Sydney-based tech start-up Audience Republic, which helps event organisers boost ticket sales, today closed a $525,000 seed investment round.
Co-founders Jared Kristensen, a former promoter, and Jason MacLulich, ex CTO of GoCatch, raised capital from Artesian Capital and QUT Creative Enterprise Australia. Funding also came from angel investors Radinck van Vollenhoven (Stocard’s MD, formerly with Spotify and Apple), Nick Ingall (Invoice2go’s head of people and culture, formerly with Spotify, Atlassian, AdRoll), Ben Sharp (AdRoll’s MD), Hugh Stephens (Schedugram’s founder and CEO), Allen Liao (Tzukuri’s founder and CEO) and Fredrik Orrenius (G4S Ventures’ CEO).
Launched in October 2015, the online, software-as-as-service (SaaS) platform – formerly known as Ticket Squad – helps organisers generate online campaigns that drive increased ticket sales for festivals, concerts, conferences and other events through their existing ticketing providers such as Ticketek, Ticketmaster or Eventbrite.
Campaigns leverage social media and involve gamification, with rewards such as exclusives, discounts and other prizes for ticket buyers who encourage their friends, via social shares, to make purchases. Platforms supported include Facebook and Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Spotify and SoundCloud.
According to co-founder and CEO, Kristensen, the data gathered through Audience Republic enables organisers to learn more about the people who buy tickets to their event.
“With data collected through Audience Republic, promoters will be able to meet the people behind their ticket sales,” he said. “We deliver insights like their highest spending, most loyal, and most influential customers. And at a broader level, we provide insights around age, gender and location, as well as interests, preferences and music listening history.”
To date, Audience Republic has generated $2 million worth of ticket sales for festivals and concerts as well as conferences and other events. AThe co-founders have also advised that Audience Republic has, on average, delivered a 76% uplift in pre-sale registrations for events, with 203% being its record – achieved through virility of social shares. The funds raised from the round will be used to accelerate customer acquisition and fuel product development geared towards bolstering customer data and analytics capabilities.
“More than 85% of events don’t sell out,” Kristensen said. “And with the live events sector being worth $3 billion alone in Australia and $100 billion globally, that’s a huge opportunity for us. We’re very much focused on being a global business. This is demonstrated by our first customers being outside of Australia.”
Prior to Audience Republic, Kristensen worked for ASX-listed Flamingo as head of marketing, and for a start-up called OneSaas. His co-founder Jason MacLulich was a former CTO of GoCatch and founder of The Medic, a secure video conferencing service for doctors, which was acquired in 2016. MacLulich met Kristensen through the Slingshot accelerator program, which both Audience Republic and The Medic went through.
