Launchpool AMA Recap — SeatLab
Launchpool x SeatLab AMA Summary
Place: Launchpool Official Telegram Community
Date & Time: Monday April 25th, 16;00 UTC
Guests: Ryan Kenny and Jack Waterfield (Co-Founders) of SeatLab
Host: Spiderman (Launchpool Team)
Launchpool was excited to host Ryan Kenny and Jack Waterfield (Co-Founders) of SeatLab for an interactive Ask-Me-Anything session with the Launchpool Community. This session lasted approximately 1hr, and consisted of questions from the Launchpool Team as well as questions from the Community.
Questions from the Launchpool Team
Spiderman:
Hello and Welcome all #LPOOLers,
As many in our Community already know, today we have an AMA session with Ryan Kenny and Jack Waterfield (Co-Founders) of SeatLab.
SeatLab is a revolutionary NFT ticketing marketplace built on the NEARProtocol that aims to transform the experience of attending live events, while giving artists & event organisers unrivalled control over the secondary ticketing market: solving some of the ticketing industry’s biggest problems with their NFT ticketing Marketplace
As always, the chat will be muted for roughly 30 mins whilst we ask the pre-prepared questions. After this, we will open up to questions from the Community for another 15 mins. We will also enable “Slow Mode” for all questions.
Welcome Ryan and Jack!
Jack Waterfield: Hello
Ryan Kenny: Hey guys, great to be talking with you all today!
SpiderMan: Glad to have you here. Please tell us a bit about yourself, your background and your involvement with the space.
Ryan Kenny: Great, a little bit about us…
The company has two Founders, myself (Ryan Kenny) & Jack Waterfield. Personally, I got involved in Blockchain in 2013. Whilst at university I came across Bitcoin & Blockchain — I decided to start a business with a friend offering help to other people who wanted to get into mining Bitcoin amongst other coins! We designed and sold mining rigs & provided guidance to people who wanted to get involved. We have been championing cryptocurrency and blockchain since then really.
Jack & I met shortly after I finished University. Jack is very much a creative person & together we founded a digital marketing and web design agency. We built this to a good size — working on projects with the likes of Pepsi, the UK Government and many more. We also got quite popular in the event sector — creating software websites for large-scale event organizers and helping them sell our shows with digital marketing.
Off the back of that, we were using all the major traditional ticketing providers and we found each offering had its own problems, whether that be lack of customization, bad design, or just the ridiculous fees user were having to pay. Essentially, we felt we could build something a bit better — so we built our traditional ticketing company, we’ve rebranded a few times over the years but as of a few weeks ago, it’s called Seatlab. So we have Seatlab & SeatlabNFT — we’ve grown and scaled that to over 100 clients, selling over £5M of tickets a year in a wide variety of sectors including universities, concerts, sports games, etc..
Obviously, we were looking for a way to cross over our love for blockchain & our experience in event ticketing and with the boom of NFT technology last year, the idea actually became feasible. Using NFT technology we can actually solve a lot of the major problems we find in the event ticketing industry today like fraud, scalping, and the very unfair secondary market.
There’s a ‘short’ introduction 😅
SpiderMan: Interesting, as they say, “two heads are better than one” 😅. Could you tell us about the rest of the team?
Ryan Kenny: It certainly is! We have different skill sets so it works really well!
We actually have a very high-caliber team working on the project. We are a team of 18 currently, made up of developers, marketers, product owners, partnerships, and operations professionals. On the team, we have senior developers from the likes of Kraken, developers who led the team that built the HSBC banking app & many other high-profile enterprise applications. We are constantly expanding & have some great conversations happening with other really credible people as we speak. We believe in recruiting top-tier talent.
We’ve worked on many software applications over the years and having a good, experienced team is crucial to the success of the project in my opinion
Ryan Kenny: It certainly is! We have different skill sets so it works really well!
We actually have a very high-caliber team working on the project. We are a team of 18 currently, made up of developers, marketers, product owners, partnerships, and operations professionals. On the team, we have senior developers from the likes of Kraken, developers who led the team that built the HSBC banking app & many other high-profile enterprise applications. We are constantly expanding & have some great conversations happening with other really credible people as we speak. We believe in recruiting top-tier talent.
We’ve worked on many software applications over the years and having a good, experienced team is crucial to the success of the project in my opinion
SpiderMan: Amazing team you got! What problem are you trying to solve and what is the overall vision for the project?
Ryan Kenny: Sure is! It’s been very time-consuming but ultimately very much worth it. We’re working at a really impressive speed and we owe it to the experienced team behind us for sure
Problems, there are many!
The legacy ticketing system is broken. There is no control over the secondary market for event organizers at all. There is a bad experience for event attendees.
