How Ed Vincent Built his Business through Determination

[Music] thank you welcome to Super entrepreneurs podcast we have with us here Ed and Ed Vincent and we always like to allow our guests to kind of in their own words to introduce themselves what you're up to nowadays and we'll kind of go with the with the stream of discussion here sure sure so name is Ed Vincent been an entrepreneur for over uh 25 years have had multiple companies along the way uh currently uh working on uh Festival pass which is a a subscription Marketplace in the live event space um and I suspect that you'll be digging in not only to my current business but all the uh the other ones along the way that we successfully built and exited that's awesome and uh so so basically this uh what would you call it live sorry what was it again event yeah so it's called Festival pass yes it's a it's a subscription Live Events Marketplace so what it means is that our members they sign up and they pay a monthly fee and they get credits and with those credits they can redeem them for about 80 000 Live Events so everything from uh the best concert that you want to go to to any kind of Festival to any sporting event any football baseball basketball game you can imagine Broadway Theater All the Above hmm so when did you start working on this startup sure a couple years back um we uh we just began to launch it right before the pandemic and then the Silver Lining is uh while all the Live Events shut down we had time time to build some technology and to build um Leo's new Live Events would come back so we just kept pushing through it to 200 billion dollar industry uh that that hasn't really been innovated on in a very long time so we uh we knew um that we were just going to push through to the other side a lot of people pivoted to live streamed events um and it's not that we won't participate in that a little bit in the future but uh we're very core to how special it is to physically be at alive event yeah I was asking because you know during when all this pandemic and covet stuff happened you know a lot of people were were confused and and worried and stressed out and then knowing that you were working on a startup about Live Events right like what kind of toll it took on your mindset but you definitely had a like what did you go through what were you thinking and how did you keep on track um to continue with this yeah a lot of it comes the context um of the business is something that you know kind of been working on for 20 years because all my other businesses all touched upon what we're doing today a little bit um and I can give you some background and then kind of answer your core question but um you know I started I was an investment banker until 1999 in New York and left to start my first e-commerce business um then so we I had an e-commerce business which then we sold in 2001 and so I understood the power of selling online on the internet uh moved into an agency I had about a 70 person experiential agency throughout the 2000s and what that meant is we brought a lot of big Brands into big large events so um you know dozens of uh staple Brands you might know whether they were alcohol brands or consumer product Brands um engaging and activating at Big concerts big festivals we helped launch a number of film festivals we even owned one down the Dominican Republic uh it was the Dominican Republic International Film Festival we built a co-branding hotel with maximum magazine down there so it was always really about that's where I kind of fell in love with Live Events fast forward to um you know 2000 2010 2000 2014 I built a SAS business in the retail franchise and multi-unit space but but that was where I learned about um effectively subscription recurring Revenue um and then had following that a data and analytics company we sold that in 2014 the SAS business and then had a data and analytics company in the entertainment world uh called predict analytics and you know we really helped some of the biggest television brands in the world a e networks AMC networks course entertainment out of Canada movietickets.com screened all these companies we helped them understand their consumer data strategy and execution and that all led to um you know I was brought into a company called MoviePass people might uh have heard of uh Infamous name in the movie subscription business but I spent about 18 months as the interim Chief data officer not necessarily a full-time employee just they hired my company to come in and help them understand data but it gave perspective to how what to do and what not to do and building a subscription driven Marketplace in entertainment so that led into what we're doing today in Festival pass all those pieces along the way I knew you know back in 2019 uh 2018 2019 that I wanted to build this business um and you know I know it's a 200 billion dollar Global business I knew it had a huge upside and huge opportunity so that when we started uh to roll it out and then the pandemic came of course it was like oh okay well you know maybe we'll start picking up traction next month oh don't worry everybody's going to be back in two or three months and then you know ultimately luckily we had some great you know early uh supporters investors that kind of uh helped carry us through that time but stayed uh strong on Vision right so we knew we knew at some point Live Events would be back um we we knew that it would give us an opportunity to kind of get the technology ready as well as build Partnerships that can help us build inventory Etc and then that's kind of where we are today now in the last few months um you know events have been