The start
Why I started Zoticket
My wife was on the parents' council when someone suggested organizing a party for all the parents at school. It was a great idea: venue booked, poster ready, message drafted for the class group chats. We were excited.
Tickets would be €15 each. With 70 guests, the costs would be covered. Anything above that could go straight into other parents' council projects for the school.
Only one thing was still missing: ticket sales.
But that was harder than it should have been. The ticketing platforms they found were expensive, complicated, or built around subscriptions. All for one party a year.
Why couldn't it be simple: upload the poster, set the price, and start selling?
So I built it myself. That became Zoticket.
In the weeks before the party, it was already fun to check the sales after every reminder in the class group chats. A few more tickets each time.
The party itself was brilliant. The theme was Proud to be Fout, so everyone showed up in their loudest leopard print or tracksuit. That made scanning almost unnecessary: if we did not immediately recognize someone from the schoolyard, the outfit usually did the job. I had printed a guest list from Zoticket just in case, but we did not need it. Scanning worked without a hitch. I did notice it would be useful to check people in by name too, so I added that later.
In the end, we sold 93 tickets and the room felt properly full. It was a great night, and it was pretty satisfying to see Zoticket do exactly what it was built to do.