The industry is plagued by ticket scalpers, ticket touts & fraudulent tickets. An estimated 12% of tickets are fraudulent while 40% are purchased by ticket scalpers & bots, which is crazy really. With secondary ticket marketing worth many billions a year, it’s a vast opportunity for us.
Our overall vision for the project is to become the go-to ticketing marketplace that looks after the artists & event organizers (making them more money). And makes for a much better and more rewarding experience for users. There are loads of cool things we can do with NFT technology, which wasn’t possible before. For example; assigning specific royalties on every secondary sale for each ticket, adding ceiling prices on tickets to stop over-inflated prices, airdropping fans/event go-ers NFTs in the form of unreleased songs, collectible moments and digital memorabilia, and much, much more!!
SpiderMan: No doubt, your vision towards helping in the ticketing system would go a long way. How are you differentiated from other similar projects?
Ryan Kenny: Yes, it’s a big problem and one we’re very well positioned to help solve!
We are creating the first-ever NFT event ticketing marketplace with its own secure, anti-fraud ticketing wallet mobile application, there aren’t any other launched projects with the same offering. We are also one of the only offerings which also allows organizers to attach NFT collectibles to tickets, have their own profile, and also mint collectibles alongside tickets on demand.
We’ve included a lot of the things we’ve learned over the last 4 years working with ticketing clients, and alongside adding a ton of cool new web3 functionally, at heart we’re creating a powerful marketplace that makes ticketing much fairer and more enjoyable for all.
SpiderMan: Where are you at in your roadmap? Could you please talk us through the next steps.
Ryan Kenny: We started development in December and are making great progress on the overall platform development. The smart contracts are coming to completion and the mobile NFT wallet app is looking great. We have also completed the majority of the front-end work now and a sizeable amount of the core functionality
With regards to the next steps, we officially launch in August — from now until then we are working on refining the user experience, testing and QA. Our partnerships team is also working incredibly hard to make sure our rewards center is full of valuable rewards for our loyal customers. We are already speaking to some very high-profile companies & organizers around the world — to get them lined up for the launch. Some very big and exciting news to be shared in due course!
Overall, we are fully focused on the development and bringing on top calibre brands & event partnerships in preparation for the launch.
SpiderMan: We are looking forward. How was the project funded up to this point? How will the funds from the pre-IDO be used?
Ryan Kenny: Initially we undertook a seed raise in December, which allowed us to start the project and start building out the team. Following this, we carried out a private round raise in February. The funds from the pre-IDO have mainly been allocated towards obtaining top tier team members, development of the product, and of course, marketing both pre and post-launch.
SpiderMan: Are there any strategic partners (excluding Launchpool) that you can share.
Ryan Kenny: Our strategic partners include the NEAR foundation itself, who have been very supportive and have backed us with one of their largest grants. Our other investors are made up of project founders & good quality VCs including; NetZero, Cetacean Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Kujira Ventures & more.
We have chosen two further IDO partners, Skyward on NEAR and ATLO on TERRA.
SpiderMan: Glad to know, NEAR has been making some waves. What made you choose Launchpool as your launchpad partner for the AME?
Ryan Kenny: We’ve chosen Launchpool because we wanted exposure to an ecosystem that we currently don’t, and we are fans of the platform and think it will help attract a key early community. Our project is a mass-market project, so we need to gain as much exposure as we possibly can before launch. Launchpool will help with this and bring more eyes to the project who are interested in innovative projects within Web3.
SpiderMan: Launchpool certainly would do this. What is the total allocation you’ve set aside for the Launchpool community? Are there any limitations or is the Allocation Mining Event open to everyone? Please list any countries that are excluded from the allocation event due to regulatory reasons.
Ryan Kenny: We have allocated 7,142,857 tokens ($250k) to the Launchpool Community. Anyone KYC’ed on Launchpool is eligible to participate in the pre-IDO sale.
SpiderMan: What happens after the AME? Could you talk us through the tokenomics: total supply, initial circulating supply, initial market cap, initial vesting, total vesting period.
Ryan Kenny: Sure, the total supply is 845,000,000 $SEAT
Of which;
- Seed: 50,700,000 — Daily Unlock for 18 Months
- Presale Investors: 109,850,000 — Daily Unlock for 12 Months
- IDO: 4,225,000–1M Lock, Daily Unlock for 3 Months
- Treasury: 80,275,000–3M Lock — Daily Unlock for 12 Months
- Airdrop: 8,450,000 — Daily Unlock for 12 Months
- Advisors & Marketing: 76,050,000–9M Lock, Daily Vesting for 12 Months
- Strategic partnerships: 50,700,000–6M Lock, Daily vesting for 15 Months
- Team: 84,500,000–1Y Lock, Daily Vesting for 30M
- Community & Ecosystem: 295,750,000 — Daily unlock for 60 months
- Founders: 84,500,000–1.25Y Lock, Daily Unlock for 36 Months
SpiderMan: Thank you for sharing. What are the use cases for the token? Do you have any mechanisms planned to support the DeFi component?
