Don't Forget Your Tickets
Don' Forget Your Tickets is a podcast devoted to the unsung heroes of the spectator sports and events industries, the Ticketing Managers. We explore who they are, their well-guarded industry secrets, and how they entered the field. Beyond that, we delve into a broader ticketing realm, inviting experts from various fields to share their insights and stories. Our primary aim is to add value and highlight deserving individuals.
(The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com)
Don't Forget Your Tickets
Queues or NOQ? The Final Piece in the Stadium Data Puzzle with Param Kanabar, CEO and Founder of NOQ
In this Live Special episode of Don't Forget Your Tickets, recorded at Cherry Red Records Stadium, Param Kanabar, CEO and founder of NOQ, shares the story of how a frustrating concert experience led him to create a solution that eliminates queues and boosts revenue for event organisers.
Param discusses how NOQ has evolved into a comprehensive financial operating system, offering seamless experiences for both attendees and organisers. With his background as a CFO, he highlights the financial complexities of large-scale events and the importance of integrated systems.
He also shares his journey from corporate CFO to startup founder, providing insights into building long-term event partnerships and the personal fulfilment of blending business with passion. Param’s vision for NOQ’s global expansion offers inspiration for anyone interested in the future of events, data, and efficiency.
Don't Forget Your Tickets is powered by TicketCo and hosted by TicketCo’s CEO, Carl-Erik Michalsen Moberg. The podcast was originally named TicketingPodcast.com
We are back and now with the new name. What was once ticketingpodcastcom is now Don't Forget your Tickets. The reason for that is that you should not forget your tickets and you should not forget your ticketing manager. This brand will include much more than just this podcast, However, the podcast will still remain its backbone. However, the podcast will still remain its backbone. Our first guest on the new brand is Param Kanabar, CEO and founder of NoQ.
Speaker 1:This episode is a live special recorded in front of a live audience at Cherry Red Redbird Stadium in London. This is the home of AFC Wimbledon. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Hello and welcome to this live special of Don't Forget your Tickets. In fact, it's a name change of the ticketingpodcastcom, and Don't Forget your Tickets was made because we shouldn't forget about the tickets when you're going to an event, obviously because then you have to queue, and also you shouldn't forget about the ticketing manager the heroes of the event industry that doesn't hear anything when things go right, but hear a lot when things go wrong. Then everyone asks for the ticketing manager, and that's why we had the idea of starting this podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm going to continue to do so and today we are doing an interview in person here at Stage at the Data Talks conference, which has been very interesting so far. We are at Cherry Records Stadium in London and that's the home of AFC Wimbledon. Whitney on Stage is a CEO and a founder who started his career as a senior associate at PwC and went from there to the position as commercial finance business partner and later CFO at Kantar, before he funded NoQ almost six years ago, and I always thought that CFOs were very risk averse and didn't start their own companies. But here we are today, so let's give a warm welcome to Param Kanabar, CEO and founder of the NoQ Group.
Speaker 2:It's great to have you here, param, how are you doing Good? Thank you everyone for the warm welcome. Excited for the rest of the show Amazing.
Speaker 1:But first of all I have to say when I heard NoQ, that's an amazing name. I mean, who likes a Q? I'm sure no one in this audience likes the Q, but probably no one used to stay in the Q either because of what they work with. But how did the name come about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just some background. I'm born in Lisbon, in Portugal, and often I go and see my dad's side of the family in Portugal, and I think in 2017, I was in a concert called Rock in Rio Justin Timberlake A-Team Lorde. It was great and it was about five pints in and it took 45 minutes to get the sixth one and I just became so sober. I was having the best time with my cousins. You know, when you just have such an amazing time but you're standing in a line, it's the round that you've got to go get for four other people and they're just there having the time of their life and you're standing in a line. That's when I was like, hold on, is there something we can do about that? And that's how no Cues started and that's how, you know, just festivals and events became a thing that we wanted to tackle.
Speaker 2:Amazing, there's nothing about that story on LinkedIn, though, but it's good that you're truthful. I'm not a massive social media person, I should say, but I will try and do better.