coming back uh events planned for 2022 or double then were planned for 2019 I know we're all going through little bit of a blip today in terms of omnicron but I think we'll get past that as well and um and now you know even on our platform we have over 80 000 events on the platform so getting all those Partnerships and technology in place to handle that so that now in 2022 we can really kind of let the consumers of the world really know what we have and why it's different and why it's special yeah because this industry the live event industry you know there's there's a lot of media attention on it as well and they're talking about it being you know one of the largest Industries in the next two or three years because of everything that happened right so you guys must be excited yeah so there's a silver lining to everything right so it's it it was two years of uh you know kind of just staying under the radar and just working but at the same time now we're ready to take on what's going to be one of the most explosive Industries out there and how many members do you guys have no uh on the platform we have a little over 60 000 members on the platform now um and uh and growing rapidly uh you know every day and uh we're going to continue a big marketing push going forward we expect to have close to a million paid and unpaid there's two types of members um by the end of you know at the end of 2022 we're expecting close to a million um so in a journey of a customer or client on that platform can you kind of run down like what what it is exactly what are they what are they signing up for and what are they getting and if there's competition out there on this yeah so very much so so in the world of ticketing right so we're we're an entertainment driven Live Events community that has ticketing at its core right so we're not a primary ticketing company and there's hundreds of them out there you probably know of some like Ticketmaster and others they're all primary ticketing companies and then there's also secondary ticketing marketplaces some people have heard of StubHub and a few others like that um so in that world it's primary secondary ticketing marketplaces often work together in terms of finding an audience for tickets um so were neither of the two but we're a subscription Marketplace that gains access to a similar set of tickets right so whenever somebody wants to go to something they will tend to search out where do I get that ticket and sometimes they'll buy that ticket directly from a primary ticketing Source like a Ticketmaster or sometimes they'll go to a secondary ticketing Source like a StubHub and end up acquiring that ticket but there's a lot of things that happen along the way and some of the larger marketplaces end up charging significant fees which a lot of people are a little frustrated by in terms of transparency it's like hey I just bought a ticket for a hundred dollars and by the time I check out of my shopping cart it's 165 and there's a very a big frustration in in the kind of especially Millennial and gen Z Community about well why am I paying all these extra fees what does that mean to me so that's one pain Point that's been there the second pain point is really this sense of community right most of these ticketing Services um they serve a purpose but they're very transactional and there's really no brand loyalty to it it's really I just so it's a ticket to what I want to go to but for us we want to change a lot of that right so we're building a community a social frictionless Community where people can come and be a member and by being a member they're committing to us to paying a subscription fee and they get credits for that for that money right so if they're paying 20 a month fifty dollars a month or upwards of 99 a month they get a certain amount of credits for it and they can use those credits to go to any of the events but what happens is because um because we're we're not charging ticketing fees it's no fees so the idea is that they're always going to pay less on our platform because it's it's kind of a classic uh model whereas there's margins that happen within the industry and we're willing to give some of that margin back to the customer because they're committing to be part of a subscription or a membership so our our members that are paying 99 a month they're going to save up to 30 on every single ticket they go there because they're not going to be paying ticketing peers for doing so now that on top of that that's just the base and I'll explain a good analogy for that but uh on top of that it's now okay now I'm part of this community I'm a member what else do I get um so you know we also have 600 000 hotels on our platform where you can get hotel room nights that are cheaper than anywhere else um and then um we're building this whole artist platform so you can engage with your favorite music artist or your favorite comedian or your favorite whoever and have a special relationship within the platform and that ultimately will also roll into nfts in the crypto space which I'm sure you've probably heard a lot of people talk about in coming in 2022 but the point really is I use this analogy a lot when I'm trying to explain it to people is and I'll even ask you personally is um I I suspect you are an Amazon Prime member my wife is so I I just I just send her what I need and she orders it for me which makes sense and the question I always ask people is why right there's always a core reason and 80 of the people it's almost like Family Feud it's like a survey says 80 of the people answer the same way so if if you were to guess what do you think most people join Amazon