Advanced and innovative software designed by UT graduate students Barry Kahn, Andrew Mills and Jiten Dalvi could revolutionize the way people buy and sell entertainment tickets.
Their fledgling company Qcue will face off against other entrepreneurial teams from around the world this weekend in the Rice Business Plan Competition at Rice University.
In one year, the team has developed a program that will create an efficient resale market that box offices can control for entertainment tickets. Instead of buying tickets from second-party distributors like eBay, the team's software allows the original box office to mediate the resale process.
For example, instead of the box office showing that tickets are sold out, it would wait to distribute tickets until just before the event. That way, people who want to re-sell their tickets can do so through the original box office. This prevents ticket prices from skyrocketing in the back-alley resale market.
"Our product would protect everyone involved and make sure the correct people are getting the money," said Kahn, a former economics graduate student and the CEO of Qcue.
The software would allow the price of tickets to fluctuate according to popularity, so the price for extremely popular tickets would increase while slow-selling tickets would drop in price.
"This is a way to return profits to event promoters and better protect consumers," Kahn said.
In the competition's eighth year, the stakes are higher than ever. The first place team will receive $325,000 in prizes, including a $100,000 investment in its company.
"This competition could help us develop our product more and be able to expand our idea," said Mills, Qcue's chief technology officer and a computer sciences graduate student.
In an international applicant pool of more than 280, Qcue was one of 36 teams chosen to compete. Despite facing tough competition, Kahn said he was looking forward to the contest.
"At the end of the day, we believe in what we're doing," he said. "It is more than a good idea - it has evolved into a great product and a great business."
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