and data, and lower operational costs. The platform also solves consumer issues such as ticket scalping and resale fraud. The Ticket Fairy is backed by some of the most respected tech investors in the industry, such as the creators of YouTube, Twitch and Reddit.
Jigar is a British-born multipreneur, starting his first micro-venture at the age of 12 and founding multiple businesses in and around the fields of technology, real estate and international trade in the United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, India, Australia and New Zealand.
What is The Ticket Fairy all about?
We bring people together in a way that’s fun, inclusive and repeatable, but everyone has their own take on what Ticket Fairy is about. That is because TF is simultaneously B2B, B2C, a marketplace and content producer. Each of these areas is semi-independent, and within each is a range of products and services that at some point interact with others in the ecosystem. The best description is probably this: we support the proliferation of live entertainment culture and bring people together. That’s how we like to see ourselves.
We have several goals in mind. A foundational one is to keep event organizers in business, because running events for a living, profitably, is hard. We liken events to startups: they launch, expect losses, must scale and aspire towards profitability. The similarities are all there, and are striking when you draw them. TF understands this in a way that no rival platform seems to, because we’ve been through it both as a startup and organizer. We create cutting-edge, proprietary tech that solves the issues we know are relevant for growth and survival. To that end, I believe we are masters of our craft because evidenced in our solutions is the fact that we get it. I say this with confidence, because it’s one of the first things professional organizers tell us when they see what we’ve built for them. They’re anything from pleasantly surprised to downright stunned. And that’s unanimous, globally, because the key challenges are the same everywhere.
TF sits between organizer and fan, fusing the connection between both sides. But it’s not just that initial connection (or transaction); we try to keep both sides connected and connecting. We do that partly by helping to keep event organizers in business, because without them, none of this exists. We equally focus on reducing the barriers for people to attend, both in terms of discoverability and accessibility. We then encourage engagement and to some extent steward that relationship. And I believe that we’ve cracked it. Our model stands alone in the world of ticketing, because what we do has always gone far beyond ‘ticketing’ itself; it’s connection, the synchronicity and mutual equity of that connection, and the central aim of keeping it alive. As far as I’m aware, we are perhaps the only 5* rated ‘ticketing’ company, as rated by both organizers and fans, on Trustpilot. Something seems to be working.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started The Ticket Fairy with your brother, Ritesh?
TF may turn out to become the biggest commercial success of our lives to date, and it very nearly didn’t happen at all. In hindsight, the path to its formation seems to make sense, and it needed both of us. We each bring different skills and expertise, yet are driven by the same values and principles. Beyond that, we’ve also partnered on multiple business ventures since 2008.
Ritesh comes from a background in software engineering and event promotion. He’s actually our first client, whose events we ran our initial trials with. My background is more broadly in business and the creative arts. I also used to DJ at his events back in the early 2000s. I remember arriving in Bristol, Ritesh collecting me from the train station, and us going straight out to canvas the streets with flyers, posters and a bucket of glue. We love music, make music, love events, run events, and want to help event organizers thrive so that they can continue bringing everyone this crucial form of recreational entertainment and real world connection.
In 2007 – at 23 – I had just moved to Dubai to explore new opportunities, fresh-faced and without a clear plan, but certainly with the same life goals and vision I’ve had since very early childhood. I was halfway through a degree in audio engineering and decided to drop out so that I could continue to pursue it. Ritesh was living in Sydney, Australia, at the time, working as a cloud engineer and running events under his ‘LOCUS’ brand, which he founded at university. At the time, the infamous financial crisis had begun to sweep through much of the world, but Dubai and Australia were largely unaffected. We were bullish about the opportunities we each saw and decided to join forces to explore them together, investing significant personal and borrowed funds. Together, at that moment, we felt invincible. Things were looking really good. Initially, they were. And then the crisis hit our two relative safe-havens, destroying our businesses and wiping us out in one fell swoop. The rise and fall was so fast that you might call it a blip, but the ensuing period of reflection and renewal was long, restless and grueling.