Prime for purchases well no shipping fees right oh yeah no shipping fees yes yes yes yeah so that's the biggest um thing that people do they're like well I'll pay my 130 a year to access Amazon Prime because I'm never gonna pay for shipping that fast delivery yes yeah so the first thing is this big thing about shipping fees fast delivery and then on top of it you get all these other little perks if you go to Whole Foods you get discounts if you want to watch movies you get free movies so the idea is there's one thing that's a big pain point and then everything else are all these extra perks so once you sign up you're always getting value and you're not going to want to leave and one of the reasons that it helps is because from a business perspective is once you're signed up and you're at Amazon and you're already paying that and you're already getting free shipping the next time you think you need something you need a hat or you need uh you know some uh Gatorade what are you gonna do you're gonna go to Amazon first and assume if they have it great you buy it if they don't you might search elsewhere um so think of that same amount about what we're doing in the entertainment space so we look at it and say hey if you sign up as a subscriber to us you're never going to pay a ticketing fee you're never going to pay that extra fee that you get charged that could in some places some Services charge up to 65 percent more in a ticketing fee at the end of the day and that's um that's a very difficult pill to swallow so for us once you sign up and pay your subscription to Festival pass whether it's annual or monthly you already win because you'll never pay a ticketing fee on anything you ever want to go to you have these credits which are in your bank and you can use them on any of the 80 000 events and you're always going to save money and you get all this other access and you save money on hotels and you get to talk to and hang out with your favorite artists and you get early access to nfts and in the future you might have special access at an event you go to that has a special section or you get a meet and greet or whatever those perks are there's we're continuously building all those extra perks but just like Amazon Prime it's very similar right we hope that people will join us and any event they ever want to go to at least look at Festival pass first because we're likely to have 80 80 percent of them uh just like Amazon would have 80 of all your your uh Goods you want to purchase um so is there is it is there anything special for super entrepreneurs family members the audience on this membership there may be so uh sorry it's already to put you on the spot but no we we can talk afterwards and give you a code that people can uh thank you that's awesome always trying to you know look out for everyone but that's an incredible concept and you mentioned that point system right is this some kind of relationship you had to create or develop with the live event organizers to be able to give you that discount so it works in many ways right so there's um there's a world of primary uh when I say primary it means um the either the original ticketers or the venues themselves or the producers or the people that are putting it on and then there's a secondary market right so the secondary Market means the people that put the event on have already sold it to somebody or some group and then that somebody or some group is reselling it um you know to somebody else so in that secondary Market there's a there's a lot of fees and that's what I was referring to the 65 fees and all that so on the secondary side we're saving them a lot of those transaction fees on the primary side we are working directly with a lot of um individual producers uh venues um festivals themselves uh in order to have them provide our members uh some level of a discount so that we can pass that along to our members so um you know and as we get bigger and over time it's going to get more and more uh beneficial to our members because we'll have a little more purchasing power and we'll be able to even you know pre-buy thousands of tickets for very popular events at a discount to for our um for our members um because it like it's always interesting a lot of people forget um in the ecosystem of any business um it's just like the financial world there's certainty and there's risk and whenever you take risk off the table people are willing to take less money for reduced risk so what I mean by that then I assume uh it's a business podcast so I assume a lot of people here kind of get that whole perspective but like even in the finance world if somebody was an investment Bank was going to help a company raise 100 million dollars and they commit to doing it often they'll take on that 100 million dollars and then they'll Syndicate out a large portion of that to other Banks institutions or whatever it is because they're gonna they're gonna take risk off the table so when you think of a big event let's say there's an annual Festival even though we're not just festivals we're all events but let's say or you might be a tour a concert tour an artist or a comedy tour um when somebody's starting that tour they don't know if it's going to sell out or not right so that there's risk involved to putting in a live event on because they may sell out or they may not so if early on in the process somebody comes in and says hey I'm willing to you know buy 5 000 of those tickets for an event happening six months from now but I want a 20 or 30 discount it's likely they may take that because it's reducing their risk of the future of selling out so it's all a data-driven