He Built A $500 Million A Year Business By Connecting Culture To Commerce

Brian Fenty has been on both sides of the table as an investor and entrepreneur. He has leveraged that experience, as well as his love for culture to build an incredible business that delivers six star experiences. 

On this episode of the Dealmakers Show, Fenty talks about what separates good companies from bad companies, how to choose the best board members for your business, turning failed acquisitions into big wins, and surviving financial crises.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

What Separates Good Companies From The Rest

Although he has spent most of his life in big cities, Brian Fenty got his start in life growing up in a small town in Connecticut. 

He grew up in a fun household. While his parents didn’t have a lot of money, he says that he quickly figured out how to be entrepreneurial. Starting at three years old he was cast in a show in a local theater, ultimately appearing in 55 productions by the time he was 14 years old, whichhelped him fund going to boarding school and college. 

While he is a self-described introvert, that experience of having to learn a script and get up to present on stage certainly helped him on his journey to raising capital, and becoming the CEO of a 400 person company.

After studying entrepreneurship in college in North Carolina, Fenty began his career in private equity. He saw it as a way to balance a professional career with his creative side. Being able to be involved with many new creative business ideas and founders, and learning more about entrepreneurship at the same time. 

Working with all of these companies also gave him plenty of perspective on what made companies successful.

The Basics Of Building A Business

One common ingredient he found was the authenticity of genuine leaders with vision and purpose. Factors he feels would help ensure they make it through the highs and lows of building a business.

Secondly, he points out the importance of real commercial fundamentals, value, and aligning the interests of investors and founders. Especially in this current economic environment. 

Thirdly, he says to be investing in products you believe in, and where you can add value. Those things within your expertise. 

In his top advice for those starting a business, Brian says to be human, and focus on building human products. He credits much of his own startup’s success to that. Which has really shown up in putting the customer first. 

One way they do that is to look for ways to add more service and value, for all customers, and to strive to get a sixth star on a five star review.

With that as their north star, customers never need to lose their loyalty and go to another platform. 

Building A Valuable Board For Your Startup

Your board members are an incredibly important and pivotal part of building any startup. They can make all the difference in how things go. Whether this will be a nightmare and disaster or a fantastic ride you are proud of. 

Investors always pitch founders that they care, they are founder friendly, and will add lots of value beyond the money. This is all very important. Yet, many investors and those that become board members may not actually add nearly as much value as they claim. 

Brian Fenty says that he regrets one early investment in which he really wasn’t a domain expert, and couldn’t add as much value as he wanted to, even though the investment turned out well financially. 

Today, he says that he’ll “always tell companies when I’m joining a board or I’m going to advise that I have strong convictions loosely held. That means I hope that my expertise and my experience can lend value and show a different perspective. I never give advice as you should do this. I give advice as I’ve lived through a similar experience, here’s what I learned in that experience and how you might generate value from that.”

Keeping An Open Mind To New Ideas

He says that as a board member or entrepreneur you shouldn’t try to be the smartest person in the room. You want to be open to ideas and help seeing potential blind spots you missed.

When it comes to structuring your board, he says that in his case they are organizing their board members to help them get to where they want to be and for what they need in four years down the road, not just based on where the company was yesterday. 

When it came to building his own company, they not only pulled in top advisors, but have partnered with great investors like Bain, to raise over $200M. 

Storytelling is everything which is something that Brian Fenty was able to master. Being able to capture the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides is the key. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here), where the most critical slides are highlighted.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

TodayTix Group

Brian Fenty’s own startup is TodayTix, the marquee brand of TodayTix Group, the global e-commerce leader for cultural experiences. It’s all about creating access to the arts and culture with the best value on tickets to cultural events, which you can purchase in 30 seconds or less from your mobile phone. 

They’ve already built it into a global business that has made other acquisitions of its own and is generating $500M a year. 

Listen in to the full podcast episode to find out more, including:

• How TodayTix is opening up culture and great shows for everyone
• The failed acquisition that turned into a hugely successful startup
• Fighting through financial crises to create new record results

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