Speaker 1:Great, and there's a lot of good ideas coming out of the party, but preventing queues that is one of the best ones I've heard so far. And you're saying that NoQ is servicing the events and hospitality sector by improving its efficiency and increasing revenues through tech. Tell us more. How are you killing the queues? I mean, what queues are we talking about? Is tech? Tell us more. How are you killing the queues? I mean, what queues are we talking about? Is it the airports? Is it the festivals?
Speaker 2:Is it, the stadiums. Where are we? I think, in general, for individuals and for every business, it's important to have some sort of an aspiration or motivation to drive towards. Having no queues is a north star for us. It's like our ambition of where we want to get to. Would you eliminate queues completely? I guess the question is, do you even want to eliminate queues completely because it makes it look like it's not doing so well or the ambience isn't there? But I think driving towards that reduction in queue and managing that is the most important thing and I think everything we've done through our features functionalities over the last X amount of years is driving for that efficiency. Our features functionalities over the last X amount of years is driving for that efficiency. You asked a little bit about how are we doing that.
Speaker 2:I think over the years I've learned that there are multiple stakeholders involved. Whenever you're doing large scale events or events at stadiums, et cetera, you've got your customers. You've got your organizers or management companies. Quite often stadiums have stadium management companies. You've got your organizers or management companies. Quite often stadiums have stadium management companies. You've got your stadium owners. You might have those independent vendors that sell food at a fan zone or outside of the stadium and then you've got within the stadium itself. You've got your operations, your marketing, your finance teams.
Speaker 2:Now, most of the time, people choose a system that makes sense for the operator. Quite often they don't think about all the different stakeholders that exist and building a system that makes sense for everyone. And that's what we've been trying to do. I'm trying to understand. So my CFO background really made NoQ, I hope. A financial operating system but tangible reports, accessible reports, accessible data to then improve on future performances. But, most importantly, giving the customers what they want as well. So let's take the customers as a first example. If I'm standing in the line, I don't want my tills to fail. I want a fast system that is reliable at all times. I don't want it to go down. I don't want internet to go down and somebody says, hey, it's cash only today. So those are the kinds of things that we try and solve at a very standard level for the customer. Then for the operations people, it's very much. You know you might get a new agency staff member come in for the first time and they're operating a new till system for the first time and they've never seen it. They don't know how to go in and add a cart that says Carling or JD, with double shots of this and that, and it takes 35 seconds for them to just process that order. Now how do you make a system that's intuitive for somebody to pick that up for the first time and use it? And that's kind of what we've been working on on the ground building a very intuitive but simple system.
Speaker 2:I was actually speaking to the CTO of TicketCo and I hadn't had much of a conversation with him, but I think my first question to him would be how do you build a product that has all the features people want whilst being simple? And that's the hardest blend to kind of build? On the operating side, you're more looking at our back of house types of systems where you want to know which locations are doing the most. Where does the stock need to get transferred to? If I've got 15 people in this bar and that bar out there is more busier how do I move not only just a resource but also the till system? Is it mobile? Quite often you find old school systems where they will stuck to the tabletops and you can't really shift them to where they need to go to and you're not really busting queues at that point. So that's important from an operations perspective.
Speaker 2:From a finance perspective, you're more looking at the data part. Power BI, data trending comparisons to like for like is important. Quite often people look at data and say, hey, this is what I know about data, but when you're doing apples and oranges it doesn't make sense, right? So you really need to have someone who understands that piece to really do the right comparisons, because sometimes it can be detrimental to do the wrong ones and not put the right steps in place. So that's more on the finance side. And then the marketing side is more looking at. Any sort of data conversation starts with data capturing. First, what tools do you have in place to capture all of that? Is it consistent again, is it apples to apples across the different platforms? And then how do you warehouse that? And then the next part of that becomes a bit more sexier around the insights and how you go in and do that.
