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Can you guarantee that the tickets you buy at the next concert or event are real?
Harold Hughes created Bandwagon to prevent fans from spending $ 2.3 billion on fake tickets every year. Bandwagon uses blockchain technology to track the ownership of tickets from the ticketing platform, through resale, to the venue on the day of the event. Over 1 million tickets have been processed on Bandwagon.
Now, Bandwagon offers fans the opportunity to invest in the company by launching a campaign of equity crowdfunding on the Republic. With equity crowdfunding, anyone over the age of 18 can invest in startups; a privilege previously limited to well-off accredited investors. This means that fans can invest up to $ 50 in high-growth startup companies like theCut and potentially receive a representative shareholding in the company. Black-owned startup companies are employing equity crowdfunding to have a "friend and family" funding round for their companies, offering low-cost opportunities for new investors to earn and build wealth.
Bandwagon CEO Harold Hughes
Black company he sat with the founder of Bandwagon and CEO Harold Hughes to learn about his crowdfunding campaign.
BE: Fans spend $ 2.3 billion on fake tickets every year. How did fake tickets become a big problem?
Hughes: Honestly, the biggest problem with ticketing is that we are still using the card. Once you pass a piece of paper, it is impossible to track it down. At the beginning it was more difficult to find stocks (the card used to print the tickets). But, nowadays, with home ticket printing being so common, the barrier to entry for a ticket scalper is very low. To exacerbate this problem, due to the exclusive nature of these ticket partnerships, fans are buying tickets on secondary markets that have no way of validating that the tickets that are listed on their site are real or not.
BE: How does Bandwagon solve the problem with fake tickets?
Hughes: Bandwagon focuses on the identity of each fan and ticket holder to address the issue of ticket authenticity. Knowing who owns a certain ticket, we can help event organizers know who does not own that ticket, which eliminates fraud. Today the ticket market is very fragmented because these important ticket companies do not share information. These silos create what is equivalent to a black hole in which the event organizer does not know who is being shown and ticket companies do not know if the tickets on their platform are real or have been made. We use blockchain technology to provide transparency to the whole process, ensuring a better event experience for fans around the world.
BE: Bandwagon has processed over 1 million tickets using blockchain technology. How does blockchain technology apply to tickets and events?
Hughes: Blockchain, in its most basic explanation, is a distributed register technology. So, when you have a team, you take my alma mater Clemson University, for example, which has season tickets assigned to the fans, and they are able to record in their database that sent the ABC ticket to John Doe. When you use paper tickets, it is there that the dollar stops, since John can deliver the ticket to his sister, a colleague or sell it to anyone. The team ends up seeing that the ABC ticket has been scanned on the day of the match but they do not know who is in possession of the ticket. This leaves a lot to gain not only in public security, but also in the form of marketing and fan engagement. Our case with blockchain focuses on tracking digital tickets and RFID on multiple ticket markets. This is the main key. Before Bandwagon, if a ticket was transferred, such as Ticketmaster to a StubHub, there was not a single audit trail to which an event organizer could log in to find out who was coming. Equally important in this is the message that is sent to the fans. Teams and other event organizers, for fear of losing visibility on who they are presenting, often create barriers to minimize the possibility for fans to transfer and resell tickets. With our solution, our customers (teams and event organizers) can offer enthusiasts a lot more options when it comes to finding the best ticket for them while they have a more complete picture of who is in the office on the day of the event. event.
Carriage ticket ticket dashboard. (Image: bandwagonfanclub.com)
BE: You have launched a stock crowdfunding campaign to raise capital from Bandwagon fans around the world. How will the funding help Bandwagon grow?
Hughes: We are really excited about the Republic Crowdfunding campaign. Before launching our campaign, we had already raised more than $ 1 million since we started the company, but when we started gaining ground with customers and investing in our technology, we knew we would need more capital. In general, the funding we are collecting will go to technological development while we are building turnkey solutions so that our customers do not have to invest in development when they start working with us. Instead, they will be able to tell us which ticket company they work with and we will be able to provide them with an application programming interface (API) and a dashboard that puts a simple user interface at the top of our blockchain. Subsequently, we will also expand to opportunities for non-sporting events. The live event sector with tickets is $ 30 billion and growing, so it's important for us to continue building for these opportunities as well. In 2019, Bandwagon's customers can be expected to be sports teams, festivals, concerts and performing arts venues.
