793: Will This Funded Event Ticketing Company ICO?

Sandy Khaund. He's the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – The World is Flat
• What CEO do you follow? – Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg
• Favorite online tool? — OneNote
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "The secret of life is doing what you do for free and getting someone to pay you for it"

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:02 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
• 02:37 – Upgraded has a solution widget that addresses the problem of event tickets
  • 02:52 – Alot of the tickets are fake and being sold on Craigslist
• 03:31 – The Cryptography has worked so well that there's only one bitcoin
• 03:54 – Upgraded has a tokenization aspect which converts tickets into a blockchain ticket
  • 04:02 – Another revenue model as an alternative to Stubhub
• 05:04 – Upgraded has already made less than $50K in revenue
• 05:11 – Sandy started Upgraded last March
• 05:30 – There are 4 full-time people on the team
• 05:45 – The cofounder was initially a consultant and Sandy has more in equity
• 06:07 – The initial fund was from Sandy's personal savings
• 06:14 – Sandy took an Angel investment of $300K on a convertible note
  • 06:33 – With 4% interest and $7M cap
• 07:11 – Sandy and the team are still talking about the ICO
• 09:00 – Right now, cryptocurrency relates to the currency valuation
• 09:12 – For Sandy, he's more about the technology rather than the currency
• 11:10 – Sandy wants to make sure that what he will do what is right for the business
• 11:50 – Nathan talks about the regulations in ICOs
• 12:11 – Sandy had a talk with his attorney about ICOs and blockchain
• 12:40 – As of the moment, anything can happen
• 13:30 – There was also some acquisition talks with Upgraded but Sandy turned it down
• 14:03 – Sandy didn't build Upgraded for the money
  • 14:20 – "I just want to keep creating"
• 15:16 – Sandy thinks it is still too early for the company to do ICOs
• 15:45 – Nathan talks about the issue DAO had
• 17:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

1. While ICO is one of the hottest topics in blockchains, some companies would rather not delve into it at this time.
2. Create a utility that can solve one of the most taken for granted problems.
3. Do the work that you would do for free and then get someone to pay you for it.

Resources Mentioned:

• Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you're doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives