TECHNOLOGY TICKETS


Meet the young entrepreneurs aiming to shake up the way we buy tickets for gigs, shows and festivals


TickX aims to become a global price aggregator service for events


BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN A


fter impressing inves- tors at a technology talent showcase a ticket finder website which trades from an office


in Dunoon is on course to raise £1m in seed capital by the end of July. TickX, a company founded by


family friends Steve Pearce, 24, and Sam Coley, 23, is in negotiations


with two venture capitalists after pitching at the EIE investor event in Edinburgh in May. If successful, the platform has


the potential to shake up the way tickets are bought for a multitude of events, including live music, theatre, comedy and festivals. “We want to be the biggest


aggregator - not seller - of tickets, bringing people a complete picture of events prices and help them find the best deals,” said Pearce, an eco- nomics graduate from Manchester University. In that sense, and as a lofty as it


might sound, TickX is aiming to become a kind of equivalent to Sky- scanner, which scours the internet


to find the best flight deals. “Our ultimate ambition is to


be the global platform for search- ing events. So in that sense, yes, it would be a bit like Skyscanner. We believe we have a business with global potential and clear revenue streams.” Underpinning the website is a


proprietorial technology based on an algorithm developed by Coley, who has run a software business since the age of 16. However, Pearce, who worked for a blue chip tech company as a sales account man- ager before developing TickX, had the initial idea during his student days. “I used to go to quite a lot of gigs


at Manchester Academy but I always found it very difficult to find tickets. Tere were many, many different websites and no way to compare prices across them. I approached Sam with the initial idea; he had the technical skills and we found we made a good team working together.”


COLEY HAD already had much success in business after moving to Dunoon, in Argyll and Bute, from Yorkshire with his parents; he had run a software company and man- aged to amass clients including the NHS, and even delivered a solution for the royal estate at Balmoral. “Sam is really good at taking


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