Founder's advice. As an online service of Egor Egereva transforms the event-market of Russia

Information technology has finally reached the market for selling tickets for cultural events. Just a few years ago, there was not a single online ticket aggregator for such events in Russia.

On the distribution of tickets issued quotas, according to which they were distributed among a limited number of sellers. There was no single booking system, and it was impossible to keep automatic records of tickets sold, which often led to numerous problems.
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But now this niche is not empty thanks to several enthusiasts. Egor Egerev, CEO and founder of the Tickets Cloud ticket platform, shared with us his experience of launching and developing an online service with the system of selling electronic tickets “in a single ticket field”. Moreover, he gave some tips to beginners.

What is a system for selling electronic tickets in a single ticket field?

If you order on Anywayanyday, OneTwoTrip or through any other aggregator of air or railway tickets, you get the same tickets on different sites, only with a different commission and price. When buying the last ticket in one place, in another place it will become unavailable. This all happens through the Amadeus unified booking system. It has existed since the 60s.

There is no such story on the market of cultural events and events. There is a quoting: tickets are divided in advance by different sellers. Since there is no single booking system and it is impossible to keep automatic records of tickets sold without duplicates, there can not be identical tickets from different sellers.

That is, now the market for ticket sales is fragmented. There are some quotas and so on. You want to create a solution that repeats either a hotel booking system or air tickets?

Yes. This is the problem we started to solve. This is a problem that permeates the entire market, starting with the organizers, who have to distribute tickets: it is impossible to divide endlessly quotas. The problem is also relevant for distributors, because it is difficult and expensive to enter another region or niche, it is difficult to get a quota for new players, everything is already distributed.

There is still a viewer who may not know about this problem. But when he comes across this, he has to browse five sites at once to find a place for himself.

How technologically does your way of solving this problem look?

This is a SaaS solution. We provide access to the cloud directly to the event organizer. You can easily negotiate a deal with distributors under different conditions. It's as easy to do as making friends on Facebook. Distributors can be any number. Despite the fact that the work goes through our platform, the organizers and distributors have the right to agree on the size of the commission and other conditions. Our system takes into account all movements of money based on transactions in the system.

How did you even come to this? How did this idea form and transform into an IT service?

The beginning of the road is 2005. I was then involved in organizing parties. I have been doing this for about 7 years. Everything grew into huge electronic music festivals of up to 15 thousand people. In 2012, I launched the "Nano ticket" service. In simple terms, this is such a follower of Eventbrite.

So I moved from the activities of the promoter in the IT sector. Thanks to our company “Nanobilet” and two more companies, in 2012 we launched the e-ticketing service. Now it's hard to believe, but really then three startups turned the market upside down. Now 70% of tickets are electronic. Prior to this, almost never sold - 1-5%.

But then I realized that it is very difficult to get a quota, quoting prevents the penetration of technologies (marketing, and in general any) into the market. The solution was in the air. She was much discussed, but almost no one wanted to invest in this decision. I nevertheless decided to make this story and received support not only from the first clients, but also from investors. I began to receive investments in 2014. Then I gathered a new team - Tickets Cloud.

Then I already had more experience in IT and development management. And now we are actively developing our project.

How technologically is it all loaded? What stack? Outsource Development Team?

No, the team is yours. Development is conducted in Python, the Pyramid framework, the MongoDB database, several asynchronous microservices next to the main core ... We have 8 developers, a PM and two testers.

And how many managers?

Also - about 10 people.

What happened to you during these two years (2014-2016)? How do you evaluate your place in the market today? How do you see the nearest prospects for 2017?

At the end of 2014, we already had about 300 organizing partners and several dozens of distributors. Now the number of partners has doubled. Among our clients are concert organizers Robbie Williams in St. Petersburg and Moscow (2017), the performance “Black Russian”, the festival “Invasion”, a series of concerts Sound Up, etc. In turn, we grew five times compared to 2014. I think in 2017 the pace will continue.

It is already clear that the turnover level is quite high. Our income has grown six times. And the marginality over the past three months has tripled.

What is your vision regarding the future of tickets per se?

With the advent of such services, the availability of tickets has become a formality. Now the whole process of buying e-tickets comes down to collecting information about a person. If he attends an event and enters some data, we can find a way to use this information. While we do not quite understand what exactly it will pour out.

Since now people interact with services via a mobile phone (we, by the way, have already launched the option to pay via Apple Pay), using the service and participating in an event or event can turn into some kind of interactive story with artists.

Another important (already common to many industries) trend is the use of dynamic pricing algorithms, automated price management, depending on demand. Perhaps, our service will sometime provide such services, now we are actively exploring this area.

Are there the main idea or several lessons that you have learned for yourself by the current moment of development?

The first thing I want to note, despite the fact that it sounds trite ... when you yourself believe - keep moving, even if you are discouraged. I had a period when I was practically bankrupt. But my goal did not change, although I saw that the market was inert.

And now, when it began to turn out, “everything” looks at it differently. That is, the main thing is to believe in your intuition. It is most important.

Is there any thing that can be considered your main mistake? Or, maybe, for these two, what was the task that was most difficult to solve?

The b2b market is very complicated. Plus, in my case, it was also show business.

The period before the Tickets Cloud was especially difficult. Non-core investors and their money created serious problems. This story has slowed our movement of months by eight. Probably, without this, Tickets Cloud could have started much earlier. But all this was resolved amicably.

What recommendation can you give to people who are at the beginning of the road?

Here I would also note, in part, a philosophical thought: I have always tried to do in my life what I like. Of course, the first party, the first IT project, the release, the first interaction with IT developers - everything was once done for the first time. But I understood that I enjoyed doing it.

That is, the main thing is not the presence of an obsessive idea to make an IT start-up or another business, but to really like it so that you fall asleep, thinking about it, waking up, thinking about your business. There should not be any contradiction within oneself. If there is a contradiction, then you need to start doing something else - it's never too late to start from scratch.