Groovoo is grooving along to the tune of Miami tech success

This Miami-based startup is proving that NFTs are way more than pretty pictures

Creating awe-inspiring events is in Miami-based Leandro Garcia and Alberto Vaz’s veins.

The Brazilian childhood friends moved to the US around six years ago to organize events for San Francisco’s Brazilian community. Miami had always been on their radar, but the duo decided to make the move to Miami in August 2020 and February 2021 respectively amid the Bay Area’s prolonged, pandemic-induced shutdowns.

That New Years eve, the duo launched an event on Virginia Key Beach with music, dancing, and all around good vibes. Think Tulum meets Rio during a massive, multi-day, million-dollar production. “That’s when we knew that this was the moment for Miami,” said Vaz.

But in the course of organizing these events, Garcia and Vaz kept encountering problems with ticketing. Fraud, scams, and inefficient digital systems made ticketing a headache. And this is a massive issue in the US: according to CNBC, 12 percent of U.S. adults buying concert tickets online said they’d been scammed. A related issue: chargebacks, in which credit card users tell their bank that a charge is fraudulent when it may not be. Chargebacks alone cost organizers as much as 5% of revenue.

Garcia and Vaz decided there had to be a better way. So in May 2020, alongside marketing co-founder Chris Knight and technical co-founder Arthur Sampaio, they founded Groovoo: an app for NFT ticketing.

“We wanted to create a better experience for fans and organizers,” Knight told Refresh Miami.

Groovoo issues tickets in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These tickets are stored in the Groovoo digital wallet that event goers and organizers can quickly access via the mobile app. Near-field communication (NFC) technology enables ticket holders to quickly tap their smartphone to validate tickets for faster entry into venues. And Groovoo’s proprietary Live QR Code, which constantly shifts like an authenticator app, prevents counterfeit tickets with images of others’ static QR codes.

Through Groovoo’s app, partygoers can also interact with each other. “Users can see all the events happening in their city and chat with participants before, during, and after,” said CEO Garcia.

For organizers, Groovoo has designed an event planning dashboard. Features include financial planning tools that allow these event experts to more efficiently manage their assets digitally – rather than spending hours wrangling various Excel files or sorting through paper documents. Groovoo also helps organizers track expenses and calculate financial results such as total sales, profits, and payouts. “No other platform provides features such as these,” said Sampaio.

“In addition to Groovoo providing a deeper connection and interactions between producers and event goers via the social media features we’ve built into the app, event organizers now have a digital tool set to increase their profits via fraud prevention, and to streamline all their core business activities – from event planning, to running financials, and paying out partners or investors in events in a timely manner,” said Garcia.

Since May, the platform has already processed upwards of $1.5 million in tickets. Now the company is in the process of raising a round of seed funding to further develop their platform.

*Left to right: Groovoo co-founders Arthur Sampaio, Chris Knight, Leandro Garcia, Alberto Vaz*

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Riley Kaminer

I am a Miami-based technology researcher and writer with a passion for sharing stories about the South Florida tech ecosystem. I particularly enjoy learning about GovTech startups, cutting-edge applications of artificial intelligence, and innovators that leverage technology to transform society for the better. Always open for pitches via Twitter @rileywk or www.RileyKaminer.com.