The case at a glance
- $100K+ processed in 14 months
- ~3,600 tickets sold, average ticket near $28
- 12 paying orgs, including 1 school district
- 560 kids checked in at one afterprom; 3 arrived without a signed waiver
- 2 years running it in-house (2024, 2025) before a stranger paid him a dollar
- Stated target: 50 paying orgs by end of year
He joined his kid's afterprom committee as a parent volunteer, saw a clipboard and a cash box at the door, and did what developers do. The product: online general-admission tickets, QR check-in, waivers signed inside the purchase flow, and an SMS to the parent when their kid arrives and again when they leave. Silent auctions got added because a customer asked.
Pricing is flat and annual with a nonprofit discount — explicitly not a percentage of each ticket. Money flows through the org's own processor, so he never takes custody of it. He hasn't disclosed his stack; the feature set is weekend-scale on commodity tools.
What he's actually selling to schools (hint: it isn't tickets)
The product isn't the ticketing. The product is a custody record.
Start with the price, because that's what got him in the room. Every ticketing platform on earth charges a percentage of the sale, which is unbudgetable for a committee that has to approve costs in March for an event in May. A percentage is a number you can only calculate after the event is over. He didn't undercut the market — he made the cost a budget line a committee can vote on. That's approvability, not a discount.
Then look at what makes him impossible to remove. 557 of 560 waivers were collected before anyone showed up. Pair that signature with a timestamped check-in and check-out for a minor and you don't have a ticketing tool anymore. You have proof that a 16-year-old was signed in at 10:42pm and left at 1:07am. The inflatable rental company needed those forms and couldn't believe it. A bar never would. A district will sign a contract for it.
Large platforms won't build this. Minors, timestamps, and liability are the exact surface their legal teams pay money to avoid.
Notice where the value lives: in absence. No clipboard, no cash box, no 2am call asking whether your kid is still inside. You're not selling tickets. You're selling the committee chair her evening back.