concept and for us we just really want to give our members the best um the best price and the best experience the best frictionless community to get together yeah that's excellent and yes you know the podcast the audience is a mix right like people they're in you know nine to five um looking they're kind of like looking out the window seeing what's up with this entrepreneurship stuff and and maybe they might jump take the leap then we have you know seasoned entrepreneurs you know we have investors um so my next question would be if anybody wants to come in to this startup um are you is there open to to investment at this point or is it all closed yeah so it's an interesting question and I've even uh written some articles about you know how uh how to finance the company and where where it's an interesting thing so at the end of the day we want to build the company and we want to build it fast so obviously you need Capital to do so um we're lucky enough to have had some really brilliant entrepreneurs already invest and and that's more at the angel level 100 250 Grand a piece uh that's people like the co-founder of HomeAway VRBO invested um I have a professional hockey player it's invested 10 other entrepreneurs that have all exited 100 million dollar companies have invested so there's a lot of there's a great Community the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse and it goes on and on but um so the answer is is we have a lot of these great people that supported us early on and we have a lot of venture capitalists that are super interested in what we're doing and I've tried to hold off on the VC side for a while just for the just in order to maintain control and direction of where we're going to take the company um but one if the right Venture capitalists and we're talking to dozens of them right now uh if we find the right partner we may be willing to take institutional Capital but on the individual investor side is up until the point we choose to do that institutional round we we are willing to take um you know 50 to 250 000 Investments up to a certain level from from Individual investors and there's there's also I can go on and on there's so much that's interesting about this there's a ton of low-cost debt options out there that didn't exist five years ago today that are really fascinating especially for SAS based recurring Revenue businesses so you know we will explore that down the road in order not to not dilute our early investors and then the last thing is uh we did test early on even before we started having events on the platform a little bit of a crowdfund campaign and it was kind of fun to do because you know for me it's all about democracy democratization of letting people who uh our members actually get to invest in the company too so we did a campaign over the summer you know raised a couple hundred grand from that but it was really more of a test just to see hey if I'm going to come and be a member and I can throw a few hundred dollars in and invest in the company too that sounds pretty fun and I think personally personally I think in the next year or two there's going to be a lot of liquidity in the non-public or call it private Marketplace for you know small or upstart and small to mid-sized companies so it's kind of we're testing the waters to you know as we have a million subscribers and you know call it hundreds of thousands of them as paid subscribers I think there's an opportunity for many of them also to be owners even if it's only you know hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars each oh that sucks well I do hear the passion your voice like you know you've been doing this this startup game for for a while now obviously and you know it's it's incredible journey and to be able to exit successfully you know I commend you for that you know and that's that's a yeah this great amazing was it my my next question is like were you always did you always have this kind of spirit in you growing up for business yeah I mean I I was I always knew I was going to be an entrepreneur there was a you know ever since I was uh you know pumping gas when I was a 13 year old that when I wasn't allowed to be to um you know to in in my college dorm room I was a real estate appraiser I actually had my own business valuing homes out of my college dorm room but um but fast forward is I ended up going the traditional banking route and it was only for a period of four three four years and it was because that's what I thought I was supposed to do um you know I went to a state school in New Jersey and I was a finance major and I was like oh you know across the river up there in New York that's where all the investment bankers live that's that's the Holy Grail that's what I'm supposed to do until I got there and was an investment banker and I was like well this is great but we're helping uh we're basically a service provider and helping finance companies where the fun part is operating the company so I was like I want to be over there operating the company and that kind of started me to launch my first business in 1999 and kind of go from there but yes I've always had an Entre entrepreneurial event and I haven't actually had a job since 1999. amazing that's I love that and what about mindset like how did you ever have to deal with um you know those the voice inside right did you ever have to deal with that stuff or were you you were always like go go it never affected you how was your mindset throughout this yeah I mean it's some people who are entrepreneurs will say it's a disease one you can't shake um so you know there's always ups and downs and there's been plenty along