Speaker 1:So it's a bit more of an all-rounded approach that we look at it's a very interesting and I think when people look at what you're doing, I think they're you're a lucky man because you work with the things that people look forward to doing in the weekends, right. But that also entails a lot of risk because, let's say, I mean you're in London, it's been raining a lot. We are from Bergen, it rains all the time, so here is a change actually. But it's a beautiful day and you're going to the festival in the park and you're ready for your first beer and the tills doesn't work. People get pretty pissed off. If that doesn't happen, how do you secure that the system just functions every time?
Speaker 2:without stop. Yeah, a long time back. Please don't quote me on where I found this data point, but if I remember correctly, the English crowd. Typically the worst thing that could happen is the weather. The second thing is the transport of getting there, and then the third is queues. So, yeah, in terms of making sure everything works at all times, there's no such thing as that in tech. I'll be honest, right, you're always going to. I mean, microsoft had issues, right, and all the biggest companies would have issues at some point in time.
Speaker 2:It's the mitigation factors that you put in place operationally. How can you also manage that? And for us, it's about ensuring our systems can work on Wi-Fi, 3g, 4g, 5g, offline. If the battery's gone down, can you put the battery into the machine, because some machines you can't really take the battery out? The reality is, when you're dealing with on-site events, the hardware component is crucial. All software typically sit on hardware and is and making sure that you can manage those devices effectively from your back end system and do that all quickly on the ground. And and I think that's the key If something's gone down, having a system to say why it's gone down and then deploying the thing that is working very quickly. So over the years, that's what we've really built, and I think our device management is an awesome module on the back end, without going into too much detail, but that's crucial.
Speaker 1:Well, I surely have some crazy stories from my early ticketing days, and I'm sure you have some as well. You can share it if you want to.
Speaker 2:For me. I think the biggest changes I've seen over the years is the team right. Like when we first started off there was three of us and now there's close to about 40 of us, and what I've seen is the stories are becoming crazier, because now I'm no longer involved in them. So now I'm like a part of listening to what's happening out there and I don't want to explain the stories at the moment because I don't know if this is the right place, but some of the stuff I am seeing and hearing is interesting. I don't know. I mean, a question to you would be you've been around what? For 10 years, 12 years right, as a company, but did you also find that the stories are getting crazier? Because the ones before were a bit more manageable and controllable, because it was me and two other people right Now it's like what's going on there? Tell me more.
Speaker 1:It's definitely more at scale and that also is a huge risk, right, but I guess we'll read more about it in the book when that's written in a couple of years. So a little bit back to the customers, and I mean one thing is customer, but I think a better question it will be.
Speaker 2:Who are you actually helping? Yeah, so I mean, I explained a bit about rocking rio, which was a festival, right? So initially our core focus was large-scale events, but what we realized as time went on, it wasn't just about the festival event spaces. The problem was around managing multiple vendors. Now you're talking about catering companies, merch operators, ticketing companies, you know payment systems, I mean for stadiums specifically.
Speaker 2:You might have somebody providing your self-service kiosks, you might have somebody doing your website e-commerce with Shopify. I mean so many suppliers, but then also so many stakeholders and different people are signing off on different supply arrangements, and it's a matrix of short-term vision, in my perspective. Right, and wherever those types of complexities are there, that's where we would operate more as a consultant to kind of understand the matrix of that complexity and building a long-term plan, because it's never like, hey, I'm going to change everything today. It's more like a staggered approach, and trying to find the right people in the room to put their hands up for a plan like that is the hardest part. But then, more so on the who are the customers? Well, it's the ones that want to be on that journey, right, and where that's really a big problem.
Speaker 2:And so at the moment we do a lot of large-scale events. You know, in sports specifically, we work with for sale gp, for example. Globally we've done some events with live golf. We work with some of the events at pga tour. We've been doing the scottish open for a long time, which is part of the dp tour. More so, from a local club perspective, we've recently been working with Chinna guys like Wales, scarlet's Rugby, just down the road, charlton Football Club. So trying to work with operators who are in the same wavelength in terms of the long-term planning and having that multi vendor management issue and multi supplier issue. That's really going back to this data point.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you've got all of those problems and you want to learn from data, you're not helping yourself by having such a fragmented solution you see a change I mean, we're here at a data conference where the key topic is understanding customer data and utilize that for good decision making right and Do you see your company, noq, as being part of a more integrated system, now more than before? I?
