Founder Stories | Jay Parmar, Founder & CEO of Picatic

So my name is Jayesh Parmer. I'm the CEO and co founder of Pikitek. Pikitek is an online ticketing and event management company. What we do differently than anybody else is we give away our ticketing company away for free. So sometimes when people hear that there's a hook or there's a gimmick, there's no hook, there's no gimmick. It's simply like Spotify give it away. We have a freemium product, our big vision, and what we're going after is API for events. So ticketing anywhere by API. We see the future of ticketing from a software to software approach. What and why I do what we do is because love events. I love everything to do with events. And the reason why I like events is that it brings people together. And that's beautiful. And I say this often, is that it doesn't matter how much money you make, how many great things you have. When you're dead, the only thing that you probably take with you are your memories. And that's what events do. That's what it brings. It brings people together and new friends together, brings old friends together. In some cases, where you're going to meet the love of your life, it's where you're going to see your kids on stage doing their recital. And that's what we do, is we bring people together, and that's a passion. So that's what Pik a Tick is all about. And that's what I'm all about. Roller coaster in order for the journey. And the journey is definitely a roller coaster. And at the beginning, what ended up happening was that it was filled with a lot of questions and a lot of doubt, a lot of anxiety in some cases, in the sense that, where do I start? How do I get started? What do we have to do? Fearful to jump and lean into it. How it started was that as time goes on, you think that this roller coaster ride is going to get easier. In fact, it gets more difficult. And then as you grow, you realize that's a good thing. So the roller coaster gets faster, the boulder that you're pushing uphill gets heavier. But that's when you realize as you move on is that's exactly what you want to do. You want to go out there, and if you're doing your job right, the problems that you're creating are going to be bigger tomorrow than they are today. So, for example, when we started in Canada, we grew North America, we had to go there and expand to Europe and then Australia, we Didn't know how to do that. And those are big problems, but we wanted to solve them. So leaning into it, riding that wave is definitely something that we started with. And it's continuing to take up speed and getting faster as we go along, which I love. The unknown. I mean here's the thing is that as entrepreneurs now, I know this is that it's all encompassing. It's something that you have to jump, you really have to go out there and lean into it. And generally, especially in the technology world is what you're building and what you're developing is a product that is distinctive and destructive and most likely is not a me too company. So no one's really done this before. So how are you supposed to go out there and answer the questions that you don't even know you should be asking? And the only way to do it is to lean into it, is to go into it because there is no roadmap, there is no idea or playbook what you do. And that's a little bit different in terms of the educational system that most of us have grown up with in terms of, you know, here's what you should learn, here's what you should remember and here's a test in order to go out there and there's a right and a wrong. And with startups and what I feel like life, it's an iteration of failures and failing fast and lean into it and hopefully you don't run out of money, you don't run out of steam, you don't run out of confidence, you don't run out of patience, etc, etc. So that is what you, the answer to the question is you just gotta lean into it and jump. Now along the way, in order to go out there and minimize that iteration process, is learning as much as you possibly can about the industry that you're going into, practicing, partnering up with good mentors and advisors, because there are some principles and theories and structure that you do need to know in order to go get the base foundation. Especially if, you know, if you want to go out there and raise funds, especially if you want to go out there and hire great talented people, especially if you want to go out there and work with any type of governance within certain industry. So I hope that answers your question. But to go back to it is just lean into it and jump, especially especially when you're young because I mean there's, there's really no babies to feed, no mortgages to pay. It's just really going out there and having a lot of energy. I Say this all the time is if you're doing your job correctly and, and well, is that tomorrow's challenges are going to be bigger today. And you're always fighting to go out there and make bigger headaches, bigger challenges, and that's the end of it, you know, so when we had to go out there and hire, you know, find our first co founder, that was our first challenge. We ended up going out there and have our first customer. That was the first challenge. As we move along, these challenges get bigger and bigger. So can I tell you about every single one? Every day has been a challenge, a good challenge. You know, it's a game of entrepreneurial, entrepreneurialism, and it just doesn't end, it just keeps on moving. So the one, you know, that really comes to mind that almost broke us and took us through big, where we had to fight back is that we had an employee stealing money, falsifying documents, all that kind of stuff. So we had to go out and live through kind of the life moments of humanity, which almost broke us. But, you know, what we did is we banded together, we iterated, we pivoted, we got mentors, we could bring in our advisors and got through it. Now, no question, the team that we work with inspires me. You know, what we have done is we've solved problem after problem after problem and different iterations going on. And it takes a dedicated team of really passionate people with real strong heart to be able to go out there and day in and day out, come out there and beat themselves up to a problem that we hope to solve and hopefully that we're making, we're making headway with and during the early stages, I mean, the sleepless nights, the sacrifice of salary, the sacrifice of xxxx and you can move on. And I don't actually consider it a sacrifice, we consider it an investment. But that investment, when you see those people go in and day in and day out and you see how beautiful they work and how talented they are, and it's such a pleasure to work around them. That inspires, that inspires you. And it's kind of like a team. It's this team of