I interviewed at SeatGeek five years ago when they were a very small team. I was super intimidated at my first "startup" interview. No need to be; Jack and Russ were some of the nicest guys and interviewers. I remember after the interview they spent a bunch of time talking about the ways they had scripted Adobe Illustrator (I believe) to make the then very awesome, but now quite rudimentary, seat maps.
Really thought they had a great product on their hands and have used it quite a bit. They've done great work building both a great product as well as an engineering and product driven company.
I also remember interviewing when there were around ten people, and also being rather intimidated by just how much they cared about getting seating maps right. I've been a fan—and user—ever since.
I remember getting an email from Jack a few years ago asking if I wanted to help them build their iOS app. They knew exactly what they wanted and where they needed expertise, which is the right way to approach contract work. I wasn't surprised when their app turned out to be very well done :)
as someone who lived through/participated in phase one of the "ticket disruption" to include secondary markets, i'm skeptical this is relevant and really i think the vc dudes just flushed a bunch of money down the toilet. TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective. then there's the whole regulatory issue.
wish them good luck, but this is one of those domains that just sucks...
seatgeek has an amazing ui, maybe the best ui for finding tickets. That alone is very valuable. The problem is that with this round total raised is $100M. VC's expect to double or triple their money, as par. That sets a simplified expected exit valuation of $300M for this to be a success. Ticketmaster was last sold for $400MM in 2009. The bar for success is now extremely high. Anything below the high expectations generally means that this fantastic product will be considered a failure and most likely sold for scrap. What a horrible situation, why create these artificial expectations?
You didn't really counter any of the OPs points, though. A great UI is cool, but not if you don't have any tickets to sell because Ticketmaster already owns the entire market.
(Reuters) - The world's largest concert promoter, Live Nation Inc, plans to buy Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc for about $400 million in stock, aiming to create a company with dominant holdings in concert promotion and ticket sales.
> TM owns this market and frankly, the issue has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with the way professional sports and concert marketing works from a biz perspective.
Props to you for realizing the complexity of the business side. Most folks don't realize how complicated the world of ticketing is.
I do think you underestimate the value of technology. Ticketmaster effectively figured how to solve some really hard problems, similar to how we solve inside Google today.
The difference is TM did it with VAX assembler and for very focused use cases.
What are some of the main challenges in the world of ticketing, regulatory & business wise? I wonder what would make it so hard to just strike a deal with a venue.
TM took over back in the late 80's as the underdog because they made the great business decision to give venues a cut of the pie as opposed to charging venues for their services - which is what their competitors did at the time.
They quickly took demolished the competition and began setting up long term contracts, usually between 3 and 10 years with each venue.
Then, in 2010 they merged with LiveNation who owns a vast majority of some of the nations largest, most popular venues.
Major artists' managers and promoters all have close ties to TM/LiveNation as well, because it's where the money is. So when Taylor Swift goes on tour, these folks make sure they hit a TM venue at each stop along the way.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the gist.
They are not going against TM in the ticket market though. Putting the entire ticket market in one place is really nice from a ticket buyers perspective. How much TM and the whole ticket market sucks though, is another story.
But they are. TM/Livenation don't just do concert tickets. They do all types of events, festivals, etc. I've seen tickets for golf events, dinner events, etc on livenation.
Not only this, but TM/LN actually own a ton of venues. They seem to grow in size monthly.
"SeatGeek helps people find and buy tickets to sporting events, concerts, Broadway shows, nightclubs and a range of other live entertainment through its mobile app or website." This is targeting TM/LN market for sure.
They don't have the connections that TM/LN have that allow them to gobble up a venue/festival monthly.
Yeh that was my thought a few years ago I worked for Odeon sorting out some of the problems involved in selling cinema tickets online.
One particular supplier seemed to have a lock on that industry and was milking it for all its worth.
Odeon wasn't helped by using packet switched radio links that blocked - that's right only 1 person at a time could make a booking at an individual cinema (well the big one in lecister square had 2 links)
This is cool to see(congrats to them), as I too have had interactions with the founders when they first started. Just looking at a few emails we exchanged and thinking why I haven't I reached the same level of success when I've had a ton of great serendipitous moments/opportunities to seize.
It all boils down to pretty much being a solo founder. I always hired or found code monkeys to help turn my front end coded designs/ideas into a working product. None of these coders cared the same 500% percent I do for my start-ups. I.E. In December a Fortune 500 company wanted to become our client and I wanted to make this happen. I wasn't sure if I should make this company sign a licensing agreement or not. An advisers said they should, though I wasn't sure and wish I had a co-founder who cared as much as I do to discuss this decision with. It was a turning point for my start-up and the deal ultimately fell through (crushing).
Having a team/co-founders that are vested the same 500% is utmost important. Especially, if your not a schmoozer with tons of charisma and or a unicorn with great luck!
SeatGeek has a wonderful product but I feel we're positioned in the market a lot better because of the access to a large number of primary tickets. We can uniquely do some things (like giving fans early access to onsales). Our products are currently lacking but we have many things internally going on that will change that.
(If you are in LA and would be interested in helping, email me)
Congratulations! That's big time. I think just in time too. I have a feeling (as do others) that valuations may start declining soon to try and head off a bubble. Peak market is now! Perfect timing if you ask me - congrats again.
Really thought they had a great product on their hands and have used it quite a bit. They've done great work building both a great product as well as an engineering and product driven company.