Dazzle Tickets wins $70K biz start-up prize

Launch Pad entrants Christopher Smith (left) and Nick Schembri want to take their product to the world. Photo / Natalie Slade

Dazzle Tickets has been announced as the winner of the Launch Pad competition that was part of the Planet 2010 Conference at SkyCity earlier this month.

Six start-up companies went head to head in the Dragons' Den-like competition, and were given five minutes each to pitch their business model before an audience.

Judges then narrowed the six entrants down to three finalists, comprising four businesspeople, who gathered nervously in an Ellerslie office block yesterday to find out which company had won the competition.

Speech School TV, an online voice coaching school, took out the third prize, while Life Time Health Diary, which provides a complete lifetime health record, came in second.

Dazzle Tickets, an online event ticketing service that manages event ticketing from start to finish, received $70,000 worth of products and business support for taking out the top prize.

Nick Schembri and Christopher Smith, founders and managing directors of Dazzle Tickets, said the business support provided as part of the prize would be invaluable for the growth of their fledgling company.

"We've got the product and the passion but we need support from different areas, whether that be someone that's done [business] globally before, accounting people, law firms and things like that," Schembri said.

He said the accounting system provided by Myob would be particularly useful to their future business, which was set to go "cashflow positive" within the coming weeks.

"We will be dealing with millions of dollars of people's money every day - people will be trusting us with that sort of money."

Dazzle Tickets was going through a rebranding phase, Schembri said, which would see the start-up getting a new name before its official launch in May.

"We came up with the name [Dazzle Tickets] while we were still at university, so we want to give it a new name with some meaning and a message behind it."

Rob Spray, chief executive of the Telecommunications Industry Group, which organised the Launch Pad, said Schembri and Smith stood out from the other competitors because of their energy, great product and strong focus on customer service.

Schembri and Smith, who have worked part-time as well as dedicating themselves to building their business, hope to soon work full-time on their ticketing solution.

Their goal is to take on the big players in the New Zealand ticketing market, and then export their system overseas.

Smith said: "This is our passion, this is our goal, this is our dream."