At first, we focused entirely on trying to undo what had happened. Those were stressful times. We went from flying high to suddenly unable to take flight at all, and it was gutting. It took several years to accept a total loss on those investments, partly because we were in a state of denial, and partly because we couldn’t afford to lose hope. That said, it didn’t take long to start thinking about new projects. We had nothing to invest into them other than our time. By 2009, we were working on multiple ventures, each with varying degrees of success. Some were at conception stage, some under [slow] development and some up and running. One of them was Ticket Fairy, which we started building in 2009 and launched in alpha in 2010. We knew then that this was going to be our next big project, and it seems that we were right about that.
This isn’t to suggest that TF was a random project we started out of desperation that happened to take off. That certainly isn’t the case. We had to be passionate about what it would stand for. It had to mean something. The qualifier wasn’t only whether money could be made, but also whether we believed in its reasons for existing; whether we cared enough about solving the problems we saw, and if solving them would have a material impact on more than just TF and ourselves. We put everything we had, physically and mentally, into getting it off the ground, and if it were not for the dark days that preceded it all, the environment to bring it to life with the determination we had just wouldn’t have existed.
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
Adaptability – because almost nothing will go the way you plan it to. The first step is to set your vision. And for this, I believe it’s important to zoom out a little and think bigger. Aiming for financial freedom, multiple sources of income, to leave a lasting legacy, improve lives, reduce poverty, or even become a billionaire is a respectable vision for what you want to accomplish in life. How you go about achieving it is always relative to the time, circumstances and changing realities of your own situation, and that of the market(s) you decide to enter. These factors aren’t in our control, so you have to be open to adapt and recalculate your route when needed. It’s also perfectly normal to realize a better one exists and subsequently pivot everything. Pivoting might even be necessary to survive. Just be sure to define your vision in short, high-level terms, and there will always be multiple ways to get to it.
Resilience – because you will get beat up, denied, rejected, ridiculed, alienated and possibly lonelier the bigger you dream and further you go. You will likely even fail, multiple times, but your only option is to reflect, absorb, rethink, stand up, brush off and continue, even when at times you may consider giving up. Keep going. The only way to actually fail is to realize a total loss. And for the record, failing is fine. Good, even. Giving up is the thing to avoid.
The thing with failure is that you have a shock opportunity to restart; to channel everything you have into finding another way. In our case, we had no choice but to do that immediately, before we’d fully processed what had happened. Laden with debt and guilt, we had the kind of desperate determination that had to lead somewhere. In fact, it’s one of the primary reasons we secured our first investor, Justin Kan – founder of Twitch. He told us that he believed we would succeed because we had no choice but to. He was right, and I remember his words to this day. We had no option but to make it a success, so we gave it everything we had and continue to do so today, working up to 18 hours a day, right throughout the year. We’re not alone in that, either, because this drive has found its way into our company culture. Our team lives and breathes TF well beyond 5pm on Fridays, which signals to me that they see this as more than a paycheck. It’s a part of their lives. They believe what they are doing has purpose. And that is possibly one of the most rewarding, and humbling, things for me to see.
Self-belief – because if you don’t believe you can, how can you? A hundred things can keep you from unlocking your potential, 95 of which are in your mind. Switch those inhibitors off, because they serve you no purpose as an entrepreneur. Set a borderline unrealistic vision and believe that you will achieve it anyway. And I mean really believe it. There should be no doubt in your mind that you can or will. Most people want to see you succeed.
You might wonder whether ‘self-belief’ is a skill or a trait. Sure, some people are born with the right toolbox that makes it an effortless, naturally formed characteristic. Even then, life experiences and environmental forces can damage it at any time. Fortunately, it’s also a skill and one you can learn, practice, and (re)master until it becomes a part of who you are (again). A positive framing and mindset is inextricably linked to entrepreneurial life, and with it, truly no object in your path is insurmountable. You have to believe that you will always find a way. The means may adapt, of course, but the end goal is well within your reach. This is what separates entrepreneurs from everyone else.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow The Ticket Fairy?
I believe we are at an inflection point and that 2021 marks the beginning of the biggest growth run in our history. It feels as though everything we have worked towards so far has been in preparation for what is about to come. We are ready to scale up, simultaneously, across 5 continents, and are also embarking on the biggest expansion of our product ecosystem to date.
