GroupMe Ticket Bot Creators Win Mays Startup Award

Last Friday, juniors Anthony Herman and Myra Mendoza were honored with Mays Business School’s TechExcellence Entrepreneurship Award for the rapid growth of their GroupMe ticket selling bot. Despite launching their business in February, the bots can already be found in GroupMe chats for more than 50 percent of courses and organizational groups.

“These students exemplify everything we teach at Mays Business School,” Dean Dr. Nate Sharp said while presenting the award. “Finding innovative ways to take money from students is one of the university’s core competencies.” The ceremony occurred at a banquet featuring prominent business leaders, including representatives from Cutco and Southwestern Advantage.

The young entrepreneurs created the now-ubiquitous GroupMe ticket peddler bots, christened ScamMe, in the weeks leading up to the Taylor Swift and SZA tours. The company’s value comes from having no obligation to deliver tickets regardless of payments received. This has created a business model with zero marginal cost and has allowed the pair to recover its initial capital expenditures four times over.

Despite the early success, the founders have no plans to cash out and have already begun expanding their venture into new markets. “Canvas emails and announcements are an extremely underutilized method of reaching target audiences. My entrepreneurship professors always talk about the importance of multiple income streams and diversifying potential customer pools,” founder Anthony Herman said. “Be on the lookout for several updates inspired by GroupMe and A&M IT infrastructure, including frequent outages and a help ticket response time of 3–5 business years.”

 

— Batt-atouille & MSC ALITTLE