Ryan Kenny: We have thought about this from both sides of our user base, event attendees & commercially minded event organizers, and have created a strong utility for both sides.
For commercially minded people, we offer a staking initiative which allows staked token holders to share in the platform revenue. As a platform we charge a 5% fee on all purchases, 2.5% of this gets split between staked token holders.
Additionally, we offer users the ability to pay less fees when they’re buying on the marketplace. The more tokens they hold, the lower fee they pay on purchases. (Maximum discount is 2.5%)
Also, we have been very heavily focused on a user rewards element — essentially we will have a rewards centre that will be full of high-quality rewards, which could be free tickets, collectible NFTs, physical goods, digital assets, etc. We have our partnerships team working really hard and having some really high tier partners lined up will mean our rewards center isn’t full of rubbish, but actually cool rewards for our users.
When you hold a certain amount of our token for 30 days+, you accumulate reward points across 3 different tiers. You can exchange these points for any of the rewards. Overall, we are trying to incentivize buying a long-term holding.
SpiderMan: Definitely, this is going to be worth counting on. Where can we join your Community?
Ryan Kenny: For sure! SeatlabNFT
We’re most active on Twitter and Discord on the following links;
Discord
Telegram
SpiderMan: Thank you again. for sharing these great updates with our Community.
I will now open up the Community to questions from the floor. Please be reminded that we have “Slow Mode” enabled and will only be answering questions related to Seatlab. Any other questions can be answered in our 24hr dedicated Support Chat.
The Floor is Now Open❗
Questions from the Launchpool Community
Question: How can I get more involved in this project?
Jack Waterfield: Follow our social media. Head over to our Discord we have lots of giveaways and activities. Also, we have membership cards with specific perks for our Community members.
Question: Are you looking for a long-term vision? How will you reach it?
Ryan Kenny: Sure!
We have some big plans around our market, including the biggest NFT ticketed event with a global superstar and a large-scale university tour. So, preparing for this is up there. It’s going to really get us on the map and requires a lot of preparation as you can imagine.
Development and user acceptance testing is of course a big priority so we can launch with our best foot forward.
Lastly, onboarding event organizers. We intend to do this on a large scale so this requires whole teams being built to get the word out there and ensure everyone is onboarded.
Jack Waterfield: We are looking to compete with the likes of ticketmaster. Using NFT technology enables us to be a big player in the scene as it allows tickets with in-depth functionality that wasn’t available before!
Question: Any plan for exchange listing?
Ryan Kenny: Yes, early June❗ 👀
Question: What are your top 3 things/events for priorities in 2022? Could you share some plans for the upcoming year??
Ryan Kenny:
1. Launching our marketplace
2. Hosting a large-scale launch party with a very big artist
3. Onboarding a handful of large event organizers to bring a user base and volume to our marketplace
Question: There is always competition in the space. How do you plan to be at the forefront of the innovative Platform of space? Can you share some of the unique features of your project!
Jack Waterfield: Our marketplace will be very user friendly and will allow users to buy and sell NFT tickets with ease along with putting in offers and accepting bids.
We have thought long and hard on how to stop ticket touts and scalpers, and are creating a ground-breaking new wallet application that will provide our users a secure and user-friendly NFT ticketing application that can also be used to scan NFT on the day of the event.
Question: What is your main goal in building this project? And how can people benefit from the project that you are building?
Jack Waterfield: As mentioned buying and holding our token will give you a percentage split of our platform fee and also give you the option to claim valuable rewards from our partners within our marketplace
The main goal is to go to the ticketing marketplace in the world. We want to onboard ‘normies’ as well as Crypto folk. This means creating the most seamless user experience as possible.
SpiderMan: If the Community has any more questions or if it’s unanswered here, please hop over to the Seatlab Community to have it answered there:
Again, thank you Ryan Kenny and Jack Waterfield for your time in sharing all the info and we can’t wait for what’s ahead.
Jack Waterfield: Thank you everyone for your questions and support.
Ryan Kenny: Thanks for having us guys! 🤝
Spiderman: Excellent. Thanks to everyone that participated!
This will be the end of our AMA.
About Seatlab
SeatLab is a revolutionary NFT ticketing marketplace built on the NEARProtocol that aims to transform the experience of attending live events, while giving artists & event organisers unrivalled control over the secondary ticketing market: solving some of the ticketing industry’s biggest problems with their NFT ticketing Marketplace
About Launchpool
Launchpool leverages communities, knowledge, expertise, contacts and capital to provide crypto projects with the best possible start to life, maximising their chances for success in this fast moving & dynamic space.
