“I didn’t know if Tix had a future. But I knew I wanted to survive”: Day 1 to 1000 of Tix

If you’ve ever bought a ticket to an event in Nigeria, chances are that the ticket was purchased on Tix, a 6-year-old company that has grown to become the de facto platform for ticketing and event management in Nigeria and beyond.

But it didn’t all start smooth. Tix was born out of frustration and was nearly snuffed out by COVID before it found its footing. “We just wanted to survive,” says Folayemi Agusto, the company’s co-founder and CEO. “Everything after that was a choice.”

In today’s edition of Day 1–1000, Agusto tells TechCabal how a side project evolved into a continent-spanning ticketing platform, how execution—not vision—became her moat, and why staying alive through a pandemic was the ultimate founder test.

Day 1 – Solving my own problem

I didn’t start Tix because I had some grand vision to revolutionise event tech in Africa. We started Tix because we needed it. Simple.

Before Tix, I co-founded Eat.Drink.Lagos, which began as a humble food blog. Back then, my co-founder and I just wanted to document our eating adventures. But then strangers on the internet started asking to eat with us. Weird? Yes. But also an opportunity. That food blog turned into supper clubs, which evolved into a full-blown food festival.

And that’s when the pain began.

Selling tickets was hell. There was no good way to process payments locally. We’d use a Fidelity bank account. We’ll tell people “pay in 15 minutes or lose your spot.” We’ll monitor manually. Cancel unpaid reservations. Do customer support over Gmail. Eventbrite didn’t support Naira. Shopify helped, but paying in dollars? Unsustainable. We got dragged online when we couldn’t handle crowds. I still remember 2018—15,000 people showed up. We collected no data. People couldn’t pay at the gate. POSs failed. It was chaos.

So we said: let’s fix this. That’s how Tix was born.

Day 50 – The group chat where It all began

Tix started in a Twitter DM between myself, Nosa (Eat.Drink co-founder), Timmy of BuyCoins, and Ope of Paystack.

If I’m being honest, I was the least committed. I had a good job at Andela and was only half-paying attention. But when we had something usable—a prototype where someone could actually buy a ticket—I got serious.

We tested it at Eat.Drink.Lagos Festival in December 2019. You could land on a page, click a picture, buy a ticket, and receive a QR code. It was basic. Sometimes people got debited but no ticket. Still, it was progress. Guests liked how easy it was. We even did NFC wristbands so you could tap to pay.

On March 1, 2020, we hired our first mobile dev (part-time) and a full-stack engineer.

And then 15 days later, on March 15, 2020, COVID hit.

We had just leased office space. We were building an event company for an era where nobody could gather. I didn’t know if Tix had a future. But I knew I wanted to survive.

Survival became the goal. We slashed salaries by 50%. We got scrappy. During COVID, I learned Figma. I built discount code UIs. I learned SQL and built dashboards in Retool. We did Instagram Lives with creators, partnered with chefs, and integrated Zoom into our platform so you could host virtual events without a Zoom account.

Total revenue from paid events during COVID? Between ₦100,000 to ₦500,000. Maybe. Most events were free. People used Tix for Zoom birthday parties or paint-and-sip sessions shipped to their homes. It was bleak. But we stayed alive.

By late 2021, COVID restrictions started to lift. People were gathering again. We sold ₦160 million in tickets that year. It was the first sign that this business could work.

Day 730 – Our first “real” year

2022 was our first real post-COVID year. That year, we sold ₦884 million in tickets, a 452% increase from 2021. We were still a small team (fewer than 20 people), but we knew one thing: Tix was now a real business. This wasn’t a fluke. People wanted what we were building. That felt euphoric.

In September 2023, I won the NBA Africa Triple-Double Accelerator. I pitched live in New York and beat out startups across the continent. It was my first live pitch. I was still grieving; my brother had passed away. But that moment… it gave me back my confidence. My will to build. It reminded me why I started this journey in the first place.

The evolution of Tix

When we started, all you could do was sell and buy tickets.

Now, our creators can:

• Run Instagram ads and track them with Meta Pixel integrations.
• Create GBP-priced tickets for diaspora events in the UK.
• Host in-person events in Ghana with staff and logistics powered by us.

Our product has become more robust because I stayed close to the users. I knew we had hit product market fit when a teammate told me: “When I say I work at Tix now, people already know what it is.” That was new. Before, we’d have to explain: “We’re like Eventbrite for Africa.” Now, people recognise us. That’s product-market fit to me. We’re  in Nigeria, Ghana, and the UK (diaspora). We help organisers do more than sell tickets. We help them run smoother, more delightful events.

Day 1000 – Present day:  Reflections on pain, power, and persistence

If you asked me, would I do it again? Yes. Absolutely. But differently.

I’d raise money from investors who actually understand the event space. Ticketing isn’t a niche. It’s massive. QuickGet in South Africa was acquired by Ticketmaster. DICE is growing fast. People underestimate this space.

I wouldn’t change our team, though. Or our name. And I’d invest even earlier in telling our story. Tix is powered by execution. That’s our moat. I don’t fear competition. The real difference between ideas is execution. My philosophy still remains the same:

• Execution is everything.
• I hate medium-effort people.
• I hate coasters.
• I hate “wafflers”—people who talk big and deliver small.

We’ve had hires who realised in one month: “This isn’t for me.” And that’s okay. Tix is intense. You can’t fake hard work here.

What keeps me going? Radical delusion. I see the future of Tix like it’s behind a glass wall. Every day I chip away at it. It’s bulletproof, but I have to keep hammering.

Success for me is helping people—both organisers and attendees—have delightful event experiences. That’s what we’re building. One ticket at a time.

Read more Day 1-1000:

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