UTicketIt is an event-registration and management system for school and community open-seating events. Manual ticket sales can be laborious; with UTicketIt, event organizers can create events and begin selling tickets within minutes. UTicketIt provides an automated platform for selling tickets online. It’s free for free events; organizers of for-profit events are charged a fee only when a sale is made. There are no setup costs or hidden charges.

HOW $10,000 WILL HELP: “We’ll use the money to develop a smartphone app to make UTicketIt fully mobile,” Ryan Clark says. “In addition, we’d like to start a search-engine-optimization campaign and develop new features such as mobile tickets, enabling attendees to enter an event using nothing more than their mobile phone.”

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IDENTICAL TWINS Ashton and Ryan Clark, 22, are the president and vice-president, respectively, of UTicketIt, an online event-registration and management business headquartered in Chicago. (“We flipped a coin to figure out our job titles,” Ryan says.)

While students at the University of Illinois, the Clarks became frustrated with the process for buying tickets to campus events. Lacking a way to purchase tickets online, they had to buy directly from the event organizer, the ticket office or at the door. “Realizing that other students shared our frustration,” Ryan says, “we developed the concept for UTicketIt.”

Ashton, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois’s College of Business, is the founder of LudaKicks.com and 247Mixtapes.com. In May 2009, he was named by Diversity Executive magazine as one of the “Emerging Leaders Under 40.”

Ryan is also a graduate of the University of Illinois, having majored in accountancy and minored in technology and management. He cofounded LudaKicks.com and 247Mixtapes.com with his brother, and in 2009 received the Black Engineer of the Year Student Leadership Award. •