Aventus is thrilled to announce Andy Grant as the latest addition to our team as head of product. He is the former CTO of Ticketlogic and Founder of Glue Works, and has experience building and designing ticketing infrastructure for over a decade.

Andy is a results-oriented technology leader experienced in implementing and overseeing teams, products, and projects. Andy has a true love for technology and its potential and leads with a people-first pragmatism, which has allowed him to deliver strong professional results through effective stakeholder and team collaboration.

Some of his experience includes:

Founder of Glue Works. A ticketing technology start-up focused on building SaaS applications for ticket vendors and promoters.

Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ticketlogic, an online ticket agency operating in 6 countries and turning over more than £6,000,000.00. Originally a monolithic system Andy led the project to refactor the system to a microservices architecture. Ticketlogic was a multi-language, multi-currency platform with integrated affiliate, partner and other systems.

Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Entertainment Intelligence, a big-data, B2B SaaS company operating in the complex world of global music sales and marketing with the goal of consolidating multi-stream, multi-owner, multi-jurisdiction data into a logical and accessible format.

We are extremely excited that Andy has decided to join the team and we are confident that together we will be able to bring the Aventus solution to the global ticketing markets.

A fireside chat with Andy Grant

Could you please give us a bit of information regarding your background and past experiences in the ticketing industry?

I graduated from a computing degree in 2001; I worked as a developer for a couple of years before moving into project management for a mid-sized ERP vendor. After getting disillusioned with the impossible projects the sales team promised we could deliver I started working for smaller companies in tech/ops roles.

In 2011 I joined Ticketlogic full time having consulted for them off and on for the previous 3 years. Ticketlogic (aka Clubtickets) operated in 5 countries and 3 currencies specialszing in promoter led events and festivals. At their peak they turned over approximately $7M P/A across all divisions. I redesigned the financial parts of the system and successfully led the project to refactor the solution to a microservices architecture. Unfortunately a bankrupt client brought down the company in 2014. Since then I have worked for other companies in entertainment tech as well as consulted to ticketing organizations.

What made you agree to join the Aventus team?

Mostly it was the founders. From our first meeting they listened when I challenged some of their assumption, and rather than get defensive and try and sell me their ideas they immediately went into problem solving mode and suggested other approaches. It was refreshing to see. There are new ticket tech companies starting every year, they are mostly run by people who know a bit about events and not much about ticketing. They learn the hard way that ticketing at scale is not as easy as it appears.

Considering the current landscape, what are some of the challenges you foresee and why are you optimistic that the Aventus solution and the team (yourself included) will be able to overcome said obstacles?

I’m optimistic for the same reason I joined, the attitudes of the founders. You can’t approach product development with a ‘Field of Dreams’ attitude. If you are not prepared to listen to your clients and adapt quickly you will inevitably fail. I’m confident that the team can adapt and evolve, we have a great starting point and a lot of people keen to work with us.

How are you envisioning the product development phases of the Aventus Solution? Could you give us some details about the ideas you have?

Product development is an on-going process, I don’t see it starting or stopping at all. What we build and how depends very much on the client feedback. The blockchain component adds another dimension to the overall solution structure, and it gives us plenty of opportunities to create products that can either be services as part of our own larger solution, or, products that can be sold to clients. We have great domain knowledge now as well as some enthusiastic clients. We’ll be agile and lean so we will be building the right things in the right way.

Why did you want to work on a blockchain/Ethereum based project? What aspects of the blockchain are of particular interest to you?

I’ve been interested in the blockchain for nearly 5 years now and I have been looking for ways to utilise the blockchain for ticketing for the last 3. I was actively looking at various blockchain implementations with a view to building a blockchain ticketing solution when I chanced upon Aventus. Any blockchain implementation in this area is going to have advantages and disadvantages, my main concerns at the moment are speed and scalability but I am confident we can focus our energy in the right areas. In the short term a blockchain ticketing solution can eliminate certain forms of touting very easily, and in the long term can act as a general disintermediation enabler for certain use-cases. I think we also have to be open to the possibility that there are other potential benefits which we cannot foresee.