BE: Why was this the right financing opportunity for your company? What should entrepreneurs consider before raising funds through equity crowdfunding?
Hughes: For us, we have found success by exploiting our relationships with investors and consultants. In short, our success has been directly related to the people who know what we are building in such a natural way, we wanted to think about the best way to make our history and our product known to as many people as possible. By campaigning equity crowdfunding, we are literally adding hundreds of new investors who can help us open doors around the world. At the same time, as a black founder, I felt a sort of responsibility in the direct effort to find ways to help bring more people who resemble me to the table when it comes to initial investments early on. If an entrepreneur is considering a stock crowdfunding campaign, I would encourage them to become aware of the time commitment and the level of transparency they need to provide. When a founder raises money by tradition, it is a full-time job. When we talk about equity crowdfunding, it is an even greater commitment in terms of time because, contrary to the traditional fund-raising cycles in which you present your company only during the investor meeting, with equity crowdfunding, you have a public website offering everything from the company's financial data to your business model on show 24 hours a day, so building and maintaining momentum are incredibly time-consuming, so be sure to plan accordingly.
(Crowdfunding, image: Shutterstock)
BE: What impact do you think that equity crowdfunding will have on access to capital for the various founders?
Hughes: When you look at some of the big startups in the last 20 or 30 years, many of the early investors were not blacks. So when this company explodes and becomes public or is sold for hundreds of millions, this is a missed opportunity for black people. Through equity crowdfunding, we are giving people around the world the opportunity to help us build something that will forever change the face of tickets by inviting them into the world of startups investing in a relatively low bet. The other part of this equation is the disproportionate amount of risk finance that goes to black women and people. Even with equity crowdfunding, the SEC has set a maximum amount of $ 1.07 million that a startup can re-launch in a 12-month period but to date only 6 crowdfunding campaigns driven by black founders (via Repubblica) have reached 39; goal with jetpack having collected more money at $ 250,085.
BE: How do you consider the fans of your platform and make them investors?
Hughes: Unlike the B2C (Business to Consumer) companies that often have hundreds and thousands of customers who can easily sell when they decide to do a stock crowdfunding campaign, we are on a different boat. As a B2B (Business to Business) company that helps our customers to give fans a better experience, we want to educate fans about why the ticket industry is broken, because the major players in the industry prefer it to remain so and how they can be part of the solution that changes the way we enjoy live events forever.
BE: What are the prospects for Bandwagon? What other opportunities do you open with the ticketing blockchain?
Hughes: I'm happy to say that the Bandwagon team will grow in the first quarter of 2019 by closing this round. Of all we have accomplished, as a first-generation American and son of Jamaican parents, I am truly proud of the creation of jobs and the value we have been able to offer over these nearly three years. My four brothers – Andre, Steven, Tiffany and Marcus – and I grew up with all kinds of government help available because our parents were often in and out of work. So, the creation of the Bandwagon team is next and I am honored to have more talented people joining our team and proud of the fact that we will be able to help them provide for their families while they do something they are passionate about. On the technology front, we already have two products that will be on the market in the first quarter and we believe that sports enthusiasts will be thrilled. In the fall of 2018, we collaborated with Kweku Mandela to participate in the Africa Rising International Film Festival, helping them to get a better idea of their participants and what they preferred to experiment with. We are planning to take this experience and turn it into a case study, as we are aiming for more festivals in 2019 and 2020. We have achieved quite a bit to get to this point, but we are just beginning and this it's what makes us really excited.
Brandon Andrews
Brandon Andrews is a senior consultant at Values Partnerships. Conducts a national casting tour for the ABC Shark Tank. He writes about business, politics and crowdfunding.
Website – www.brandonandrews.me
Twitter – www.twitter.com/brandontalk
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