Speaker 2:think integrated system is one thing, but integrated member of the team as well, because it's a small example, but quite often when you displace a previous operator and the client will be like, oh my God, you have this feature, the reality is that probably most of the times, the other supplier also had that feature, because, I mean, you know, from a ticketing perspective, there are other ticketing companies out there, but the reality is that how much of your ticketing system did somebody understand?
Speaker 2:So I believe the customer success piece is crucial. So does the way your account management team speak to the client resonate to how the client learns, understands, champions. Your product is important and I think we focus heavily on that to be a not just a tech partner but a partner in general, to kind of help people go down that journey. I think this industry in particular is a little bit further behind, to be honest with you, than some of the other industries, and so that level of support is always a must in my opinion. But again, everyone's got their own thoughts on how important that is today. Everyone wants to deal with the fire that is today versus the future. So, yeah, that's our ethos trying to work with people not just from a tech perspective, but more on a long-term vision and advisory perspective as well.
Speaker 1:So I mean you've done great right. You've been growing. You're over 40 people. That's a lot of things to manage and, as you're saying, challenges are at scale. But what would you say is your greatest achievement so far, or is that yet to come?
Speaker 2:People say you should never mix business and pleasure right, but it's hard. As a founder, you find that your business is why it's my pleasure, right. It's like everything I live for at the moment. I mean, there's lots of other stuff, but it's one of my biggest drivers. You asked do I have kids? I don't have kids. This is my baby, right?
Speaker 2:So it's very much about business and pleasure together, and so I think the answer to that question would be from a personal perspective, which is actually a little bit more important than some of the professional side, and I think what I've seen over the years now is friendships being developed within no queue and someone's asked me this before and I think my answer has always been the same. It's like the friendships within the organization are awesome to see. I think building friends is a very personal thing to somebody, and you can only really build a true friend if you're comfortable or you're open to it, and I think the fact that NoQ is able to create an environment like that at work is why we're seeing that develop. We went kickboxing yesterday, which was great, so stuff like that. I think that's the big change. I mean, rupert's on the floor here and he's worked six months with NoQ and I've probably had like three holidays with him, right. So it's like I say holidays but work as well, right, but it's very much about that side of it.
Speaker 2:I'd say, on a professional basis, value in savings and that's one way of looking at it, but I look at it as an investment. So, when conversations always become about hey, but I'm getting this charge and you're charging me X, and again it's apples and apples or apples versus oranges, right, what are you costing and what are you comparing it to? I'm not here for the short-term gain, but I just want to have a level conversation, and I think this year that was never even part of the conversations. It was more like they understand the product and the value, and I think value is not always monetary, right. Value could be in various things. Is it an improvement for your staff? Is there less headache with your labor? That's my biggest worry right now with 40 people. It's like, how do you keep your staff happy, right? So that's also value. Are you learning from a system for the future? That's also value.
Speaker 2:So, when it comes down to making a decision on a system, how do you have a more all-rounded conversation versus just pricing is a tremendous achievement. I think we've stopped doing that. Obviously, pricing has a part to play in it, but it's more of an all-rounder conversation and I look at it as like a example. Like you know, sometimes you go to all these fancy restaurants and you look at the menu and like, yeah, this is great, but there's no price against that lobster. You just get the lobster for this. You're like, all right, this is what I want to get, and I think it's driving that ethos Like there's more to value and what we're trying to achieve, together with the trust working with the right people to then just talking pricing. And I think if people keep holding themselves back with that mindset, I don't think you can invest for the future.
Speaker 1:So I mean, you've done an impressive accomplishment right and you didn't start too many years ago. When you decided to start this company, was it the passion for making events better or killing queues that drove it forward, or was it an underlying wish of running your own business eventually? I mean, if you see my point, was it the mission in itself or was it the wish for running your own company?