Another key focus is to increase our brand presence and visibility this year. We aim to achieve this through traditional press and media, a greater focus on our online and physical presence, an expansion into new verticals, and doubling down on digital marketing efforts. As an example, we recently formed a media division, through which we are creating free-to-consume content around live entertainment culture. This is part of a long planned move to bolster our B2C efforts and to position TF as the cultural brand we see it as. There is a real excitement within our team about all of this, especially now that a post-COVID world could be in sight.
How do you all separate yourselves from your competitors?
It could be argued that TF is advanced ticketing. I would counter that by saying TF has advanced ticketing, but is actually multiple enterprise solutions across digital marketing, data analytics, business management, sales and consumer intelligence in one platform, all built for the unique needs of event organizers and the live events ecosystem at large. That is our differentiator. We just happen to have the most advanced ticketing product in the industry as well.
In reality, we most often get compared to competing ticketing companies, since we ultimately serve the same people and that ‘Ticket’ is literally our middle name. Ticketing is a central part of what our customers need, but we’ve always known that so much more is possible. At an enterprise level, TF is Salesforce for the live events industry; a platform on which event organizers can operate their entire businesses, not just their events.
Our approach has been different from the offset. We took a holistic look at what event organizers’ and attendees’ needs are. We’ve never actually wanted to be a ticketing platform, because that need is already fulfilled. I don’t believe that in itself would ever have been enough to compete with multi-billion dollar leaders in an already fiercely competitive industry. If an organizer needs robust ticketing, many platforms are available to do that job very well. Our ticketing competitors, for the most part, have great ticketing products. They’re functional, well-built and usually reliable. Do I believe we have a better ticketing product? Yes, I do. It’s legitimately the best in the world. But that is just one part of our product ecosystem.
We could easily have looked at every ticketing product on the market, combined the best of each into one super platform, and undercut them all on pricing. As a company, we’re relatively lean enough to have done that. But that’s not what we did. That’s not innovation. It’s not valuable or rewarding enough for anyone. Our focus has always been to assess what we believe the market needs and bring it to life. This is what we do.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
Overload. Not everything can be a top priority. Young startups have a wonderful energy and ‘can do’ attitude, and it feels counterintuitive not to seize upon every opportunity like it will be the last. But this can actually be damaging to growth and stability, at least in the short term. Something has to give, and it usually does. There was only so much we could manage before our team became overwhelmed. We sometimes lost strategic clients we had fought hard to acquire, and at times lost morale because our team was burning out. Our focus was too broad, relative to the resources we had, and while I do believe we weren’t wrong about most of the choices we made, staggering what we chose to devote limited resources to at any one time would probably have worked out better for everyone in the long run.
This is not to suggest that a conservative approach is best. Not at all. The right point of balance sits just beyond the threshold of what’s manageable. That’s enough to keep you and your team at full burn, without burning out.
It’s not all about the product. You usually set out to disrupt an industry because you believe your product idea can, and when you start to see some success in that, it’s easy to feel as though the race is all but over. It’s not, because the race continues in perpetuity, with or without you. When it first dawned on us that the market was validating our product, we believed that we would rapidly become the next big name in events technology. That was several years ago and, of course, it was never going to be that easy. Don’t get me wrong – TF is the definitive answer to event organizers’ most critical problems, but that hasn’t suddenly made us the biggest ‘ticketing’ company in the world. Other factors are at play. The product alone doesn’t make up the business machine you need to survive. It’s far more complex than that. The winning product gets you a place at the table, but you still need the ability to arrive at the party to claim it.
Fluff and hype. How do you judge your success? Impressive milestones, headlines and praise are all great, but they’re not reliable data points and definitely should not alone shape your view of where you currently stand. Take them as a form of validation, recognition and glamorization, and get back to work. The danger of believing your own hype is real, but do not lose sight of the fact that your work is not done. I remember one very key nugget that was dropped into my head by an old friend and incredibly successful entrepreneur: “Always remember that the next man is a bigger man than you.” He wasn’t the greatest with words, but this one liner will never leave me. I was eventually able to apply context to it and my takeaway is this: There is no such thing as being the biggest and the best; all there is, is the pursuit.
