Sandy Khaund. He’s the CEO of Upgraded, a platform for tickets using blockchain technologies. Previously, he was the CTO at InStadium, a sports venue ad network and senior director at Turner Broadcasting along with CEO of Iryrnsoft, a video-based learning for mobile devices. He was also the COO of teen social network at Piczo and director at Microsoft.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – The World is Flat
What CEO do you follow? – Reed Hastings and Mark Zuckerberg
Favorite online tool? — OneNote
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 4.5
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “The secret of life is doing what you do for free and getting someone to pay you for it”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

02:02 – Nathan introduces Sandy to the show
02:37 – Upgraded has a solution widget that addresses the problem of event tickets
- 02:52 – Alot of the tickets are fake and being sold on Craigslist
03:31 – The Cryptography has worked so well that there’s only one bitcoin
03:54 – Upgraded has a tokenization aspect which converts tickets into a blockchain ticket
- 04:02 – Another revenue model as an alternative to Stubhub
05:04 – Upgraded has already made less than $50K in revenue
05:11 – Sandy started Upgraded last March
05:30 – There are 4 full-time people on the team
05:45 – The cofounder was initially a consultant and Sandy has more in equity
06:07 – The initial fund was from Sandy’s personal savings
06:14 – Sandy took an Angel investment of $300K on a convertible note
- 06:33 – With 4% interest and $7M cap
07:11 – Sandy and the team are still talking about the ICO
09:00 – Right now, cryptocurrency relates to the currency valuation
09:12 – For Sandy, he’s more about the technology rather than the currency
11:10 – Sandy wants to make sure that what he will do what is right for the business
11:50 – Nathan talks about the regulations in ICOs
12:11 – Sandy had a talk with his attorney about ICOs and blockchain
12:40 – As of the moment, anything can happen
13:30 – There was also some acquisition talks with Upgraded but Sandy turned it down
14:03 – Sandy didn’t build Upgraded for the money
- 14:20 – “I just want to keep creating”
15:16 – Sandy thinks it is still too early for the company to do ICOs
15:45 – Nathan talks about the issue DAO had
17:41 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

While ICO is one of the hottest topics in blockchains, some companies would rather not delve into it at this time.
Create a utility that can solve one of the most taken for granted problems.
Do the work that you would do for free and then get someone to pay you for it.

Resources Mentioned:

Simplero – The easiest way to launch your own membership course like the big influencers do but at 1/10th the cost.
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

793: Will This Funded Event Ticketing Company ICO?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders