← The Digital Executive
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Omar Saadiadin. Omar Saadiadin is a co founder of Tickmit. Omar began his career in 2012 as a community based operations manager and event planner in the United Arab Emirates where he developed a strong foundation in process automation, technology implementation and digital transformation. This early experience fueled his passion for using advanced technology to solve real world business problems. In 2016, he launched and scaled a local hub for creatives and community members that hosted everything from workshops to to festivals, thus gaining firsthand insight into audience building, event operations and ticketing infrastructure, noting the structural inefficiencies creators and organizers faced when working with legacy platforms. Well, good afternoon Omar. Welcome to the show.
- [01:14]
B
Good afternoon, Brian. Thank you for having me.
- [01:16]
A
Absolutely, absolutely my friend. I appreciate it. And I know you had to jump some time zones. You travel a bit, you're in London today, London, England. And I am in Kansas City. So I do appreciate your flexibility in getting on a podcast and aligning our calendars. But Omar, if I could, I'm going to jump right into your first question. You began your career in community operations and event planning before moving into blockchain and founding Tick Mint. What experiences along that journey shaped your path to becoming a leader in event technology?
- [01:49]
B
So, so I started actually with with free community events, Brian, and my focus was really on the experience and building the audience. It had actually nothing to do with ticketing at the time. So in 2016 I built a community hub and I hosted a lot of workshops, small festivals, as well as creative and wellness events. And the key kind of learning experience for me at the time was the value of audience ownership. So as things grew, I started to think about scale and sustainability. And when I started looking at the existing tools, what I noticed was the ecosystem was fragmented, so organizers had little control over their audience. So the insight I got there was platforms felt like distribution channels, not infrastructure. So that shift was what pulled me into tech. So Tech Mint came from like we didn't want to be another ticketing platform, but rather we wanted to be solving, you know, the ownership and the infrastructure problem.
- [02:59]
A
That's awesome. I really appreciate that. And you saw obviously there was a need in the market that you talked about that shift from distribution channel to infrastructure and really building and solidifying that. And the value prop here is giving the audience, as you said, audience Ownership, and I think that's cool. But always love the backstory. You started out building free community events and focused on building that great customer experience. And obviously that comes a long way when you again fill a need in a market. That's where things come alive. So I really appreciate that. And Omar Tickman is often described as a Shopify for ticketing. What does that mean in practice? And how does your platform fundamentally change how event organizers operate?
- [03:43]
B
That's a, that's a very good question, Brian. So the core idea is again, we mentioned this before, but the core idea here is again ownership when we, when we say shopify for ticketing. So today's platforms, they act as intermediaries, right? So they control the customer relationship, they control the data, they control monetization. So tick mint here is again, it's infrastructure, it's not a marketplace. So you don't list events, you build your own ecosystem. So what organizers would get is a full branding control. They get to own their audience data and they get to monetize beyond tickets. So the bigger vision for us is moving towards an inclusive economy. Right. And the important point is it's not just for the big players. So what we've done, Brian, is we've built an enterprise tech solution and we made it available via like a self service DIY kind of platform to give access to everyone, you know, like even the smaller events. So it works for small workshops, community events, conferences, and all the way up to larger venues and larger enterprise clients. Right. Holders, music festivals and so forth. So the analogy here is the same shift that Shopify created for E commerce. We're doing that same shift for the kind of events ecosystem and the event space.
- [05:08]
A
I really love that. And you're putting things back in the hands of the creator. You talked about that keyword ownership. Right. You're building that infrastructure so creators can have their own ticketing system, have full ownership of that, and it's an inclusive economy for creators and operators of all sizes. And you talked about whether it's a small event or corporate event or even a large ticket venue item. So really appreciate that. And Omar, blockchain and program programmable content played a role in your early vision. How do these technologies improve transparency, security and ownership in ticketing ecosystems?
