
Eventbrite S-1 - coloneltcb
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1475115/000119312518255960/d593770ds1.htm
======
Sea_Wulf
Congrats to EventBrite on choosing to go public, but I think a congratulations
is in order for their 2017 sales team.

> More than 95% of creators who used our platform in 2017 signed themselves up
> for Eventbrite. In 2017, we derived 54% of our net revenue from these
> creators.

Selling to about 35,000 creators (700,000 total) for 46% of the profit is no
small chore, and, in my mind, speaks to a highly effective sales strategy. It
also partially explains why LiveNation is not taking a "create your own event
online" approach: direct sales can be more profitable.

~~~
sciurus
Keep in mind that Eventbrite doesn't charge anything to host free events,
which is all many of their organic customers ever host. That said, the amount
of revenue you can get from music festivals and venues, which require a sales
team to make the deals, dwarfs what you can get from most other customers.
There's a reason Eventbrite bought Ticketfly. For that same reason, Live
Nation has bought some of Eventbrite's customers and moved their ticketing to
Ticketmaster.

------
sciurus
I chuckled when I read "For example, we previously experienced interruptions
in performance of our platform because of a hardware error that AWS
experienced" on page 26.

I never expected one of the mishaps I dealt with while I worked there to
appear in an SEC filing! If you want to learn a lot at the expense of a few
gray hairs, I can highly recommend working in ops in the ticketing industry.
I've spoken about some of the things it taught me at
[https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa17/conference-
program/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa17/conference-
program/presentation/pitts)

~~~
mshenfield
Is reading S-1 filings a thing (nerd)?

~~~
jrm2k6
I think when it is a company you worked for, you might be more likely to do
it. You probably still have a bit of attachment to it.

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buf
As an early Eventbrite employee who saw the company grow from 10 to 200
people, this feels surreal.

~~~
gedy
Funny story is my company at the time looked at acquiring EventBrite about 10?
years ago, and as part of the integration eval, I happened to run the ab
command against their endpoint. Few minutes later VP ran to my office and told
me to stop as EventBrite called saying we were DDOSing them.

Congrats to EventBrite on going public. Am glad you stayed independent, as my
company would have ruined them, like many other acquisitions..

~~~
swyx
not a pro *nix guy here - what is the ab command and why does it make sense as
part of an integration eval?

~~~
gedy
ab is ApacheBench[0], was measuring the response time of an API.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApacheBench](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApacheBench)

~~~
yeukhon
One word: stress test tool.

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darkstar999
I hope Eventbrite and Brown Paper Tickets are successful in stealing some
business from their nasty competitors like Ticketmaster whose fees can be 50%
of the ticket price.

Edit: their fees can be over 100% of the ticket price.

~~~
icebraining
Part of that goes to the venue and occasionally the bands too:
[https://www.laweekly.com/music/ticketmaster-and-servants-
ban...](https://www.laweekly.com/music/ticketmaster-and-servants-bands-get-
cut-of-service-fee-2158605)

~~~
darkstar999
Doesn't make a difference. Maybe it's an industry problem, because it doesn't
make sense to advertise the ticket price but hide a bunch of fees to be found
at checkout. (I'm looking at you, airlines). Might as well advertise
everything as $1 and everything else is fees.

It reminds me of Centurylink's "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" for $3.99 a month.
It's a bullshit sneaky way to advertise one price but the actual price is
"below the fold". I think this kind of pricing should be illegal.

~~~
sciurus
Doesn't make sense? Sure it does. Ticketmaster's sales team gets to go to
venue and say "if you go with us, you can charge outrageous fees, pocket most
of it, and we'll take all the blame".

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bing_dai
I cannot be happier for Eventbrite! What a valuable product. My own startup
wouldn't have taken off as fast without Eventbrite. Congratulations!

------
sciurus
The best article I've seen so far is
[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/ticketing-site-eventbrite-
fi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/23/ticketing-site-eventbrite-files-to-
raise-up-to-200-million-in-ipo.html)

------
bbrian
Go to eventbrite.com, search (blank) your local area "today" and events are
not in chronological order. I appreciate that they show the 'best' events
first, but when I just want something to do, it kills me that such a simple
search is not available.

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dopeboy
As someone launching a coding camp for kids, Eventbrite has been instrumental
for us. We do free classes to generate leads and the free offering of EB has
been more than enough to accomplish this. Good to see them succeed.

------
Santoshpanda
Network effect could solve gaps and make Eventbrite emerge as №1 player vs.
LiveNation. But only in the ticketing for the entertainment segment. This is
further challenged due to Top 5 wants a pie of every tech-driven business:
Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and even Apple. They own the network.

here is my detailed thought post: [https://medium.com/@santoshpanda/my-
thoughts-on-eventbrites-...](https://medium.com/@santoshpanda/my-thoughts-on-
eventbrites-s-1-event-tech-industry-segments-and-trillion-world-
market-680dc6a437b)

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toomanybeersies
As a non-American who's never invested in shares outside of his own country.
How do I get a slice of this pie?

This is one of the few specific companies I'd actually be interested in
investing in, rather than throwing all my money into indexes.

~~~
drx
Get a US brokerage account like Schwab.

~~~
tehlike
Interactive brokers would be my vote.

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Kinnard
I wonder if this has to do with building a war chest to compete with meetup +
WeWork . . .

though meetup and eventbrite are definitely different.

~~~
subpixel
Not likely - Eventbrite ate Meetup's lunch a long time ago and the sale to
WeWork was about surviving Facebook's stated plans to own 'groups'. I didn't
read the S-1 but I believe Eventbrite is in a league of it's own.

------
thinkingkong
They just also recently acquired Picatic, another vendor in this space.
Hopefully that helps with the figures.

~~~
sciurus
That highlights one thing to keep in mind when evaluating their 2017 growth:
EB purchased both Ticketscript and Ticketfly that year.

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davidu
Congrats Julia (and Kevin)! Amazing company you've built.

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mychael
Congrats Eventbrite team. You guys earned it!

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minimaxir
"We have a history of losses and we may not be able to generate sufficient
revenue to achieve and maintain profitability."

~~~
donald123
What's the point? This is a common risk for all companies.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Not companies going public (historically). It’s only recently these hot messes
of unprofitably are getting dumped on the public markets.

VCs are for gambling, public markets are for profitable businesses.

~~~
captn3m0
Any reason why this should remain the status quo? Why shouldn't the general
public be allowed to invest in slightly-risky ventures?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Because the public are not accredited/sophisticated investors. It's to prevent
them from being swindled.

How much did professional investors lose on Theranos alone (answer: Somewhere
between $600-$800 million)?

~~~
madengr
Recently looked up "accredited investor". Joint income of > $300k and net
worth (minus house) of > $ 1M.

I wonder if someone actually does the accrediting.

~~~
icedchai
It's actually > $300k income _or_ > $1M net worth. And, no, nobody does the
accrediting. It's basically an honor system.

~~~
eganist
>300k income joint, >200k income single, or >1m excl. primary residence in any
event.

Paraphrasing an attorney from years ago: The risk of lying to invest in
something only open to accredited investors is colossal both to the entity
raising funds as well as to the investor, and it can/does get caught during
diligence, so it's not so much an honor system as it is something that
inevitably gets audited/managed either down the road or especially when
something goes wrong.

This may have changed and my recollection may not be accurate. Lastly, this
isn't legal advice given that I'm not a lawyer.

