Tixologi seems to have positioned itself heavily as small business friendly by targeting independent event producers and small event venues. How does this focus influence or guide your footprint growth plan for the company?
Asher Weiss: What a lot of people don’t realize is that the ticketing industry is much bigger than just the major venues and pro sports teams. Millions of event producers put on events each year and are looking for tools to help them do this. The tools available to the general public to help them ticket their events have been limited, with Eventbrite being the main option here. This is where Tixologi comes in! We took years of learnings from the events space to build a better ticketing system, making it easy for anyone producing events to set up their events quickly, customize their ticketing experience, build a community of attendees and ultimately sell more tickets. As we continue to grow as a company and improve our offerings, everything we build into our product has to help event producers do one of these things.
Data analytics is a huge value-add for Tixologi customers. Do you have an example how a client has used their audience/fan data effectively for their own business growth?
Asher Weiss: It is a bit early to answer this question, but the biggest goal is to help event producers build their own database of fan data that they can own and use to grow their business moving forward. A lot of ticketing companies today control the ticketing data or don’t provide event producers with the data they need to succeed. We focus on helping our customers grow their community over time, enhance data capture from attendees and engage that audience over time.
When thinking on scaling operationally as a company, how are you and your leadership team planning for talent expansion over the next 2 or 3 years?
Asher Weiss: We are big believers in careful and calculated growth. As we’ve all seen over the past few years, startup teams have scaled too quickly, eventually leading to companies running out of money and/or a slew of non-performance-based layoffs. For us, growth should be as organic as possible. This often means asking our internal team to push to their limits before we bring someone else on to help. As we scale, we always look to find people in our network who might be a good fit for the team. In addition, we are constantly thinking about growing our network and building relationships with people in different functions who may be a fit further down the line. Hiring can be a slow process, but it always helps if we can already have a few people in mind to potentially hire when we do decide to grow our team.
Your 10-year-plus professional background is almost exclusively centered on marketing roles and entrepreneurial initiatives. Given you majored in Economics and Film in college, any speculation on what other profession you might have pursued if you were not an entrepreneur?
Asher Weiss: If I wasn’t an entrepreneur, I strongly believe I would have ended up in the film industry. I have always been fascinated by film and love both the creative and business aspects of the industry. Perhaps I would be a director or producer, either helping others bring their ideas to life or sharing my own views on certain topics.