Speaker 2:My whole background like family wise. Everyone has pretty much had businesses in the past, less so the current generation, but my dad's generation and my uncles and everyone just went to different countries and started XYZ and you know it's all been entrepreneurial spirit, to be honest, and risk taking. Zed, and you know it's all been entrepreneurial spirit, to be honest, and risk taking. I think I've always had the risk taking side in me, always trying to be brave on something that you might not see today is important. Sticking by it is important, but I think business strategy is also very important. I've had so many ideas, from selling Pokemon cards to stickers from the premiership, like I mean, I used to go to a corner store and get the football stickers, put it into a magazine and sell that same magazine for a higher price to my friend and be like, hey, that'd be my pocket money, right. And then you know selling marbles and stuff like that, and it's like there's one thing where it's like you've got business ideas, but then there's another sticking by something that is a bit more solid. And I think, as the years went on, my previous role really helped me.
Speaker 2:When I became the CFO for the entity I was working under.
Speaker 2:That was a $4 billion business annually.
Speaker 2:North America was the region I was kind of within, so a smaller region of that $4 billion, but it's a huge organization, and when I was asked to do that role, I was 28 years old and I'm sitting there with very senior people a lot more older than me, so I think winning that respect from them was also a little bit difficult initially. Showing that I'm worth the role that I'm currently in operating at is also important, and as that started happening, I realized my communication skills, my leadership skills, or quite often people have ideas, but how can you translate that idea into reality or get others to see the same vision is very difficult, and I think I started being able to do that, which really made me feel like I've got enough to lead a new startup, and so that's how it all started. I wanted to have a nice blend of vision and innate founder things like risk taking and all of that with the right business strategy mindset as well like risk-taking, and all of that with the right business strategy mindset as well.
Speaker 1:I mean, you come from the role as a CFO of a huge company. How would you say the role of CFO has helped you in the role you have now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said that most CFOs are risk-averse etc. Which, yeah, you always have to look at the downside right and the potential risks. Noq conceptually started six years ago. So if you go into a company's house and incorporated February 2019, I believe but from an actual trading perspective, it's been just shy of three years, right. So I went full-time onto the project October 2021.
Speaker 2:So the first three years was just, quite frankly, just sitting there as an incorporated business but not really doing anything. Right, it was we don't have any trading on it or anything like that, and that was the risk averse side of me. It was like, hey, I can't leave what I'm doing. I always had the idea but can't leave what I'm doing, I'm getting promoted, I'm doing xyz, I'm getting paid. Well, I was in New York. I was like, wow, this is great.
Speaker 2:And I never had the courage at the time to leave and I think also the three years that I ended up doing that, I learned all the things that I'm utilizing right now. So that was, I think, a blessing in disguise, when the time was right. Making that jump from having a paid salary to basically not really getting paid much and just living life to a very basic level was difficult and that transition and the last three years, what we've done has been amazing. We've changed in various different ways. We started off as a founder-led problem as a consumer ended up becoming more of a B2B direct to business type of model and, utilizing the financial career that I've had, to then become a financial operating system, versus just being a system to reduce queues. Even though the name is NoQ, it's turned into more than just that.
Speaker 1:And where are you in five years, 10 years, 15 years? Where is NoQ then? I think?
Speaker 2:personally, it will be about having 500 of the biggest festivals globally. This year we've been lucky enough to do close to 100. It's been a very good year. We've been growing four, five, six, x over the last two, three years, year on year. Next year looks very exciting, but I think five years from now it's very much 500 plus festivals globally. We have operated seven different countries right now, but we don't really go in and market or sell into those countries. Our clients, organically, are taking us to those countries. So it's nice to see, but more on the venue side, events venue side. Please don't ask me why, but I'm a big man United fan. I'll say that very quickly. But the theater of dreams would be awesome. Doing Old Trafford would be like crazy for me and will be awesome. Doing Old Trafford will be like crazy for me, and no queues. And, yeah, and more than just Old Trafford, I'm a big cricket fan as well. So, yeah, the home of cricket which is just down the corner would be great well, maybe we should do it together yeah 100%, alright.