the way for me as well I mean my first business you know after we we sold it yeah I was still working at the business and 9 11 happened and so there was a big you know decrease in the value of what I thought I was worth in terms of money um because it kind of blew everything up um literally and figuratively um but then uh you know going forward there was in 2008 was the the Great Recession when I had my agency and you know we went from huge clients you know paying us millions of dollars a year in in marketing spend to uh to people all sudden cutting their budgets so they had to you know work through that uh anyway it just there's these events in life where you can't you can't predict and then all of a sudden you realize that okay well we have to uh you know pivot hold tight and wait to the the storm passes and then get back at it but was there anything internally that you had to work on or anything or is it just you just went with the flow he said oh it is what it is you know let's just see what tomorrow brings or did you actually have to work on those uh situations yes of course um I think it's it's just like uh because of weathered storms now it's easier to weather other ones because you kind of have this feeling that if something's difficult you know eventually keep keep at it eventually adore a crack of a door will open eventually something will happen eventually you know it's that old adage is you don't fail until you quit um and then you know the idea that it's easier now to to push forward knowing that there's there's always opportunity um but yes I've been through that that place and and now you know the pandemic is a perfect example you know I was I had no idea that launching a lot of events business in the beginning of a pandemic was gonna was gonna gonna make sense but um yeah there's a there's a you ever hear the story of the Taoist farmer uh it's just a classic story of um you know is something good or is something bad maybe um you know then The Story Goes that you know I'll go go through it quickly it might take too long if I tell the whole story about it but there's a farmer a Taoist farmer and and basically uh one day's horse runs away and his neighbors come running up to him oh my gosh you know what what bad luck you have there your horse ran away and he's like maybe so then the next day comes and that horse is out in the wild and ends up bringing four or five other friends back and now that this Taos farmer has five horses to work his farm and his neighbors are coming up oh what great luck you have maybe the next day is uh sun's out riding that horse and he falls off and breaks his leg and his neighbors come running up oh my gosh what bad luck you have you know your your son broke his leg and maybe you know later the next day they you know the Army comes by and says hey we're recruiting everybody over 18 to come out to the Army oh but he has a broken leg he can't come you know oh what good luck you have your son is saved maybe so anyway it's just it's just a whole story of life that says things will happen and as they happen it is what it is and as long as you kind of kind of embrace it and go with it uh eventually you can find the path to to make it successful yeah and you know Ed that that key word was Embrace and I think that's the part that is that key component when we embrace it we accept it as is it just becomes tremendously easy you know what I mean when you're trying to fight it and you're pushing trying to pushing through it that's when it gets really chaotic for you right I agree yeah and you know we always like to ask our guests what their inner superpower is that got them to this point you know you exited out of 100 million dollar companies and all that so just want to know what what that what is that inside you that that you feel that maybe you're it's your superpower that got you to this point I guess just uh determination just uh just the acceptance of and determination for um and don't get me wrong I've been there's a lot of uh broken glass on the on the way to success so you know there's a lot of ups and downs along the way so there's uh the the idea is that I think one of the things I realized right is that especially in the early early uh internet 1.0 um sometimes luck is what created success right so it's the idea that uh you know just because your buddy just sold his company for hundreds of millions of dollars and you didn't doesn't mean he's any better than you or he did anything yeah so it's like the idea that you know you ever you ever uh being from New York this analogy is easier but when you go to see a Broadway singer uh and this works for any music right the guy on stage or the girl on stage is amazing but there's also 300 other people just as amazing that didn't get that job so the reality is is it's kind of like uh it goes back to a favorite poem I have uh called If by Rudyard Kipling um and you know just without paraphrasing it with paraphrasing a little bit it's just um you know don't that don't think you're that good if you're successful and don't think you're that bad if you're not it's a you know if you can walk with Kings and keep your common virtue um and you know never lose your common touch but just simply the idea that just because something worked out and doesn't mean you were so brilliant that made it happen and just because something didn't work out doesn't mean you're a failure excellent excellent and you know my next question is you know there might there may be someone in the audience maybe wondering um have you met any celebrities have you worked with personally any celebrities I mean that yeah throughout my life yes a