Name of Project
Sesame
Proposal overview
Sesame is the first NFT marketplace focused on selling tickets for live events of any kind, including music festivals, sport games, concerts, museums and many more.
In other words, we aim to reinvent the ticketing industry by allowing event organizers to mint and sell tickets as NFTs on our platform.
The ticketing industry needs a change urgently. Problems such as scams cost consumers about $800M per year, proving that a verified marketplace where tickets can be sold from the organizer to the customer, and in a P2P way between customers is the next step to be developed.
Also, blockchain technology will open new opportunities for engagement between live events and consumers. NFTs are a memory, a collectable/tradeable asset, a pass to build community with similar interests, a possibility to gamify the event, a passport for privileges, and many more.
Although we are aware that crypto usage is still very little (2% worldwide population), we think that regular applications will be the ones that bring mass attention to the ecosystem. We know new customers can be overwhelmed with blockchain and NFTs usage, so our philosophy to design both the project and the product is “make your mother use crypto without knowing she is using crypto”. You will notice this in the features description.
The key features of Sesame will be:
- Marketplace: as “a ticketmaster of NFTs”, Sesame will sell tickets of events through this platform. Organizations will be able to mint, list and sell NFTs to their customers, offering different kinds of tickets/NFTs depending on the privileges they have.
- Secondary marketplace: to definitely end with fraud in the ticketing industry, Sesame will create a P2P marketplace where tickets can be resold. This is not only thought to sell tickets when the customer is not able to attend the event, but also to trade mythical NFTs from past events, such as Superbowls, Soccer World Cups, legendary festivals such as Tomorrowland, etc.
- Multi payment methods: Users will be able to pay both in FIAT and crypto, in order to gain mass attention and evangelize the use of crypto for regular life. For the last option, Harmony wallet will be integrated with the marketplace.
- Profile page: Users who do not use a blockchain wallet will be able to introduce their mail and user data in their profile account. NFTs will be attached to these accounts, and will be given to the users when they make the decision to create a wallet in blockchain. As well, this profile page will be used to manage own NFTs, having the possibility to purchase new packages or special offers that events may enable, making upselling and engagement more easy to organizations.
- Social platform: A parallel platform will be made for users to upload their NFTs, share them with friends and build community. This platform is thought to collect your own NFTs and show other people’s ones, so trading can be stimulated through this world too.
- Dynamic NFTs: NFTs will change their shape when the user makes some actions or activities in the real world, being in the event. With this strategy, we not only gamify the live events, but also contribute to make unique NFTs related to real experiences that also can be traded as a more valuable asset in the secondary market.
- DAOs: DAOs will eventually take action in the Sesame environment to cover several applications, such as vinculating NFTs to accounts and eventually associate them to wallets, or manage payments in different formats (Fiat and crypto).
As it is exposed, Sesame pursues the goal of disrupting the ticketing industry with the introduction of blockchain technologies, making millions of users make the transition from traditional Web2 services to Web3 applications.
The proposal is asked to
- create the marketplace
- start the business
- gain first customers
- selling our first tickets - planned to be happening in the beginning of summer
The go-to-market strategy will be based on traditional B2B techniques, approaching directors of music festivals, sports teams and concerts promoters in the first place, to start selling tickets to the attendants, in a B2B2C strategy.
This product is in the MVP stage. After being able to sell tickets in traditional Web2 technologies, the next step is including the Harmony wallet to the platform, and being able to mint NFTs.
We aim to acquire at least two to three music festivals before the summer, selling about 10.000 tickets approximately, and as a consequence, minting 10.000 NFTs.
Proposal ask
Total Allocation - $60,000
Estimated Timeline - 3 Months
In 3 months, the team will be able to develop the first version of the product, converting the MVP to a ready-to-market marketplace. The focus will be put on
- the marketplaces, both for primary and secondary sales,
- the multi payment methods including the wallet integration,
- the NFTs minting
- the profile page
Complementary, the team will pursue customers for this and next year, to establish a solid customer base to start evangelizing NFTs for IRL applications.
Team
Sesame, Headquartered in San Francisco, California
Jose T Sanchez - Founder, Business - LinkedIn
Past: UC Berkeley Entrepreneurship studies. Strategy & Operations consultant for two years. 1st startup in Spain - Accelerated by Lanzadera, biggest accelerator in Spain - 1 year. Aerospace engineering by background
LĂ©a Segretain - Founder, Marketing - LinkedIn
Past: UC Berkeley Entrepreneurship studies. Marketing and Sales Manager - 3 years. Philosophy and marketing by background
Jose Ricardo Perez - Founder, Technology - LinkedIn
Past: Full stack developer. Ex-uber. Ex-BBVA. Tech Lead in 3 startups. 7 years of experience in Computer Science technologies. Computer Science by background
**Note: Planning to include at least one more developer to the team if the funds are received
Metrics for success
Number of events acquired
Number of [tickets,i.e, NFTs] sold
Number of NFTs traded in the secondary market
Ratio [users claiming their NFTs / total number of tickets sold]** over time
**As explained above, Sesame wants to sell tickets as NFTs, but do not want to establish a barrier to users who are not blockchain users. That way, every ticket sold will be an NFT, but if the user pays in Fiat in a traditional procedure (sign in with mail - pay in fiat - PDF ticket), the NFT will be stored till it is claimed. We expect this ratio increases over time to be close to 1 in the next few years.
External links
Link to Sesame - Investor Deck
Vision
Sesame is trying to build something huge here. Yes, there are some NFTs marketplaces. Yes, there are a lot of ticket marketplaces. But, what we are pursuing is not only the first NFT marketplace focused on live events in the world. We are pursuing many things:
- We want to apply blockchain technology to solve real world problems
- We want to evangelize blockchain technology and NFTs to people who would never use it. How do we want to do it? By applying the tech to daily life activities, such as buying a concert ticket
- We want to offer the best user experience when attending a live event, and we believe NFTs can make that possible. We understand NFTs as the definite instrument to increase engagement, build community, gamify the event, acquire additional packages, and a large etcetera that will come up in the next months / years
- We want not only to stop here. We believe NFTs are a worthy collectable memory. We want people to access our social platform and remember they went to the Super Bowl final ten years ago, or that they are going to Burning man next month. We want people to share their memories and experiences with friends, building community by sharing and trading experiences.
- We want to stop here, because we are aware this is too much. We are starting from the beginning, with the marketplace. But, we want to build a strong community, a solid platform, and in a couple of years, don’t look just to IRL events. If we sell tickets in the real world, why don’t we explore the metaverse? Why not only sell tickets, but to promote events? This is far from now, but it will come. The presented project, the asked funds, is a representation of the beginning. But huge things will come afterwards.
