Helping the poor and easing punters’ woes just the ticket

Purchasing tickets online used to be a total pain.

Humanitix founders Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross. Picture: John Feder

Purchasing tickets online used to be a total pain. The ticketing giants were able to charge eye-watering fees for clunky websites and poor customer service because they had locked up all the major acts. But they’ve had to change as new sites have chipped away at their dominance, and now two young Aussie entrepreneurs want to cut fees and put those fees to charitable use.

Humanitix was started three years ago by high school best friends Joshua Ross and Adam McCurdie, who left jobs in finance and management consulting to find a purpose-driven enterprise that could scale. “Our jobs were high- paying, but not fulfilling and not necessarily with an ethical overlay, which bothered both of us,” Mr Ross said. “We didn’t feel like we were making a positive contribution in the world and we didn’t want to wait until the end of our lives to start doing this. We wanted to create a career of purpose that was sustainable.”

The friends see a big opportunity in a market worth $289 million in Australia, and an estimated $30 billion worldwide, for their platform, which donates 30 per cent of booking fees to charity.

Mr McCurdie left his job first to work on the technological development of Humanitix’s website. Mr Ross shared his salary with Mr McCurdie for 18 months as they waited for external funding.

That came last month when they received $1.2m from Australia’s most successful tech company, Atlassian, following six months’ due diligence. Now they have funding for their nine staff members for the next three years.

The latest win was being named in the top 20 of Westpac’s Businesses of Tomorrow, a program aimed at identifying and supporting innovative companies. The program has matched the ­Humanitix founders with former Wallabies captain John Eales as a mentor, and the company will receive $50,000 in consulting services, an intensive program at Melbourne Business School, as well as a study tour to Silicon Valley. The program’s previous top 20 got one-on-one time with the founders of Airbnb and LinkedIn.

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Last year’s winners credit the program with helping them raise capital, refine their business models and secure high-profile clients.

Mr McCurdie hopes it can work similarly for Humanitix. “To be named in the top 20 as a social enterprise is huge for us,” he said. “Being a social enterprise is difficult because alongside creating a viable business you have to provide social outcomes. We can see the value we create and it’s great Westpac can too.”

So far Humanitix has sold $6m worth of tickets via the platform, and has signed up major clients such as Football Federation Australia, Westfield and the Australian arm of UN. The founders say they are on track to more than double the turnover for the business next year and their eventual hope is to expand internationally.

“Down the track our aim as we scale is to give opportunity to any child or adult in any part of the world who is left behind through poverty, disadvantage or education gaps,” Mr McCurdie said. “There is a need for ticketing globally, it’s identical wherever you go. This is a solution that fits nicely everywhere.”

The global opportunity is certainly there. Eventbrite, the ticketing platform most similar to Humanitix, has processed more than $10bn in gross ticket sales since it was founded in 2006, and has hundreds of millions in ­venture-capital backing.

Mr Ross said that as Humanitix was a not-for-profit, they thought of charities as shareholders.

They say tech companies should be looking to solve important problems instead of chasing higher and higher valuations.

“The power of technology in solving social issues is a major philosophical driver,” Ross said. His business partner agrees.

“As we see rising prosperity thanks to technology, there are real concerns about communal wellbeing,” McCurdie said. “Are technological advances bringing the rest of the world up? Our core focus is helping those left behind.”

The Deal is in The Australian on Friday | Check out this year’s 200 Westpac Businesses of Tomorrow