I had the pleasure of interviewing Annika Monari & Alan Vey, founders of blockchain ticketing service Aventus, a new platform providing the ticketing industry with a fair and secure means of ticketing events.

Thank you so much for joining us! What is your “backstory”?

AM: We met in 2012 whilst we were both studying for our masters at Imperial College London. I was fascinated by Physics and interned at the John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory before starting my thesis, whilst Alan had an affinity with economics and took a year out to work at the Deloitte Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre, going on to study Artificial Intelligence for his masters.

AV: As we worked more closely together we realised we could use our joint expertise across maths, economics and technology in business by harnessing the Ethereum blockchain. Whilst looking at ways to make digitally enforceable agreements using blockchain, and with guidance from Professor William Knottenbelt, the Director of the Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering Centre at Imperial College, we began to explore more ways to utilise this technology and Aventus was eventually born.

Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?

AV: As two young people on this journey, we quickly realised that people treat you differently because of your age. Investors and partners may not take you seriously because you don’t have the experience and are new to industry. But once you prove yourself and show them what you’re trying to achieve you’ll quickly see people start to respect you and those invites come flying in!

AM: From a music Industry perspective, what’s been interesting is seeing how slow-moving an industry of this size can be. At conferences they’re still discussing “What are we going to do about this brand new technology: music streaming?”. From our perspective as young millennials, streaming has been a thing for 10 years now — it isn’t new! The industry just isn’t moving quickly enough to keep up with consumer change and demand.

Can you describe how your firm is making a significant impact?

AV: For the consumer there’s a lot of frustrations at the moment around current ticket buying processes, from sky-high ticket scalping prices to hidden costs at checkout to counterfeit tickets. On the Aventus Protocol, each ticket has a unique ticketing number, allowing consumers to easily check and prove the validity of a ticket. Part of the functionality of the Protocol is that it allows consumers to identify and report fraudulent or negative behaviour in the industry; so for example, a fake event can be flagged as such and removed. The adoption of the Aventus Protocol means greater consumer fairness, with greater checks and balances and fairer pricing.

AM: It also gives artists the ability to enforce pricing throughout the lifecycle, which is a big advantage for them. Not only can they get a proportion of costs from resales, but they can also look out for their fans by setting maximum price caps or ensuring that tickets cannot be resold above face value.

AV: For secondary platforms, it will be easy using the Protocol to prove that the ticket they are selling is legitimate and they have the right to sell it — which will improve consumer confidence and drive repeat business.

Can you tell me a story about a person who was impacted by this cause?

AM: From a consumer perspective, you hear horror stories every week! We released the results of an Aventus-commissioned survey of U.S. ticket buyers last week, which found that 10% of millennials have been victims of ticketing fraud — for example, in CNBC’s report on the survey they highlighted a girl called Emily who’d been scammed out of money for a non-existent ticket by paying in Amazon vouchers — which the seller had then disappeared with. Millennials might think that they’re more digitally-savvy than most, but their willingness to transact online actually makes them more vulnerable to this type of behaviour.

Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?

AV: At the moment there’s a lot of new legislation coming into play worldwide, particularly around limits upon the secondary market. The nature of the digital world though is that unethical actors find ways around this, and laws are useless unless they can be enforced. It would help for governments to explore and advocate technology solutions rather than enforcing solutions through legislation.

AM: A global standard or framework for the ticketing market — or at least standards across one tour across countries. At the moment the ticketing landscape is so siloed it’s impossible to have any level of accountability or auditability. Governments should define what consumer protection looks like in this space, and hold list of providers that protect consumers, as well as providing advice on how to avoid fraud.

AV: That last note around consumer education is where there’s a real need; for example, Google has recently brought in new rules in AdWords for ticketing platforms to make it clear whether a platform is primary or secondary. In the U.K., recent legislation means that secondary markets must display all additional checkout costs up-front. The government should provide consumer guidance around what’s legal, what’s illegal, and ways in which consumers can assure the legitimacy of their ticket.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

A lot of running a company is dealing with problems and fire-fighting all the time. It’s easy to get sucked into things and miss the bigger picture. A lot of people talk a much bigger game than they have — so if you do have substance, you have to shout about it. That’s especially true in the U.S.! When you’re growing a business, it’s easy to think that every additional employee is an equivalent unit of productivity, but the larger you get, the more interfacing is required between departments. It takes a long time to get things to be done, so you have to be patient. Everything is all about relationships: pursuing them and building them and then (most importantly) maintaining them. We’re building relationships across tech, across finance, across ticketing and entertainment — don’t underestimate the importance of this (or the amount of time you’ll need to put into it). The best things come from unexpected places — so take risks sometimes!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

AM: “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” — Socrates. For us, we’re not trying to destroy the current ticketing industry as it stands — we want to work with it to develop tools and technologies that help underpin and enforce the way it wants to do business.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. :-)

AV: Elon Musk. He’s South African so he comes from same roots as me, and he was a young entrepreneur in the digital space. He started off as a physicist — like Annika — and we love that he still has his feet in the trenches and spends 70% of his time in a hands-on engineering role. He also brings that element of social good to his work, closing a massive deal with the US government on green energy through Tesla.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

https://www.facebook.com/AventusPF

https://www.twitter.com/AventusPF

https://reddit.com/r/aventus

https://blog.aventus.io/