ticketing
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Chris O’Brien and the price of a pleasant surprise
He built TickPick’s technology, then helped turn a complaint about ticket fees into a business. For Chris O’Brien, the next question is what happens after the fan gets through the gate.
Ant Taylor and the trouble with an empty seat
A sold-out Olympic event with room to spare sent Ant Taylor into ticketing. His journey through Lyte, its shutdown and a new role in AI is a story about the distance between a clever system and a working business.
Michael Nabarro and the Art of Getting Out of the Way
A computer science graduate with a lighting desk habit, Michael Nabarro built Spektrix after running a theatre. His work keeps returning to the same question: what could people do if the machinery stopped getting in their way?
Travis Janovich and the business of getting in
He wanted a concert ticket he could print at home. Etix led Travis Janovich into the workings of live entertainment, from venue software to a stake in Raleigh’s Hopscotch Music Festival.
Brett Goldberg and the price of a simple night out
A few spare concert tickets sent Brett Goldberg into the resale business. With TickPick, he and his college roommate turned a familiar checkout irritation into a company built around showing the price upfront.
AXS and the ticket that keeps moving
A ticket changes hands. AXS wants to follow the whole trip - from the first sale to the final scan. That small ambition explains a surprisingly large business.
accesso sells the hour you lose in line
A place in the queue used to require a person in the queue. accesso built a business around separating the two - then followed the guest from the ticket checkout to the ice-cream stand.
Jeff Kreuser and the price of a promise
A two-month software project became a ten-month disappointment. For Softjourn co-founder and CEO Jeff Kreuser, that familiar story explains why the work begins before the coding does.
Paciolan knows who came back
A ticket gets you through the gate. Paciolan helps venues turn that brief encounter into the next visit, the next season, and sometimes the next donation.
Tessitura: The arts organizations that built their own software company
An opera house authorized $5 million to make ticketing and fundraising talk to each other. Seven arts organizations turned the result into Tessitura, a nonprofit technology cooperative serving more than 800 institutions.
The Club That Sold Tickets to the Giant
TicketWeb gave independent rooms a box office they could run themselves. Then it joined Ticketmaster, turning a small-venue tool into a doorway to a much larger audience.
Etix wants the whole night, from ticket to T-shirt
The North Carolina ticketing company built its business around the needs of venues. Now its ambitions extend from finding the audience to ringing up the merchandise.
Tikit turns “just a quick question” into a ticket
Cireson’s service desk puts structure inside Microsoft Teams. Its customer stories reveal why the hard part of IT support is often getting the request into the system at all.
The AI Employee Selling Tickets After the Box Office Goes Home
Satisfi Labs started with a food finder. Its customers kept asking for more - fan support, warm leads, ticket checkout and proof that the bot earned its keep. A decade later, the company is selling a managed AI workforce to the places where questions arrive in crowds.
Event Citadel Bought a 1976 Trade-Show Workhorse - Now It Wants to Turn Every Badge Scan Into a Business Signal
The company behind millions of registrations is betting that the dullest moment at a conference - the badge scan - can become its most valuable data point. The playbook is equal parts software, field crews and half a century of scar tissue.
Avante Price Is Building the Exit Door From the Feed
He learned to DJ at five, built a marketplace at 15, and left NYU to turn a student-party workaround into Posh. His wager is simple: the next useful social network may be the one that persuades you to close it.
The Team Natalie Portman Built to Prove Women's Soccer Was Underpriced
A women's soccer club built by Hollywood, venture capital and athletes bet that fans, sponsors and equity could sit on the same balance sheet. In 2024 the market priced that bet at $250 million.
The Blue Jackets Built a Hockey Town. Now They Have to Win It.
Columbus has proved it will show up - 94,751 fans did so at Ohio Stadium. The Blue Jackets' harder business is turning civic affection, a loud cannon and a deep local network into the durable habit of winning.
Atlanta's Hawks Learned to Sell More Than Basketball
The box score is only the front door. Behind it sits an Atlanta entertainment business that sells belonging - through basketball, concerts, commerce, civic programs and one very busy downtown arena.
The Shark Tank Is Becoming a $500 Million Bet on Hockey's Next Generation
San Jose is rebuilding more than an NHL roster. With a generational young star, a lease through 2051 and a sweeping arena overhaul, the Sharks are trying to turn a hockey club into the Bay Area's most durable live-entertainment habit.
Live Nation Entertainment
It books the band, owns the room, prints the ticket and sells the beer sponsorship. Inside the $23-billion machine that moves 150 million concertgoers a year - and the antitrust fight over whether one company should do all of that.
Minnesota Vikings
Minnesota's NFL franchise has spent six decades turning purple, ritual and recurring heartbreak into a durable consumer business. Its real product is bigger than football: a weekly reason for millions of people to belong.
SysAid
The Israeli company that has spent two decades making IT service desks less miserable is now betting the whole business on AI agents that answer the tickets before a human ever sees them.
Puzzel
The Oslo company that quietly runs the phones, chats and inboxes behind Scandic hotels, JYSK stores and a slice of European customer service - and is betting AI can make agents faster without making them robots.
tawk.to
The world's most-used live chat software gives itself away for free. Hundreds of thousands of businesses - and billions of customer conversations a month - run on top of it.
Supportbench
The Vancouver company betting that B2B support is a different sport than B2C - and building the account-aware help desk to prove it.
Thena
The B2B support desk quietly moved into Slack. Thena is the company betting the whole ticketing stack should move with it.
Zendesk
The company that turned the help desk into a category is now betting its future on AI agents that don't just deflect tickets - they close them.
LiveAgent: The Slovak Help Desk That Quietly Serves 150 Million People
Built in 2004 by Quality Unit to fix its own inbox, LiveAgent now runs customer support for more than 40,000 companies from offices in Bratislava, Kyiv and New York - without a cent of venture money.
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