Speaker 1:So yeah, as we wrap up, we should touch a little bit on the data side of things. Right, we should touch a little bit on the data side of things. Right, you mentioned it briefly, but when it comes to data and the way clubs are utilizing data, is it like our brains we're using 10% of what's available out there, or are we using more? And how good are, specifically, football clubs to utilizing data and understanding it?
Speaker 2:From what I've seen, there's not a massive influx of data analysts and data engineers and finance geeks. Moving over to the sporting entertainment industry, I just haven't seen as much of that. You know more. They're choosing sectors like finance sectors, insurance sectors, and you know, and that's makes sense. But not many people make that jump into entertainment and sports and some of the bigger operators are starting to hire those types of individuals, but not everyone's got access to those resources. So I think Premier League football clubs, for example, would have those resources. Does League One, league Two, championship have that same availability?
Speaker 2:So how does some of the more medium-sized clubs have the opportunity to compete on the same level of data? To be honest with you, it's working like brands like us, right? Because it's like what you really want to do is have a partner who understands that space has other festivals, events and stadiums under their belt so that they can help with what's happening, what's trending in the market. To kind of help that partner to say, hey, this is how you might want to do this, this is how you might want to do this, this is how you might want to do that.
Speaker 2:So I think that piece of it in this current industry is missing and I think the biggest problem is that short-term vision of using loads of different tech stacks. They don't have that data to start with in the first place and a lot of the bigger clubs are tackling that. Right. They're tackling that, like Spurs. The new football stadium out of Spurs is awesome. They've got great technology and when you look at America, they've got loads of good technology out in the sports industry. But I think UK in particular in the sports side, is still a work in progress and the likes of us, hopefully, will help move that piece Big potential for the future for sure.
Speaker 1:So last question today, param, and thank you so much for the honest stories and the things you've told us today. But is there one key lesson you learned after you started your own company and made the leap because that's what you did right, made the leap to starting setting up and cutting the wages and the career for running your own company. What did you wish that you knew when?
Speaker 2:you started. I feel like I followed this quote before, but when you're into the whole madness and what looks like a tornado, you forget it right? And there's a quote where it's you know, play each ball on its own merit, right? So when you're batting in cricket the ball's about to come out you need to assess what type of a delivery that's going to be right. Is it going to be a bouncer, is it a yorker? Is it going to come straight out your head? And so kind of assessing that and picking and choosing the type of shot you want to play is important.
Speaker 2:At the very beginning it was this is what we're going to do, this is exactly what it's going to be like in a year, and and just kind of marrying certain ideas is, I think, an overkill, right? It's like trying to be a bit more flexible but focused at the same time is the hardest blend. One of our investors that I met a few months ago was saying less is more, and the more I follow that principle, less is more is actually just. If I could say that to any new founder, it's like less is more. You know, I've got a couple of people that have been pitching ideas to me for their new startup and I was like, hey, this just sounds like a hundred features, but let's just start with the one concept and let's just work on that, right, and I think that's the key but at the same time, being flexible, that that might not be the right idea. So it's a little bit of a hybrid and I think, yeah, surround yourself with the right people is probably the most important thing.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Thank you so much, param. Thank you for joining us today on this live podcast of Don't Forget your Tickets, our new name, which we're very proud of launching today, and I hope everyone in the audience has enjoyed. I hope everyone who's listened in has enjoyed. I hope you've enjoyed, param.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a great time for me. Podcasts is great, of course, for everyone, but also personally as well. Just to have a conversation is actually very relaxing and a fun thing to do, so thank you for the invite. Great that you enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:Super cool to have you here and thank you for coming. Until next time, everyone. This podcast has been powered by TicketCo. We are super proud to be here on the Data Talks conference. If you haven't heard of Data Talks, check it out. And check out TKCore as well. If you have time, have a good day you.
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