🎫 Humanitix

You will love paying booking fees

Mar 16

Picture this: you want to go to a summer music festival. The ticket costs $100 each. You need 2. The tickets are still available. You add them to the basket and go to checkout. The total should be around $210, $220, depending on fees. Surprise, surprise.

tickets = $200
service fees = $40
convenience fees = $10
delivery fees = $50
blah blah blah fees = $……….

Total cost = $320

Well, let’s focus on the good things instead….

🙏 Good Bits

Meet 300+ Top Women in Food and Climate — Laura Hodgkiss
15 Best Climate Change Documentaries To Stream (2023) — Amanda R. Martinez

😍 Spreading Love

“I am vision impaired and use the screen reader on my iPhone. We ran an in-person event this week and I tried it. I can’t tell you how rare it is to download an app that is fully accessible.” — Natasha Brake
“We've been best friends for years, and the concern is that we're going to screw up one of the most beautiful friendships ever by, let alone getting into business, we're going to get into business on this hairy arrangement of sharing a salary” — Adam McCurdie, Humanitix co-founder
"Look, the worst thing that could ever happen here is for us to lose our friendship. If we ever feel like that's happening, we need to communicate and be upfront with that and respect that and perhaps pull away from setting up Humanitix if it gets to that." — Adam McCurdie, Humanitix co-founder
Letter from Manju - Girls' Education Program Associate
Impact Stories - Kiirra from Yalari

🌰 Good business in a nutshell

Company • Humanitix
What they do • Ticketing platform
How they started • Co-founders Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross wanted to support disadvantaged children around the world. Seeing the high fees on standard ticketing platforms, they decided to build a competitor, charge lower fees and donate the profits to good causes.
Areas of Impact • Children’s education
Saving the world • Over AUD $2.5 million has been donated to children’s education
How they make money • Booking Fees
Revenue • Not disclosed
Who started everything • Adam McCurdie and Joshua Ross

‘There is a lot of potential for tech companies to make a social difference. Yet social enterprises are rare in our industry. We see Humanitix as an opportunity to take on the giants of Silicon Valley, change the ticketing game, and make a difference to the world.’ — Adam McCurdie

🧩 Problems

Customers feel robbed paying astronomic fees (around 50% of ticket face value) to buy tickets
Top 2 issues people with a disability were facing in events: social inclusion and community participation

💡 How they started | How they are going

Like many people around the world, high-school friends Adam and Joshua wanted to make more money. Were they dreaming about new cars? Houses? Yachts?

Inspired by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Prize Winner, who introduced the microfinance concept and founded Grameen Bank, they wanted to support disadvantaged children around the world with better education.

How? Building a new ticketing platform. The platform would charge less in fees than the usual ticketing systems. It would be the world’s most accessible ticketing platform and 100% of profits would be donated to support children’s education.

But, initially, rather than making more money, they were earning less.

To fund the idea without raising money, Joshua stayed in his job while Adam went full-time on Humanitix with no salary. How was Adam surviving then? Joshua was sharing his salary with Adam. Yes, they were sharing Joshua’s salary. This situation lasted for 16 months until Joshua quit his job.