HelloWorld

On Thursday, June 22 at 4:45pm in Santa Monica California, HelloSugoi sold the first of what we hope will be many millions of event tickets.

It’s official: The revolution in event ticketing has begun.

Although our blockchain-based “competition” may have fancier websites and white papers selling promises, HelloSugoi has delivered an actual product.

“Real artists ship.” — Steve Jobs

It ain’t pretty, but it works.

“If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” — Reid Hoffman

In addition to shipping our product, we’re excited to announce that we’re selling tickets to the State of Digital Money, where influential thought leaders, stakeholders, and innovators will discuss cryptocurrency market trends and opportunities for the future. The event will take place at Cross Campus in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, July 22nd.

Some of the biggest names in the cryptocurrency space will be in attendance: Brock Pierce, Managing Director of Blockchain Capital, Alyse Killeen, Managing Partner at StillMark, and Jesse Grushack, Co-Founder of Ujo Music and Product Strategist at ConsenSys — a literal who’s who of the digital currency movement.

We couldn’t have asked for a more relevant first use case.

How We Do

We’re well aware of the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face in attempting to fix a very broken industry. We openly accept these challenges and are not deterred by the obstacles we face.

Bring it on, baby.

We’re in the business of selling event tickets, not blockchain. We use blockchain because it enables us to provide the best value for our customers, not because it’s the sexiest new technology on the block, ahem.

We understand that the success of a ticketing platform has everything to do with access to event ticket inventory. We understand that rethinking how value is captured and distributed in the secondary market is a far better solution than trying to eliminate it all together. And we understand that, above all else, great businesses serve the needs of their customers.

Thought Leadership

Angello and I host a popular blockchain Meetup in Los Angeles, called “Real World Blockchain.” We use this forum to discuss various use cases for blockchain technology (music industry, sharing economy, IoT, etc). We’re driven by a passion to engage and educate the community at large, in an attempt to introduce blockchain to as many people we possibly can.

Since embarking on this mission, we’ve facilitated talks at Pivotal Labs, Product School, Techtinx, the Herb Albert School of Music, the Anderson School of Management, the University of California Riverside, the Southern California Music Industry Professionals Meetup, the San Francisco Ethereum Developers Meetup, and the Society of Women Engineers.

Our location in the “Entertainment Capital of the World” give us access to influential musicians, promoters, and artists, who regularly seek our advice when looking to learn more about blockchain technology.

Watch our Meetups here.

Read our articles here.

Who We Is

Jason Robert — Before co-founding HelloSugoi, I was a professional musician. My first paying gig was as a drummer was at age 14. I’ve since toured with and opened for The Roots, Slick Rick, George Clinton, Robert Randolph, the Gaslamp Killer, and Boys II Men. I’ve played major festivals like Bonnaroo and the Newport Folk Festival.

In 2011, I began songwriting and producing. Within a year of living on Los Angeles, I got signed to the UK based Tru Thoughts label. I’ve since released 2 EPs and 2 full-length albums with enthusiastic support from tastemakers at NPR and the BBC, toured North America and the UK, and accumulated millions of plays across popular streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

In 2015, I signed a songwriting deal with BMG Production Music, the 5th largest publishing company in the world. I’ve since placed songs in in high-profile TV shows like “This is Us” on NBC, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” on CBS, and “The Mindy Project” on FOX.

I’m also scoring an Original Netflix Series called “We Speak Dance,” which is currently in production.

Angello Pozo —The Peruvian born, Los Angeles raised software engineer is the brilliant mastermind behind HelloSugoi’s innovative technology.

Ever since he was young, he’s wanted to be an inventor. I recall an evening at a Meetup hosted by Opodz in Little Tokyo. I began attending the Learn Teach Code meetup to accelerate my coding skills. It was that there I met Angello, who was helping to facilitate the meetup.

I sought his expertise in implementing a React component I was having trouble rendering. After he quickly solved the problem, I asked him how he got in to software engineering. His answer was perfect. He said, “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to be an inventor. I love building things. I also happen to really love computers,” at which point he lifted his Macbook close to his chest in a warm embrace.

Angello began learning Linux in 1999. Soon thereafter, he was playing around with websites and tinkering with circuits. In 2004, he moved to Riverside to attend the University of California. He earned a degree in Electrical Engineering, and later a Masters in Intelligent Systems.

While at UCR, he built an image processing grading application and implemented an intelligent systems algorithm based on auction theory with a set of Aria Robots. He was an active member of IEEE, where he conducted workshops with industry leaders. After UCR, he founded and worked on various startups in the Los Angeles area.

These days, Angello is a smart contract ninja. He’s written the logic to manage events, tickets, and user accounts with the Solidity programming language. In addition to building our platform, he’s currently authoring a book on programming in Solidity.

He’s also an instructor at the newly launched DApperNetwork Blockchain Developer Bootcamp, which is the very first blockchain developer bootcamp in Los Angeles.

Why We Is