ton and um you know like I don't know which story to even tell but it just you know growing up you just pick one nah it's just hanging out in New York in my 20s you know there was a celebrity every time you go out to a restaurant there's celebrities and um you know I mean from your business like from all the startups yeah yes absolutely I mean when we had our um film festivals right we would have celebrities we'd come to our film festivals all the time and even in the Dominican Republic you know it was more the B and c-list celebrities versus the A-list but we just had a lot of fun and you know I just remember one of my best guests down there was Anthony Anderson if anybody knows he is he's a he's a black comedian that's just a ton of fun and he was respectful and fun and happy um but you know there's in the old school people might know Judge Reinhold from uh um what's that movie forget the movie right now um anyway I'll remember it but uh yeah and then we also with Maxim magazine you can imagine there was always a ton of celebrities around we held Miss Maxim Miss Maxim World down in the Dominican Republic for a summer where they sent you know their cover models from from every country in the world to come and compete in some contests down there that was interesting and fun and even today we uh we have a bunch of really great uh young Hollywood actors that are influencers that are helping us grow um if anybody knows uh like a kids show Max Thunderman the guy that played the lead his name is Jack Griffo um he was a teen kid actor and now he's 25 26 and he's uh you know he's been in a bunch of films and you know um you know we have a partnership with him help you know helping promote some of the stuff we do for festival pass and he's in a band so uh you know we're gonna help promote some of his band as he goes forward and it just goes on and on there's a there's a lot of great relationships that happen in that way well I can tell that uh definitely uh you are someone that can definitely leave an impression in a relationship realm um and you know you're you are wise you have that information because of that experience right would you be open to any startup idea from anybody that wanted you know from your experience because of all the experience that you went through to Startup to pitch their idea to you yeah I mean I was open to help any entrepreneur in any way I can um obviously right now I'm focused on building building what we do at Festival passed out because it's still early stage but yes I'm always uh I think the entrepreneurial Community is amazing like you know even I live in Austin Texas right now and I moved here about a year and a half ago and I was immediately uh was able to tap into the entrepreneurial Community here and um you know appreciate what people have done for me and I'm always happy to do it for anybody else that's great and thank you so much and are there any last like final words that you would like to share with the audience no I mean I I think I encourage everybody to to follow their passion right so uh yeah if you have an idea you know make sure it's something you're passionate about something you really enjoy something you really want to spend your time on um you know I've always tried to work in businesses where I really enjoyed the work um as opposed to you know built the business just so I could own a business um you know there's there's a lot of a lot of different businesses and ideas out there whether it's uh you know health care or the crypto world or you know you name Finance or space it's there's a million things to do you should pick the one that everybody loves beautiful thank you for those last words final words not last final words for today and you know for the audience um this is live obvious right now but once we are done with the editing it will be published and all ads links and all the contact information everything that he's working on will be available but is quite easy you can also Google Ed vidson and this information is there on the first page that you if you need to you know sign up with this and and you know be excited for everything starting to open up so getting that kind of subscription is is great right um if you're if you're in that in that ticket world and you want to entertainment especially going to Live Events you you heard it from the man so you know Ed thank you again I appreciate you and you know anytime you're in Toronto Canada definitely send me a message anywhere I can help uh it'll be my pleasure and um thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today sure and I'll just say that festivalpass.com is the address if people want to go to it and you can set that up for free you don't have to immediately be a paid subscriber you can sign up for free and be on the site and when you're ready to become a paid secure driver you can do that and then the last thing you mentioned from the investment side if there ever is somebody out there that is seriously interested they can always send an email to invest dot Festival pests or yeah and invest at festivalpass.com if they're interested in learning more but um you know it's uh eventually we'll do another crowdfunding thing so people can invest smaller amounts um but anybody that might be interested it's more of that kind of over 50 000 is is all we're really looking at now perfect thank you so much for sharing that and again I'm grateful for you to come on the show and um again thank you so much for your time and have a have an amazing day and the rest of the week I appreciate it and I love the fireplace oh thank you so much I love the money plant [Music] thank you [Music]