people that come out, have heart, and you don't want to let them down. Another thing that we do that inspires us is that we are now at a point where we have customer stories. And when these customers come in and they tell us great things about how our software helped them in their life of some whatever facet, that's pretty cool. That is really, really cool in terms of knowing that this now especially our product isn't ours anymore. It's our customers and soon to be the world. And hopefully it is the world. They get to go out there and help with product. So that, that really inspires on a personal level, you know, we have a phenomenal family. I have a beautiful wife and a beautiful son. Knowing. Knowing that. Knowing that, you know that the tough days are only tough for that moment, that kind of inspires me to kind of get up and get off my ass when I feel like I'm down on some. What I like about what I do, in terms of the favorite part of what I do is that it's, it's a consistent challenge. It's a game. It's, it's, it's. It's always trying to build something and evolve. And why I love it is never boring. It's not this rote thing. I'm not gonna go through life 30 years and doing the exact same job. And that's cool if people like that, you know, it's consistently challenging and it helps. Helps me as an individual learn and always continue to be a lifelong learner and iterate. For me, if I don't learn, I burn. And that's something that, is something that really motivates me at the same time is having these goals and trying to beat it. Build something from nothing and hopefully the world will take it and love it. I mean, that's a really cool feeling in terms of going out there and then this feeling of just living. I feel like I'm living through entrepreneurship. It just is living in terms of it. And then I guess the last thing is that the why. The why do what we do is going back is to bringing people together. What a cool feeling to know that, you know, somewhere down the line that we're bringing people together, we're building community, we're helping bring culture. So there's a lot of reasons why we do what we do. If you notice, money wasn't one of the things that we mentioned, but that is a good, that is a motivating factor, is we do. We build companies to go out there and have the type of wealth that other people only dream about. And that is something. So, you know, that's something that we live for and aim for as well. So it's a combination of a whole bunch of things. So it's not just a black and white question for me. I'm going to give some advice and it might be contentious and it's, it's at different ages and for the young people, I'M gonna tell you this and I think that there's a lot of people especially in the tech world that think that it's tech sexy. This is all bloody consuming. When you go out there and do work into a startup in any type of business, entrepreneurs, they work their asses off. You know, they're, they're the craziest type of people that they're gonna go out there and they could be working at let's say a great job making 100k but they'll be an entrepreneur, work twice as hard and only make 50k for the fact that they're going to build something great or they love what they do. Now going back to just the tech world, the advice I give for young people in their 20s or whatever the case be is own a problem, understand the problem, live the problem, you know. And what that means is that my opinion is you hear these great stories of these 20 somethings, build a billion dollar company. Those are far and few between. They are so far few between that it hurts. What I encourage people to do is understand that is go work for a startup, go out there and find a startup that has 10 people or less, five people or less. And the reason being is because when you come in and something that you enjoy, maybe it's a fashion startup, maybe it's a, it's a, I don't know, an SMB of some form, maybe it's a clean tech, whatever you like, work for a startup within that five that person and you know that are, that's a ramen noodle diet is what we call that just doesn't have a lot of money. You dive in there, you have five jobs, you're going to learn and you know, I equate it to one year of startup is five years of real life. You're going to learn so much in a couple years that you'll have a base foundation more so that you'll understand the foundational, the mechanics, the different parts of how to run a company. Especially if you're going to be a technology company, moreover, what you will find is what you don't like and what you do like is this for you, is this not for you? Because especially if you're going to get into this world and it is all consuming with a multiple effect, you're not going to make a lot of money. In fact you're going to go out there and live on the ramen diet which is going to be little to next and you only take as much as you need so that there's that thing. But moreover, you're going to find a pain point and when should you go and dive into something is when you have a pain point and you have something that is burning you, that you can't go to sleep anymore because you know that this is something that you really need to work on and it's a problem that you will go out there and die for. When you find that out, that's when you. I think as an entrepreneur, you should really go into a startup, if you will, for any other entrepreneurial aspect. If it's more traditional and there's a, there's a playbook for it. I mean, you can start whenever you want to start. I mean, but when it comes definitely to startup, that's what I would recommend you do. It is own that pain, understand that pain. And there's four things I really like to go out there and understand and I call it is when you have your idea, you take your idea and it's called pttm. You have a product and your product is make sure that you can work on a product that is destructive and distinctive. We don't want to have anything. Me too. In terms of what you're looking at, building your team is one of the most important things. It's ideas are dime a dozen. The teams are the most important thing that you really have to work on is that execution. Can this team iterate? New technology, new governance comes in. Can you pivot? Can you iterate? Can you learn fast? Can you fail fast? And can you, can you move out there making sure that you go for a larger market size? I mean, is this a market size that's only $100 million or is it a billion dollars? That has a lot of change and a factor in terms of the venture math, in terms of how your later rounds will go. And can you build traction? Can you build traction on a bootstrapped, on a model? And these are the things that you can go out there and you can learn when you work with another startup and get those chops, if you will.