Jayesh Parmar, Gunkii - Founder Journey Series, Episode 12

Gunky. You may not recognize that name, but our entrepreneur today is on a mission to make it a household name. We're going to talk about his journey from starting a tech company, exiting that tech company, becoming an angel investor, but then having that entrepreneurial spirit just eating away at him and forcing him to come back and build another company, but not another tech company. He's now diving into consumer packaged goods.

3, 2, 1.

Hey, what's up, everybody? We're back at it again with another founder episode Founder Journey series. Really excited today. Feel like a broken record every episode. I'm like, really excited because at the end of the day, these are entrepreneurs that I know and I really appreciate and I look up to. And so it's exciting for me to have these people on our series. Jayesh Parmar is joining us today. Jayesh is a entrepreneur, Canadian entrepreneur that's built some great, great companies. Pika Tick is the one that we're probably going to focused a little bit on today. And it was acquired by Eventbrite and definitely a Vancouver success story. Had its ups and downs. I've seen them firsthand since they are a launch academy company, and I got to witness a lot of the ups and downs firsthand. I'm gonna let Jay talk about most of those. Jay, welcome to the series.

Hey, Ray, how you doing? And hi, everyone out there.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I'm Canadian and very proud of it. I was born in probably the coldest place on earth is Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. You don't necessarily think that you're gonna start a tech company when you're in Saskatoon. But, you know, I did. I started a few companies and then, you know, effectively ran into a problem. I was put on events back in 2006, and as I was putting on events, I wanted to go out there and sell tickets. And at that time, you had to go out there and go to, like, music stores and drop some tickets and physical tickets and. And you had to collect money. And it was just really hard. Who's showing up, who's not showing up, and then how do you go out there and capture those dollars? So at that time, I was like, okay, well, why don't we try and sell these online? I mean, you got to really think about it. At that time, e commerce wasn't a thing. Fast forward a little bit. We end up going and doing about a million dollars in revenue in Saskatchewan, which was. Which was fantastic. Didn't know anything about tech. Didn't, you know, just really kind of just banged my head around it. You know, we didn't even really call it a startup back then. Got that traction, got invited to go to San Francisco. There is a pitch competition again. And I'm, you know, awesomely embarrassed about this as a pitch competition with these valley. Big valley folks came up to Saskatoon. You know, when I had a piece of paper on stage, reading from this piece of paper.

So, so was this in, in the, in Saskatoon? Yeah. So these valley guys came up to Saskatoon to scout companies and they found little ojsh an oversized two piece suit sitting on stage with a piece of paper.

Yeah, oversized two piece with pair of Arizona maybe.

They literally.

I remember this, you know, this investor being like, I am dumbfoundly impressed with how far you guys have made it with how little you know. Right.

It's like a backhanded compliment.

I don't know. You know, it's just like, you know, it's just like how did you guys learn how to do what you did? So they invited me to come down to the Valley, which, you know, my world. I was like, oh my God, we're gonna make a billion dollars. This is on. Yeah, that was a very sobering, humbling experience to really go down. And I, you know, at that time I was like, and this is the figure of speech or this, this thing that I talk about, it's like being a phenomenal hockey player from Guatemala and then you come up to Canada and the kids on the street are better than you. That's what it was like when we went down there. Got an opportunity to learn and then.

I call it the big fish small pond. So totally no matter where you are in the world, this is a true to fact thing that happens is that you in your market become that big fish. But when you move to a market that's a little bit larger, you become the small fish in that market. You have to learn to swim all over again because the fish in that market swim differently. Oh, and faster. At a different speed and yeah, yeah, they're faster.

All the signaling that happens in the industry as well as the networks, they were able to go out there and have. So, you know, really quickly I learned that I need to go apply for accelerators. I didn't even know that there were accelerators at that time. We, you know, and so that we applied to an accelerator at that time. There is this, there is this only a handful. There was one that was extremely lucrative, that was in Toronto. It's called Extreme Startups. They accepted five companies, all Ontario based companies except one that was from Saskatchewan. We Got accepted, went through that whole entire process again. Leveled up really quickly outside of my comfort zone. This whole entire process went through the CTA program in New York. And then finally we got pregnant, my wife and I, and we decided that we needed to come. One, pragmatically is we wanted our kid to be Canadian. Two, as we know that there's a lot of advantages of running after raising money is building your company in Canada. And that's when I knocked on your door. Your name came up as one of the pillars of Canada, and especially in bc, who to talk to. So I was luckily to get on your radar and have a conversation. And you're extremely welcoming and open and told me everything that was great about bc.

Well, I think from what I recall, we talked about. So it was a phone call and you said, your options are either to build in New York or build in Vancouver. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I advise you to go to New York and not come to Vancouver because you were already there. You already had a network going there. But then when you told me, yes, you're having a baby, you want the baby to Canadians. Okay, now I totally understand that whole other dynamic that was just isolated, just on your business. I'd say, no, go to New York. You've already built a network there. But there are other aspects. There's the human aspects of the entrepreneurs that, yeah, happy that you did end up coming to Vancouver, but we actually ran into each other at south by Southwest in Austin. Middle of the street. It's like random. Turn a corner and you're just staring there looking at. Hey, aren't you Ray Walliam? Yeah. Oh, Jayesh. We had a call a couple weeks ago. I'm like, oh, wow. Such a random small world, random place to meet. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, man, that's almost a decade ago. That was before you had gray hair on your chin and then moved to Vancouver, built up the team. It was absolutely like, listen, here's something that we did not have in Saskatoon, in very many places, but we didn't have a launch academy. And I am so grateful for the fact that we had a launch, a second safe landing spot that could help us go out there and just have a support group on day one. And not bad for that. We wouldn't have had the foundation we did.

And fast forward concentration of entrepreneurs. The facility is one thing, but it's the people in the facility that really make a difference for entrepreneurs. And it's a peer network. Yes, Saskatoon has great entrepreneurs, but. And I think it's different now than it was back then, but it's that fragmentation. People just working out of coffee shops and small little basements or little pocket offices here and there, getting them into one room.