- [05:44]
B
Yeah, so our initial focus, Brian, was, was the secondary market in ticketing. So there's a, there's a lot of shenanigans that happen in the secondary market, whether it's fraud, scalping, inflated ticket pricing, and essentially organizers get zero from the resale that happens on Secondary market. So blockchain at the time made sense because with you said programmability, which is smart contracts and it enables traceability and verifiability. So and with the programmability part you can, you can control the inflated, the inflated pricing with setting price caps which are reinforced by the smart contract and they're programmable like we said earlier. You can introduce royalties which is, you can put a 10% royalty which is fees that go back to the creator of the organizer once a ticket has been resold on secondary market. And mostly it is, it offers the transparency layer because essentially it's a distributed or open ledger blockchain so you can track the entire ticket life cycle. So but when we started building all of that, the key realization we arrived at is that technology isn't enough. Right. Timing matters. So after we spoke to many, like hundreds of organizers and stakeholders in the industry, what we realized is that although secondary market was a real problem, it wasn't their top priority. So what actually was needed first and on a priority was better infrastructure, more flexibility and more control. So we didn't really pivot, we just sequenced or we reprioritized our roadmap items just to kind of prioritize the market requirements. So today we've built a better version of our blockchain secondary market and our core focus now is on the primary needs first, which is the shopify for ticketing which we spoke about earlier. And I mean we've built a very modular architecture. It's like a multi tenancy architecture that enables us to plug and scale, plug that secondary market back into our, our infrastructure whenever the market is ready for it. So that's, that's what we've, we've, we've done with, with the blockchain and the background of blockchain technology.
- [08:06]
A
That's awesome. Really appreciate that. I'm a big fan of blockchain. Our publications built on blockchain as well. We had a lot of people that creators and founders in the blockchain space web3 that have been on the podcast. So I love that whenever we get that opportunity to have discussions around blockchain. But I like what you're doing here. Obviously there's a lot of ticket scalping as you know, secondary markets. There's a lot of ways that a lot of money's lost in some ways and also some people get, they lose money in these situations. But using blockchain smart contracts you can use programmable features like set setting the pricing, controlling royalties, having that transparency of blockchain's Digital ledger, which I really like. Just love the fact that you're leveraging this technology to really level that playing field and making it a fair marketplace for everybody. So thank you. And last question of the day, Omar, as we look ahead to the future, how do you see the future of ticketing and live event infrastructure evolving and what role will platforms like Tick Mint play in shaping that ecosystem?
- [09:10]
B
Yeah, that's a very good question as well, Brian. I just want to go back to the blockchain and say I'm also very passionate about the blockchain technology myself. I'm certified from MIT in the application of blockchain technology in business. And I'm also fascinated with the collectibility like part. Like I also collect art and a lot of digital art. So we're also, I don't want to get a lot into that, but we're also looking into introducing the collectibility items in, in ticketing as well. But I'll move now onto the question that you just asked me, which is how it, how it is shifting and the future kind of ticketing. So the shift happens kind of from transactional to relationship is how we see it. So instead of it being a transaction, it turns into a relationship. So the ticket here is not just access anymore. Right. It's the start of an ongoing connection. So what's coming is more personalization, stronger communities and new revenue streams beyond just the event itself. So the big idea here is that organizers will own the relationship and take mint role in all of this will be really being the fundamental infrastructure layer, not an intermediary. And this applies to small organizers and small creators all the way to large enterprises, like we said earlier. And the goal is to help anyone build, scale or monetize their audience.
- [10:36]
A
That's awesome. Really appreciate that and love your excitement for blockchain. I'm glad you did touch on that. I can tell when people are really excited about what they're working on and they really embrace the technology like Web3. So thank you. But you're not just providing this access, you talked about that. But it's a long term connection and relationship and fundamentally the infrastructure is a part of that for ownership for these creators. And I just really love what you're doing to make the world a better place. And Omar, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [11:08]
B
Likewise. Likewise. Brian, it was great meeting you as well. And I'll just leave with kind of a closing thought here, which is the people who are creating the value should be the ones who are capturing it. And that's essentially what we're enabling with Tick Mint. And thanks again, Brian, for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation.
- [11:29]
A
Bye for now.
- [11:40]
B
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