Speaking of hype, we have worked hard to create ours. Some would say that TF is one of the more exciting startups they’ve come across. Our friends and well-wishers certainly do. The journey is documented, publicly, and people seem to follow our progress with great enthusiasm. But what we don’t share publicly is what it takes to make all of this possible. Every entrepreneur knows what I am referring to here. The risks, challenges, highs and lows are sobering. Winning creates the falsehood of being a winner, while the truest reality of entrepreneurship is that no victory is certain. The lesson here is that you must keep going, whether that is following a loss or a win.
Tell us a little bit about your marketing process, what has been the most successful form of marketing for you?
From the perspective of marketing for product development, one of our primary processes has been to work closely with customers to understand how we can better solve their problems. As a global platform, we’ve had the benefit of learning from a diverse range of customers and bringing these learnings into our wider product strategy. In my view, this is the golden standard of product development, because it’s backed by real-world data, in real time, from a wide pool.
Listening to your customers has always been sound startup advice, but we decided to take it further by thinking of them as product development partners. An obscure solution for one will likely prove useful to another, because while no two customers are the same, their problems tend to overlap. They are your closest source of truth. And they’re accessible to you. Show them that you want to understand their needs to create bespoke solutions for them, and you’ve just opened the door to free consultancy, surgical product refinement and their loyalty and appreciation. Take the win, because nobody loses.
In terms of promotion, we’ve had some great press so far. We were covered in notable tech and business outlets, such as TechCrunch and Fox Business, which gained us wider exposure and, I believe, helped to legitimize TF at a higher level. We received a lot of inbound interest from both prospective clients and investors as a result. Google Ads have also worked surprisingly well for us, especially for event organizer demo bookings and self-service account creations. Ritesh and I are also very vocal on our personal social media accounts, where we announce growth milestones and the acquisition of strategic customers.
Another form of promotional marketing that has always worked well for us happens to be the most legitimate: word of mouth. There is perhaps no easier way to gain trust than through qualified recommendations. It’s a step towards social proof, which is particularly important for B2B platforms. The key to word of mouth marketing is to build and execute to such a high standard that your customers will become your champions, vocalizing their positive experiences and influencing others to head your way. And for this, it’s not actually necessary to have the best product on the market. A great product with awful customer service still results in a poor experience. So, it’s not always about what you can do for your customers; arguably, more important is how you make them feel. Sound familiar?
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
We entered an established industry, knowing that the barriers would be high. We just didn’t anticipate how high. The biggest challenge used to be getting a meeting. Event organizers were exhausted with ticketing companies, and that’s exactly what we were seen to be. Innovation had forgotten our industry, and even when it occasionally shone its light, there wasn’t much to see.
I remember Ritesh speaking on a panel at the ILMC in London, where he started by saying, “Ticket Fairy isn’t ticketing”. I was in the audience and heard someone behind me chuckle. Sure enough, as Ritesh continued speaking, that same person began to pay attention. I don’t fault his initial skepticism. Every couple of years, a slew of new entrants would lay out convincing pitches that they’re ‘beyond ticketing.’ Some venture capitalists and wealthy angels clearly agreed. They had the solution, and it was here.
Except that it wasn’t, nor could it be. The reason has always been clear to us: ticketing isn’t broken. And yet, event organizers remained underserved and underwhelmed. There’s a huge disconnect. What is actually broken is the recognition that event organizers’ risk is astronomical, that they have little room for error, and that innovation at the transactional ticketing layer does not adequately help to manage this. Now, in all fairness, the larger ticketing companies believe they have found the solution, and it is to share event organizers’ financial risk through large cash advances, before a single ticket is sold. It’s brilliant – and I mean that sincerely – because this simultaneously helps to keep event organizers in business (for now) and locks new entrants out of all sizable ticketing contracts. Who could compete? Not us.
