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Who are you?
I am originally from Iran, grew up in France and started my career in Investment Banking at Deutsche Bank then Bank of America before starting the online platform KweekWeek with my cofounder Tina.
What is KweekWeek about?
KweekWeek is an event discovery and ticketing platform.
We help Londonders (and soon people in other big european cities) find events and activities in a radical new way. Instead of looking for things to do, the platform gets to know the users and suggests the most relevant events based on their tastes, location and social network - all in real-time.The focus is to simplify the user’s decision process when it comes to deciding which event to attend.
The KweekWeek algorithm curates the most relevant experiences for the customers so they don’t have to spend time thinking of what to do or go through large quantities of information online or offline. Events range from gigs, film screenings and musicals through to experiences.For promoters, it offers a simple yet complete ticketing, promotional and analytics solution to market their events to the right audience.At the intersection of online and offline, the platform brings the convenience of instant booking to the entertainment space.
How did you come up with this idea?
The events market is still dominated by old pre-internet businesses that have simply taken their old business models online. With the latest shifts towards smartphones, the ubiquity of social networks and tremendous cloud computing power and storage, there is an amazing opportunity to disrupt simultaneously the way people discover events and how promoters can reach the right audience. Too many people still rely on word of mouth and randomness to find out about interesting things happening in there cities hence our idea to create a true platform connecting the two sides seamlessly.
Is there anything in particular that motivates you in building KweekWeek?
To take an idea and make it a reality and seeing people starting to believe in and supporting it: investors, partners, employees, clients and users… It also feels great to see the product actually achieves its objective, in our case help an individual find and attend a great event while improving the promoter’s reach.
As an entrepreneur and CEO, how did you find the process of recruiting and managing a team of nine people?
Recruitment is certainly one of the most (if not the most) challenging aspect in building a company. I always say a startup is like a very small rock in space with very little gravity and it needs a lot of patience and luck to start growing by adding other smaller pieces to itself and then have a pull power/gravity like a planet.
Which cities does your product cover and how many are you planning to include in the next year?
One only ie London. By the end of the year we want to expand to a few european cities and one more outside of the continent.
What is it that makes KweekWeek different from any other events finder application or website?
We are ultimately positioning ourself as a personal companion tool to our users and for promoters we want to be the most effective promotional platform. We want to know our users and suggest events that match their personality, past behaviour and obviously take into account their location and what their friends are doing. We don’t simply look at this business from the ticketing angle which is what most other platforms do; they are simply transactional where we are much more social.
Did you receive any funding in order to expand KweekWeek?
Yes a large seed round from prominent Angel investors in London.
How do you see London in terms of startup scene?
Very promising. We are ourself based close to what is now called “Tech City” and host regular events to help promote the startup scene such as our Tech Founder Talks that happen on a monthly basis (http://www.kweekweek.com/TechFounderTalks/3878fbc83f). I think there is a clear shift that is starting to happen in London where a growing number of people are looking at careers outside the traditional banking/consultancy/real-estate sectors which have dominated historically the market. With a number of promising startups looking to break out of the London/UK market into the global scene, a few british success stories would be a great proof that London can be a rival to other technology centers.
What was the biggest mistake you have made as a founder?
Not learn how to code when I left my old job! Now I spend 2 nights a week and my weekends in intensive programming classes.
What is the best advice you could give to a student who wants to startup as soon as university is over?
Go for it. There has never been a better time to launch an online venture. There are close to 4 billion people one click away from any website/app and hundreds of traditional business models ready to be disrupted so without hesitation I would advise all students to pursue their ideas.
