Picatic, organizer-oriented event management & the Funding Roadshow (Views: 3677)
Wed, 26 Mar 2014
As we look forward to our stops out west, we shift our focus to one of the big winners of last year’s Funding Roadshow (FRS): Picatic. With over $800,000 raised through last year’s event, Picatic “empowers event organizers to create, manage and promote events of all sizes while encouraging organizers to choose their own service fees.” Originally from Saskatoon, Jayesh Parmar, CEO, and his team moved between San Francisco, Toronto, and New York City before settling into their new home in Vancouver.
What is Picatic?
Picatic was founded in 2009 as your standard online ticketing tool. Despite directly competing against the likes of Ticketmaster and Eventbrite during their periods of rapid growth, the company managed to gross over $1M in local sales annually. However, the founding team soon realized that they would need to pivot their business model to not only stay competitive, but also solve a bigger problem than distributing tickets online. As Parmar puts it, “It’s always been a ‘commission first, service later’ industry with event organizers coming in and taking on risk early. The solution is to let organizers pay what they want and take out the base rate plus variable rate model that has dominated the industry for so long.”
Product Offerings
On top of creating a custom event page, organizers can effortlessly promote their event though various channels: custom URL, email, social media, and embedded widgets. In addition, event data such as sales, attendees, etc. can be visualized through an intuitive dashboard. However, Picatic’s coolest differentiator has to be its event crowdfunding tool. “Put your event out there and do some market valuation to understand things like how many tickets you’ll need to sell. If you’re unsuccessful, everyone gets their money back,” Parmar explains.
Picatic and the Funding Roadshow
When asked to give his thoughts on the FRS and how it serves communities, Parmar did not hold back his enthusiasm: “We are big, big fans of the FRS! Every company has a lifecycle and, in order to succeed at the ‘critical spark’ stage or growth phase, you need the working capital. At this point, most founders and employees are too busy with the internal dealings of their startup to go out and find funding, new networks, as well as the experience and mentorship they need. That’s the power of the FRS: it brings people on both sides of the table together in a great environment.”
Parmar’s advice for this year’s group of hopefuls?
“Know who’s in the room and take the opportunity to network with them offline.”
Make sure to sign up in time to take advantage of the FRS when it passes through your city!
For all inquiries regarding this post, please reach out to Mani Alaei.
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