The company
Aventus is a blockchain-based protocol that delivers increased trust, security and control for the live-event ticketing industry, practically eliminating counterfeit tickets and unfair scalping. Organisers can create, manage and promote their events and associated tickets, dramatically reduce platform costs, and significantly influence secondary markets.
While being undergrads at Imperial, Professor Will Knottenbelt suggested to Alan to look at the Ethereum network and Smart Contracts, instead of the Bitcoin price prediction. He first started with film rights distribution on the blockchain and after completing his masters project, got interested in the ticketing industry and realised that there was a great need for such technology and started a company with Annika.
The team
The team met on Imperial College’s campus in Beit Hall where they both stayed first year of undergrad. We also have some great advisors on board: Daniel Masters – VC and expert in cryptocurrency; Professor Mike Waterson – ticketing knowledgebase and Professor William Knottenbelt – blockchain engineering expert.
Enterprise Lab support
The Enterprise Lab has been a really useful resource, especially when we were just starting up. We used the Enterprise lab as office space for two months before moving into our own offices. The Lab allowed us to work productively together with all needed facilities including whiteboards, meeting rooms for potential clients, investors and employees. The team also helped by introducing us to the Imperial press team who put us in touch with the evening standard who did an article on us which was great.
Successes
Our greatest successes to date have been getting VC investment from Global Advisors, our token sale performance and closing a major deal with Kind Heaven. But there have been hurdles along the way. The ETH market crash in July resulted in us postponing sale, we had an employee security breach during Token Sale and a client unfairly testing our system and pulling out of a deal, when really their investors just did not like blockchain!
Advice to aspiring entrepreneurs
Our advice to anyone hoping to start a business would be to be humble and work super hard, no excuses. Never neglect the importance of the people around you, it can’t be done alone (1% of something huge is much better than 100% of nothing)! Ideas are not particularly valuable, it is all about execution.
