How do you convince an industry to trust two 22-year-olds with their biggest events? For Christopher Hodgson, the Co-founder of TicketBee, it starts with a refusal to take “no” for an answer. Chris has always been driven to build something that genuinely improves lives. That drive led him to disrupt the stale ticketing industry, transforming a campus pain point into a business reaching a 95% retention rate.
In this feature, Chris and his Co-founder Jacques Amsel share the journey from hosting one event a year to dominating the market, the vital importance of hands-on support, and why they view every rejection as the best feedback money cannot buy.
Chris was born in Johannesburg but grew up in Cape Town from the age of four. Surprisingly, no one in his family has ever been an entrepreneur. “I’ve always been driven by a deep desire to innovate and build something bigger than myself, something that genuinely improves people’s lives and makes a tangible impact,” Chris acknowledges.
For Jacques, entrepreneurship was the family default. Raised in Cape Town with both parents running their own businesses and cousins either building startups or deeply involved in them, Jacques grew up believing that “if you output value, good things will come your way.” That environment normalised the idea that creating something from scratch is a viable path, not a risky detour.
Identifying a market gap through firsthand experience
Chris has always been involved in campus events at Stellenbosch University (SU). He says, “Back then, we relied on SnapScan to manage payments, which was a lot of admin-heavy and time-consuming.” Chris then realised there had to be a better and more efficient way. “I saw a gap in the market for a ticketing platform that was not only cost-effective but also delivered a premium experience and that is how TicketBee was born,” he recalls.
Supporting Chris’ sentiments, Jacques adds that the initial spark came from frustration. “We were organising events including the Simonsberg Metropolitan and were genuinely surprised by how little our competitors offered in terms of meaningful data and marketing analytics, paired with fees that were frankly outrageous.” It started as a personal project in Jacques’ room at Simonsberg res, where Chris happened to be his roommate. “After a few months of building, it became clear this had real legs,” he says.
From day one, the duo stuck to a simple principle: delivering exceptional value to both guests and organisers at a highly competitive price point. “By staying true to that foundation, we’ve built a 95% retention rate among event organisers who use our platform,” adds Chris.
The venture has experienced fast-paced growth, from hosting one event per year to processing over R1 million in ticket sales over the last four months alone. For TicketBee, a massive part of that growth has come from identifying and targeting underserved markets and then refining its product to meet the markets’ specific needs.
Overcoming the trust barrier through personalised support
Ticketing ultimately boils down to two things: cost and trust. For a while, TicketBee struggled to gain trust despite establishing a smart competitive price. “Event organisers are naturally protective of their events and usually have established ticketing preferences, so asking them to take a leap of faith on a new platform is a big ask,” says Chris.
Jacques agrees, adding that the “student founder” bias was a persistent hurdle. “There’s an assumption that being students makes us somehow less professional or less reliable. We’ve addressed that the same way any business does, by delivering, consistently, and letting the product speak for itself. Millions of rands in transactions later, the results do the talking.”
The duo tackled the trust issue by obsessing over hands-on support for both guests and organisers. Chris says, “That dedication built our credibility, sparked incredible word-of-mouth momentum, and has now led to us powering events all across the country.”
Looking ahead: AI and ambitious growth
TicketBee has some exciting developments in the AI space that is keeping close to its chest for now. More broadly, the company is in a strong growth phase. They are actively expanding the variety of events on the platform, from community markets and club nights to corporate functions and charity fundraisers and continuing to build out the organiser dashboard to make it even more powerful.
Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs
When asked what advice they would give to those following a similar path, Chris and Jacques offered these insights:
- Anyone can replicate your code in an afternoon with the right AI tools. You need to have that “something extra”, a unique insight, a distribution advantage, a community, a brand. Build around what can’t easily be copied.
- If you’re a student with some time and an idea, the risk-reward equation is genuinely in your favour. You have very little to lose and everything to gain. The longer you wait for the “right moment,” the more that moment costs you.
- Understanding your customers’ frustrations better than they can articulate them themselves is one of the most underrated skills in business. This does not just talk to users, it means intensely scrutinising your analytics, sweating the details that customers never consciously notice but always feel. “When we optimise for milliseconds, our customers don’t think ‘that was fast’, they just think ‘that was easy.’ That’s the goal,” says Jacques. The best product improvements are the ones your users can’t quite explain but would immediately miss.
Chris adds; “Over the last four months, I have taken nearly 70 face-to-face meetings. Jacques and I have heard ‘no’ countless times; some people even laughed at the idea of trusting two 22-year-olds to handle large-scale, ticketed events. But every single rejection just fuelled our motivation.” Being rejected forced them to step back, reflect on where their platform was falling short, and constantly refined their value proposition. “That resilience is exactly what has allowed us to build our current momentum and see such a strong uptake on the platform recently,” Chris explains.
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