Q&A: Jared Kristensen talks Audience Republic, innovative ticketing startup

In October 2015, former concert and festival promoter Jared Kristensen launched startup company Ticket Squad alongside former GoCatch CTO Jason MacLulich. Renamed Audience Republic after recently closing a $525,000 seed investment round, the Australian-developed online platform is designed to help event organisers increase ticket sales.

More than $2 million worth of ticket sales from tens of thousands of event goers have been delivered by Audience Republic to organisers to date. Coming from an events industry background and realising the fact that 85 per cent of events fail to sell out, Kristensen sought to offer a service that addresses this issue head-on.

Audience Republic’s campaigns leverage social media and rewards – such as access to exclusive tickets, discounts and prizes – to incentivise people to invite their friends to purchase tickets. On average, the company says it’s delivered a 76 per cent uplift in pre-sale registrations for events, with 203 per cent being its record – achieved through the virility of social shares.

Kristensen chats to TMN about his humble beginnings in the music industry, how one painful experience provoked a unique business idea and why Audience Republic is a valuable tool in the global event ticketing market.

Were you involved in the music industry prior to establishing Audience Republic?

My start in the music industry began at 15-years-old, pushing boxes and setting up lighting equipment for events like the Big Day Out and Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was not at all glamorous, but I loved every minute of it.

I worked my way up to running my own company at 18, which produced a number of electronic music events, with international artists like Boys Noize, Bloody Beetroots and MSTRKRFT.

Immediately prior to Audience Republic, I was working in the startup/technology space in marketing.

What inspired you to set up Audience Republic? Can you recall any experiences that made you recognise a gap in the market that Audience Republic could fill?

There was one event I ran, which ended up losing $20,000 in one night – because I didn’t sell enough tickets. That was obviously a pretty painful experience, but became the inspiration behind starting Audience Republic.

And looking at the industry as a whole, it was getting much more sophisticated: in ticketing, lighting, audio and everything else. But marketing was still lagging behind. While there were lots of great ticketing platforms, what struck me was that there wasn’t a dedicated product to help with increasing ticket sales. That’s where Audience Republic comes in.

Audience Republic is quite an innovative and unique business model. Have any other startups adopted the same principles of Audience Republic since it launched?

Audience Republic is based on the principle that if you know your friends are going to an event, you’ll be 10 times more likely to buy a ticket.

Our online marketing platform allows event organisers to create campaigns which leverage social media and rewards – such as access to exclusive tickets, discounts and prizes – to incentivise people to invite their friends to purchase tickets.

Certainly, there are a lot of players out there attacking a similar problem, but as far as we know, we’re approaching the problem from an entirely unique angle.

What companies is Audience Republic currently affiliated with and/or have worked with in the past?

Some of the festivals we’ve worked with include Electric Gardens, Pitch Festival, Days Like This, Beyond the Valley and Rhythm & Vines. Also concerts for Sticky Fingers, Broods and Rufus.

Our system is designed to work with all major ticketing agencies (e.g. Ticketmaster, Ticketek, Moshtix, or Eventbrite).

In your opinion, is the live music industry, and the wider events sector in Australia, still as strong as it used to be in light of increased regulation through lockout laws etc?

It’s without a doubt that the lockouts have been detrimental to the local live music and nightlife scene in Sydney.

However, we’ve very lucky in Australia to have a very vibrant music festival scene.

In the wake of large music festivals collapsing like The Big Day Out and Future Music Festival, we’ve seen the rise of many more smaller boutique festivals – like Pitch Festival and Days Like This. I think this is a good thing, and expect this trend to continue.

Do you have further plans to expand the company internationally in the future?

The majority of our business actually already comes from outside of Australia. Key markets we’re focusing on include Australia, New Zealand, UK and the USA.