SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 801: The $60M King of Ticket Sales
Oct 3, 2017
19:13
Jayesh Parmar. He's a serial entrepreneur with two decades of event industry experience. Currently, he's the CEO and co-founder of Picatic and is listed as one of the world's top 10 tech entrepreneurs disrupting the event industry.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- What CEO do you follow? – Jeff Bezos
- Favorite online tool? — Amy
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6-8
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "Failure is just a data point"
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:44 – Nathan introduces Jayesh to the show
- 02:10 – Picatic brings people together and does things that are absolutely different from others
- 02:22 – Picatic has given away a product for free
- 02:55 – Picatic has changed the ballgame with their pro product
- 03:13 – Picatic offers Picatic Anywhere which is a new ticketing service
- 04:00 – The bigger stream for Picatic is the commission-based stream
- 05:00 – Average pay for Picatic varies
- 05:26 – Picatic has a basic product which is free and the pro product which is commission-based
- 05:33 – Base rate is a dollar and commission rate is 2.5% per ticket
- 05:46 – Stripe is on top of Picatic
- 06:18 – Enterprise API ranges from $5K to $100K depending on the API calls and ticket sales
- 06:58 – Event businesses are seasonal, but Picatic has partnered with different venues and organizations that aren't seasonal
- 08:00 – Picatic was launched in 2008 as a side project
- 08:20 – Picatic went through Extreme Startup and got $250K with 10% equity
- 08:33 – Picatic has raised $1.5M as additional capital
- 09:22 – First year revenue is less than $10K
- 09:48 – 2015 revenue is less than a $100K
- 10:05 – As an event organizer, Jayesh wanted to de-risk events
- 10:31 – Picatic has pivoted from their previous model
- 11:40 – 2016 revenue
- 12:22 – The revenue is around $1.2M
- 12:40 – Team size is 15 based in Vancouver, Canada
- 13:55 – 2017 goal
- 14:05 – Picatic grows 100% year over year
- 14:25 – Jayesh has been going to different events to market his Picatic by being a doorman
- 16:40 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Don't stick with your current business model just because—test other models that your company could benefit from.
- The online ticketing world is consistently improving.
- The best way to get your business out there is by marketing it yourself.
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