Reflections on Running a Digital Ticketing Start-up During a Pandemic
Usually, I write in this space about the future of ticketing, what might change, and why. But for this post I want to focus on something different, I want to focus on our journey through 2020.
For now, as I reflect on the year that has been, a range of emotions swirl. It was a battle to get through every day, despite the year seemingly passing by in a blur. While there’s plenty to ponder about where the ticketing industry is headed in 2021, it’s important to evaluate the existential crisis that 2020 presented to our society, families, and industries. Here is how we handled it:
January to February — Everything is going as planned
We entered 2020 with unbridled optimism. Even though we were in the middle of a bridge raise, we were confident in our plan to close the remaining investment. In January, we met with current clients, as well as prospective clients, and partners at INTIX (the annual International Ticketing Association conference). We unveiled our product, the culmination of over a year’s worth of work with our pilot clients. We were proud of what we had built, and we were excited to begin delivering it to our clients and the market.
A month later, we would continue to execute on the vision as planned. We delivered tickets for a Saturday night performance of Hamilton at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami. While it may have been only two dozen tickets for our team as well as a few key investors, it was Hamilton, and everything went off without a hitch. The crowning achievement for me was receiving a bear hug from one of our earliest and most significant investors. It was a great night, we closed some additional investment and received verbal commits for much more predicated on achieving our next milestone that we would hit in a month or so. We were riding high.
March to April — Confronting and dealing with reality
With news and cases of the coronavirus quickly spreading, everything suddenly changed. Thirteen days after our team gathered in Miami for Hamilton, the remaining shows were canceled at the Arsht Center. The Arsht would not have another scheduled ticketed live event until Nov. 5 — almost eight months later. A week prior to the Arsht shutting down, we canceled travel for our company. On March 13, we instituted our weekly investor updates, increasing our investor communication cadence. Given the degree to which the oncoming pandemic was upending society we felt it was the best course of action not only to keep our investors informed but to also ask for help. We would continue with weekly updates for the next three months.
March and April were, for me, the most mentally taxing days and months of 2020. There was truly no certainty, no good news, and no good options. Then came the gut punch — many of the verbal commits we obtained weeks earlier had backed out. The investment was material to us and all the promise the year had in store essentially evaporated.
I sought a good bit of advice from our investor and advisor base. Of the conversations I had, one stood out in particular. It was with an investor who is very experienced in and with capital markets. His perspective was that the market had become completely risk-off (stocks are selling, investors move to safer assets). Valuations were being reduced 20%, 30%, and in some cases over 50%. The best course of action was to lean-out spend where possible and see how things play out. This ended up being the right approach, but we would only know it was the right decision months later.
May to June — Navigating the storm
In 2006, I was a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Navy, and I remember one flight where we launched ahead of a squall line in the Sea of Japan. About an hour into a three-hour flight, they “99’d” all aircraft — we needed to land as the storm’s intensity was greater than forecast. Our helicopter was equipped with radar that could help us navigate the storm back to the carrier, helping us avoid the microbursts being reported that our aircraft could not survive. We decided the best course of action was to fly as quickly back to the carrier while dodging areas of high risk. Our teenage crewman directed my co-pilot Around several intense cells as rain pelted our windscreen. I remember sticking my fingers through the scupper to feel the rain amidst the violence of the storm. It was serenely surreal.
There is serenity in making a difficult decision and putting it behind you. A question I like to ask myself when confronting challenging situations is: is this a test or a sign? (I talk about that in more detail on this IBM podcast). For True Tickets, this pandemic was a test we needed to overcome, not a sign we needed to pivot or drastically change course. Our decision to optimize our cost structure and stay the course was also benefited by a few things:
- First, while our cash position was challenging, we had options. Having read Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things and hearing of his experience having to IPO a company with three weeks of cash on hand was a very helpful perspective. We never crossed that line, and in hindsight we never really came close to it either (queue a General Eisenhower quote “No battle was ever won according to plan, but no battle was ever won without one”)
- Second, pre-COVID we had signed commercial clients. Even in the darkest hours, they never abandoned us, in fact quite the opposite, they came back to us requesting our service handle more of their ticketing than initially thought — they would need a contactless ticketing service that would provide contact information for patrons before, during, and after an event — exactly what we had built.
- Third, markets not only stabilized — they completely turned around. My perspective on the markets is not meant in any way to diminish the pain and hardship encountered by many during this pandemic, however, it does explain one thing very well — the reengagement of angel and other investors. The risk-off market in March and April was now contrasted by buoyed investors with capital to invest and a risk tolerance to match.
In late June we completed our production launch, with a months-long delay attributable to the near doubling of technical requirements needed to handle more volume and at scale. The Deputy Commander of our airwing had one rule for airwing pilots: “Don’t fuck it up.” I received a reassuring email from one of our investors as a response to one of our weekly communications that read:
“Your email gives me confidence in your ability to run your company. Keep up the good work.”
Airwing Commanders and investors have essentially the same rule. Though the latter may express it in a more nuanced way. We landed safely on CVN-72 Lincoln the night of the squall. True Tickets made it to the midpoint of 2020 and we had not “fucked it up.”
July to December — Resetting and shifting the focus to 2021
Following our production launch in June we closed our bridge round at the end of July. In a twist of fate, we were now in the most solid financial position we have ever been as a startup. The credit is shared among our team. We made it to this point together and we are hopeful for our industry and what we can do to help it come back. The second half of 2020 has been oddly calm, allowing us to be more strategic in our planning while continuing our development and rollout efforts. We made official a strategic partnership with the Tessitura Network, accomplishing a major goal two years in the making. We helped the Arsht Center in Miami and the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa reopen their venues with 100% contactless ticketing in November. As we look to 2021, it looks a lot like what we thought 2020 was going to be. That is not to mean 2020 was a lost year. We accomplished a great deal in the most challenging of times.
One of my main lessons from leading True Tickets over the past three plus years is that, compared to my experience in corporate, startups are constantly dealing with essentially mini-crises daily. Whether it’s issues related to your product, your funding, or your team — at a start-up, the pain is more acute, the timeline to address them is much more compressed, and the consequences of making a bad decision more dire. Adding a global crisis to that mix is almost laughably unfair. Fortunately for us, our team and supporters have successfully weathered the storm thus far and my hat goes off to all those who are doing the same and will continue to do so in 2021 and beyond.
