

Venuetastic (YC W11) Makes Booking Event Spaces a Breeze - cyen
http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/20/venuetastic-makes-booking-an-event-space-a-breeze/

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aberman
This one is a sleeper. Might not get as hyped as the other YC companies in its
batch, but I think this could definitely be an interesting business.

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citizenkeys
Y Combinator's first all-female start-up. Lets hear a round of applause for
that!

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quizbiz
would be nice to see the number of upvotes for a comment like this. :)

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adrianwaj
Other big players in this space not mentioned in the TC article are:
Reverbnation Gigfinder: [http://blog.reverbnation.com/2010/06/15/gig-finder-
the-large...](http://blog.reverbnation.com/2010/06/15/gig-finder-the-largest-
free-searchable-venue-database/)

Foursquare Venues project (with some layer on top - hint, hint):
[http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/14/1up-the-importance-
of-...](http://blog.foursquare.com/2011/03/14/1up-the-importance-of-platforms-
and-how-we’re-extending-ours/)

Indie On the Move: <http://www.indieonthemove.com/>

Venuetastic - YC's "Ebay for venues," and taking a cue from AirBnB.

These guys are positioning to be the Ebay of transportation:
<http://www.uship.com/>

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citizenkeys
Y Combinator has several companies each doing something unique in the event
space:

Lanyrd YC W11( <http://lanyrd.com/> ) - Lanyrd is a directory of conferences,
events and speakers.

GrubWith.Us YC W11( <http://grubwith.us/> ) - Grubwithus builds friendships
over food by sharing reservations.

Venuetastic - YC W11( <http://venuetastic.com> ) - An easy-to-use event venue
marketplace.

Swagapalooza YC W10 ( <http://swagapalooza.com/> ) - Free stuff for event
attendees.

AnyVite YC S08 ( <http://anyvite.com/> ) - The easiest way to create event
invitations.

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carbocation
Just checked <http://www.venutastic.com/> and you guys already had it with a
redirect. Strong work.

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sbisker
Wait, _that_ Helen? So that's what you've been up to since college. Nice job.
(And you too Christine.) :)

A lot of great features in this thing, even from day one. The right number of
different ways to do things. Very strong UI work already. Still a few kinks in
the flows - how do I add a venue to my Event without also contacting the
venue? - but something I'd feel comfortable recommending to my mother.

It's also clear you guys took cues from airbnb, not letting users get too
distracted by worrying about what they _can't_ chose until they've already
been sucked in by the sheer imagery and selection of what they _can_. Heck, I
don't even live in San Francisco, and even I found myself on here way longer
than expected just looking at the various venues and how it all worked. (A
"corking fee"? Fascinating.)

I see your "for ____ people" field only fits four digits. Do you see
yourselves eventually letting people search for and select even larger venues
(conference centers, stadiums, what have you)? Or is that sort of business a
bit too high touch? EDIT: Ah, you can still type in five digits; it's just not
wide enough. Eh, my question still stands. :)

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belokor
Yes - that Helen :) Thanks for the kind comments!

Re: how do I add a venue to my Event without also contacting the venue? You
can work around it right now by adding to Favorites first but yes, that is
something we're working on changing!

Re: Yes. We are currently focusing on the 20-500 size events but will be be
letting people select larger venues in the future (we are continuing to add
larger venues even now). We will also be incorporating other new features for
the more high touch events - so stay tuned!

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barmstrong
Awesome idea!

As unsolicited feedback, I think the UI is a bit complex on search result and
booking pages. Could benefit from doing a lot less there I think. But overall
it looks great.

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cyen
Thanks! We went back and forth finding a balance between the relatively
complex constraints some people have in looking for a venue, versus a cleaner
interface + fewer features. This is noted :) and we'll noodle on it a bit more
going forward.

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savrajsingh
It's like AirBnB, for venues. Neat idea! Congrats.

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mtogo
Ugh, can we please stop with the "X for Y" convention?

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thesethings
I feel you, but in many cases a comparison can save a lot of work for both the
explainer and understand-er :D

"It's a peer to peer marketplace where both commercial entities and individual
consumers can rent-"

"oh, like airbnb?"

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whizkiddd
I like this concept. I know a few people were already looking into this ever
since AirBnB came along, but this looks cool. well done.

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frankdenbow
Like this one alot. As someone who has booked venues before and had to run
around searching, this would have saved me tons of time. Combine this with
SpeakerGram (for booking speakers) and EventBrite for ticketing and I can plan
a conference in a snap :-)

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Watcher
Nice pivot guys. But shame on the mentor that provided you all your features.
Guess NDA's are worthless and integrity isn't coded into the tech world.

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Watcher
Eventify.me came out with this idea a little while ago. Plus points to
Venuetastic.com for good interface design.

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hrasm
The about page is borking for me. <http://venuetastic.com/about>

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cyen
Heroku / EC2 are seeing intermittent connectivity issues - try again in a bit?

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cpeterso
I don't know why, but the Venuetastic site has crashed my Firefox about 5
times in 10 minutes. :\

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guynamedloren
Seems like a great idea and I definitely see a need for something like this...
but _Venuetastic_... really?

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pg
Almost as bad as calling a search engine google.com.

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brlewis
I too have pointed out google and yahoo when people talk about bad domain
names, but for all I know those names may actually have made it take longer
for people to take those companies seriously.

That said, I think venuetastic is a great name.

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rokhayakebe
Tags:Useful.

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kongqiu
Well done!

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ericfrenkiel
congrats!