One of our greatest barriers to entry was to be heard amidst all the noise. The other was to convince customers not to take free money, because our solution would ultimately deliver a higher ROI, with no strings attached. Our approach was so novel that we needed an hour to explain how our solutions work, and even then some organizers could not overcome their skepticism. We had to accept that our growth would be slow. We knew our product was the gold standard and would eventually see mass adoption, but for that we needed more case studies and social proof, and it would take some years to achieve that at any meaningful scale. To a large extent, you might argue that we overcame these challenges simply because we stood the test of time. Eventually, our message was going to resonate, and it increasingly has.
At a personal level, the stress and workload have always been a challenge. We managed, but it came at a personal cost, at least for the first several years. We made the conscious decision to launch TF at a global level, rather than to focus on a single region first. We began in Australia and the UK, then launched in Europe and the US, then New Zealand and India, and are now preparing for the UAE and Mexico. Until 2015, TF was still a 2-person team. Ritesh and I handled product design, engineering, marketing, corporate admin, sales, operations and customer support for tens of thousands of event attendees. We didn’t sleep much. The span of time zones meant that, between us, we had to be available 24 hours a day.
TF became my greatest addiction, and the pursuit of our vision took me further away from my personal life than I’d anticipated. Relationships suffered. My friends would complain that I didn’t make time for them, and they were right. My girlfriend (now my wife and member of the team) found it increasingly difficult to be in a relationship with an entrepreneur. It’s all-consuming. I could rarely ‘switch off’ and work until 3-5 am, every night, phone in hand and half-written email open. It was only when she joined the team that she not only understood but became the same. A key learning here is this: if your life partner isn’t coping with the realities of your entrepreneurial life, consider bringing them in, because both need to be in sync.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
- Mouseflow
- HubSpot
- Chili Piper
- Podcast: My First Million
- Book: From Impossible to Inevitable
- Course for entrepreneurs: Y Combinator Startup School
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
It would depend on whether I sought passive income or to launch an actual business. There are distinct approaches to both. Passive income is possible through some fairly quick hacks. Everyone can (and should) do it. A $1000 investment is plenty to get started. Over time, I’ll probably multiply my money. It’s easy.
Launching a business is more time and capital intensive. There’s a clinical, prescriptive approach to setting up certain passive income streams, but successfully launching a business needs greater thought, planning, creativity and active participation.
I’m going to try to give a basic illustrative example, but first, here’s what I wouldn’t spend a cent of it on to start with (even if the costs happened to be a fraction of what they really are):
- Trade shows and conferences
- PR and agencies
- Trademarks
- Premium domain names
- Consultancy
- Company incorporation
A $1000 budget wouldn’t get me very far with most of the above, but none of it is relevant at this stage. Later, of course, if, when and where relevant.
With that out of the way, generally, I’d first attempt to define what I am setting out to do, and why. It starts with the following foundational questions:
- What am I trying to solve?
- Do I care enough?
- Do solutions currently exist?
- If so, can I create a better one and will people care enough to use it?
- What does my potential solution look like?
- How will I make it happen?
- Will I need a team?
- What range of skills will it need?
- How will I get those people on board?
These types of questions would form the basis of my initial market, competitor and feasibility analyses to assess if an idea is worth pursuing. Not every idea needs to be about making money, but if financial gain is a driver, there’s likely to be stiff competition, and a good approach would be to offer something that at least meets potential customers’ minimum requirements, at a lower price point. Most entrepreneurial efforts go where the money is, so having a plan to navigate a competitive landscape is important.
With that out of the way, here we go:
Let’s assume that I’ve decided not to build a tech company, knowing that $1000 will not get me very far. I do not create products or services, code, design graphics or make jewelry. My first problem is that I have nothing to sell, so I would need to sell somebody else’s products. Becoming a reseller or affiliate marketing can work, but let’s consider dropshipping, where I could list and sell products without any advance payment, handling or storage requirements, earning the spread between the cost and sale prices. But there are millions of products. Which do I want to sell?
I’d need to identify a niche: what are people searching the web to buy online? The goal is to identify products that are high in demand, but niche enough not to be too competitive to pull in traffic for.
