Adam McCurdie is a celebrated UNSW Engineering alumnus who took a left turn from his mechanical engineering and maths degree to start a nonprofit that is now a leading Australian ticket agent.
Even though his day job has left his studies behind, the same motivation that led him to engineering is the one that drives him today: solving problems and making a difference.
Adam is now co-CEO of Humanitix, a ticketing website that donates all profits from booking fees to charity.
Adam was inspired to follow in his engineer grandfather’s footsteps, who saved lives with many inventions. A notable one was the ‘earth leakage system’, a type of electrical circuit breaker.
Improving quality of life and safety for everyone was a legacy Adam wanted to continue, and he was determined on where he’d start.
“I chose to study at UNSW as it has some of the best engineering programs in the world. I always had in my mind to go to UNSW.”
After graduating in 2011 and taking his first career steps in consulting, Adam founded Humanitix in 2016 with Josh Ross, an old friend from school. Josh kept working to provide for them both while Adam started building an early version of the website.
“The early days were incredibly difficult and isolating,” he says.
“Although I had Josh in my corner, ultimately every morning I would wake up and it would just be me and my laptop with an ever-growing list of things I needed to do to get Humanitix off the ground.
“One day I'd feel on top of the world and the next a complete failure.”
After six months, they built something that worked. After sixteen months, Josh packed in his job and joined Adam.
After “hundreds of knockbacks” and roadblocks, the pair started making some headway. The first chair of their board decided to join them on a hunch, just minutes after knocking them back over coffee. Through him, they met philanthropists who believed in their goal.
Atlassian came around with funding from its charity arm, and then the NSW Government followed in with a grant.
In 2018, they won Google’s social development ‘Impact Challenge’ and $1 million for their troubles.
“Winning the Google Impact Challenge was the most exciting and exhilarating moment of the whole journey.
“It was such a huge validation of the years of hard work that we'd put in and now it finally felt like we stood a chance of making it a success.”
Humanitix is now the fastest-growing ticketing platform in Australia and New Zealand and is establishing itself in the United States.
They’ve donated $10.5 million to charities at home and across the world, supporting access to basic needs like education and funding for school resources.
In 2022, the Committee for Sydney, the city’s peak advocacy body, recognised them with an award for emerging leaders.
And while Adam’s career and work are reaching new heights, it’s a strong tertiary foundation that allows him to keep building.
“Studying maths and engineering at UNSW helped surround me with incredibly smart people where I was being pushed to solve interesting problems every day.
“It gave me the confidence to appreciate that any problem which seems insurmountable and impossibly complicated to grasp just requires the right amount of patience and attention to work through it.”
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