Now, it’s time to build a website, design a logo and buy a domain with email hosting. Nobody is going to take me seriously with a Gmail address, and people will check that my domain has more than a holding page on it. I can pick up a domain name for around $12/year and add hosted email for around $6/month. I can also build my website at Wix.com and create a logo via Canva.com, both for next to nothing. I now have a professional image. DIY is super simple and allows me to keep making content changes without paying a designer each time. I can also create an unlimited number of promotional graphics, flyers and presentations. Speaking of graphics, an Instagram account is important these days to complete my online presence, build the brand and even generate leads.
My product site and distribution channels are now up and running. I’ve generated some organic leads because my Instagram account looks professional (thanks to Canva) and I took a data-driven approach to selecting the products I am selling. My friends and family also shared my profile with hundreds of people to get things off to a start. Now, my focus needs to move to generating more sales, for which I’d want to place ads on Instagram, Google and Facebook. This is probably where much of my budget will be spent, so in order to do so efficiently, I’d split test as many variations of my ads as possible to identify which are converting. Now, I know to redistribute all the ad spend from the non-converting ads to the ones that are converting. Conversion optimization and proper SEO practices are important, and some cheap tools (and free online resources) can help with this.
All of this probably cost me around half of my initial budget, leaving me with half to spend more aggressively, and assuredly, on ads that are proving to bring me a positive ROI.
What valuable advice would you give new entrepreneurs starting out?
I want to tell you and everyone you know to just get out there and do it. Truly. If you have something to offer the world, don’t let that idea die before it’s had a chance. There’s no telling what it could have become, or the number of people it could have inspired.
But if you’ve actually read all the way from the beginning, you might remember I said this:
“The risks, challenges, highs and lows are sobering… the truest reality of entrepreneurship is that no victory is certain”
You have to ask yourself why you’ve chosen the entrepreneurial path; to swim against the tide and risk everything in the process. An easier, more secure route to comfortable retirement is available, yet you’ve set out to challenge the status quo, with every chance of falling flat on your face with everyone watching. Are you prepared for that?
So, I’m going to have to be clear. If you decide to do this, know that there is no predicting what the outcome will be. What is for certain is that the line between your personal and work lives will blur. Your work will define you. It’ll take dedication, grit, stamina and a lot of midnight oil. You’ll wear multiple hats when you start out, and you have no option but to cope with it all until you can build a team.
And, failure. Be sure that you’re prepared for it. Failure (and rejection) isn’t for everyone. The mere thought of it stops extremely smart people and their ideas from ever being seen. It stops the smartest person in the room from ever opening their mouth. Somewhere, the next Elon is sitting on an idea that might inspire teleportation, but the fear of how it might end meant that she chose not to begin. Everybody lost.
There’s a question we once debated in business school: are entrepreneurs born or made? The room was split, highlighting that there is no clear consensus. My answer was that everyone is an entrepreneur when they need to be. Some of you reading this will resonate with that. That need can arise from a number of things, but that’s another discussion altogether, beyond the scope of what we’re discussing here. But, back to my earlier question: why have you chosen the entrepreneurial path? Your answer, in its simplest form, will probably define your vision, and you’ve just set it. Don’t look back. Onwards you go.
Now, be prepared to make some personal sacrifices. They’ll hopefully be worth it, whether you succeed or fail this time round.
Here are some quick tips:
- Only make decisions that are well-informed and data driven. Nobody wants a drunk captain at the helm.
- Follow your product vision, but don’t land in Myopia. Deliver what the market wants, as well as what you know it needs.
- Get your product out there fast. Add bells and whistles afterward.
- Don’t expect overnight success. It doesn’t tend to work that way.
- Create a feedback loop with your customers. They’re the closest source of truth on what you should be building, and it’s free of charge.
- Never underestimate the importance of an excellent customer support strategy. Here is your chance to right wrongs and win back loyalty and trust when you eff up.
The reality is that there are no shortcuts to succeeding as an entrepreneur. But if what you’re building will touch hearts and minds (including your own), or in some way will resonate with people, don’t deprive the world of its existence. You should just get out there and do it.
How can readers get in touch with you?
You can find me across all social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and also via my website: jigarpatel.com
Tech Founder Interview: Suhail Doshi and Tim Trefren – Founders of Mixpanel
