

The new reality: Ticketstumbler ($15,000 in funding) vs Fansnap ($10.5 million) - pg
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ticketstumbler.com+fansnap.com/?metric=uv

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fallentimes
Hi guys, Dan here from TicketStumbler. While it was kind of PG to post this,
there's still a long long way to go. Fansnap has done a good job with their
maps and including many ticket sites (even if most of them post their tickets
on Stubhub and Ticketsnow).

We've had a recent run of press recently (Financial Times, Boston Globe, Local
News, ABCnews.com) and our interactive maps have been a huge hit, but we're
not even close to having breathing room. Aka me on a tropical island drinking,
Tom in Australia floating between cities.

~~~
kmt
Right. You'd better fix "Upcoming Events near Washington, MD" before having
those tropical drinks. It's Washington DC here and you don't want to
underestimate this market.

~~~
tdavis
Well there is a Washington Maryland, and I don't have to be sober to realize
that, which I am not even close to, so if you are in the Distinct of Columbia
that's another story.

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aston
Might be a little too early to call it an absolute win for the home team. But
then again, they are profitable already...

~~~
fallentimes
Agreed. It's way too early.

I think PG is trying to jinx us ;p.

~~~
pg
_I think PG is trying to jinx us_

I certainly wouldn't have done this to everyone, but you guys are fairly
indestructible.

~~~
fallentimes
I don't know, Tom bruises like a peach.

~~~
tdavis
This man is a liar. And a thief.

~~~
prakash
He only lied about being a thief :-). hat tip oceans 12

~~~
sachinag
Is that line in Twelve as well? I loved Eleven so much that all my friends
refused to let me see Twelve.

~~~
prakash
12 is a good one in a different sense, it grows on you. 12 has the most class
IMHO.

------
acangiano
I'm convinced that startups that receive very large amounts of "not strictly
required" funding are far more likely to fail than startups that are slightly
underfunded.

~~~
tbrooks
I completely agree and have been wondering about this lately.

Any studies or articles to back it up?

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robg
I'm completely naive on both. What are the biggest differences between the two
from the user side? With that quick separation (after the YC buzz fell off),
is it something really obvious (e.g., cost to list) or a collection of
factors?

~~~
fallentimes
Fansnap has been at it for 2.5 years so they have more maps & providers than
us, but we like to think our UI is a little better :). Also, most of the long
tail providers they include also post tickets on Stubhub and Ticketsnow so we
include them indirectly.

We'll be introducing maps every Monday from now on:

<http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/category/map-mondays/>

~~~
jgilliam
I went to both sites for the first time just now. I was instantly drawn into
ticketstumbler with the events happening this weekend in my neighborhood front
and center. My first reaction was to subscribe to the RSS feed (but I haven't
found it yet, please add it!).

~~~
drenei
I can't use it - I'm in Canada. But I agree that an RSS feed of events results
(like a feed for events happening in your area) would be a useful feature.

It looks like you guys are off to a great start. Good luck!

~~~
fallentimes
Coming soon :).

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nir
I think at some point people will realize this is not counter intuitive, but
actually a logical conclusion - if you raise $10m to build what another
company produced for $15k, you're setting yourself to fail.

You have VCs or other investors now, with a lot of power over the company,
whose interests do not necessarily align with the company's interest and who
don't necessarily understand your area at all.

You have a lot of money which can be very useful but can also act as a cushion
that insulates the company from reality, allowing it to be lazy and stupid.

(Maybe it's the start up version of the Resource Curse:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse> )

------
thorax
Does anyone else see their sites reflected wildly incorrect by compete.com?

I have two sites that get 5-8 times the traffic shown by compete's graphs.
Because of this, I just never take compete.com's stats as reliable at all.

~~~
shafqat
We see the same for NewsCred... our traffic is an order of magnitude larger
than what Compete reports. We're thinking about getting Quantified for that
reason, but I'm not so sure about sharing every little detail of traffic
information with the whole world.

~~~
rmaccloy
You can hide data fairly selectively on Quantcast, FYI. (As of one of our more
recent releases people can ask you for access to your hidden data, which is
nice if you sell ads.)

Full disclosure: I work for 'em so obviously I'd encourage you to go for it.
:)

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revorad
Congrats guys. Just read your backstory with YC -
[http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/11/03/when-
ticketst...](http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/11/03/when-
ticketstumbler-met-livingston/)

Very exciting stuff. Especially loved the FC reference -

"Starting a company isn’t a seminar; it’s not a goddamn weekend retreat."

~~~
fallentimes
Thanks - we're both big fans.

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paul7986
Could someone enlighten me on why VCs put millions in a few companies with
concepts they deem a multi-billion dollar industry and yet come up empty most
of the time?

Why not invest smaller dollar amounts in more companies - they'll have more
chances for hitting more home-runs.

With our current economy and the cost it takes to build a start-up I should
hope VCs change their ways!

~~~
aston
This isn't the best place for this discussion, but the short version is that
you can't take the amount of capital VC's are dealing with and invest it in
tiny ways because you don't have the ability to manage all of those
investments. Also, VC's don't need to win most of the time to generate great
returns for themselves and investors.

~~~
ph0rque
I had an idea about that very thing... what if there were yc-like firms in
many of the notable cities/towns, and VCs funded them to fund the startups,
thus outsourcing their management?

~~~
fallentimes
It could work, but I'd worry about fees and the build up of bureaucracy.

~~~
sharpshoot
Actually, a lot of the 'angel boutiques' are funded this way. This is how the
VCs get some of their dealflow from trusted sources.

~~~
fallentimes
Are those the same as angel groups? How effective are those?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457100>

------
chwolfe
Fansnap should acquire Ticketstumbler (This assumes Fansnap has not spent
$10.5 million on coke and hookers).

~~~
fallentimes
We're not for sale.

~~~
ivankirigin
Everything is for sale. The only question is price.

~~~
fallentimes
Not true. We both value disposable time and not having bosses more than money.

If you get acquired you almost always have to stay on for 2-5 years.

~~~
ivankirigin
So your price includes the perks of working for yourself. For example, you
would take a deal that included enough cash & stock with no work requirement /
vesting.

~~~
fallentimes
I'd think about it, but those things don't happen 99% of the time. I'm always
willing to listen.

Having worked in M&A / financial due diligence before this, acquisitions are
like an anal probe; they're never clean, simple or quick. They're sloppy,
tedious and unpleasant. It's sort of similar to raising money in a sense that
it's very possible that real work is put on hold for months. Ugh.

And the other thing is, I'm just a big fan of events and helping people have
fun. When people tell me they used TicketStumbler and had a great time at X
concert or Y hockey game, or a Dad comments how he took his son to his first
baseball game, that means more to me than any dollar amount.

------
sanj
From what I can tell, Fansnap has spent a lot of time working on the business
end of things creating real relationships with secondary market ticketing
companies.

From watching Ticketstumbler succeed admirably, they've spent their time on
tech side and are running with affiliate relationships. Lower margins, I'm
assuming.

------
catone
For sites that get such a small amount of traffic I don't know if Compete is
accurate enough to draw any conclusions. Rails Forum gets about 110,000
uniques per months, but Compete says 24,000.

I guess the point still stands if they're essentially even in traffic, though.

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jonursenbach
Am I the only person on this site who isn't a huge fan of Ticketstumbler?

~~~
fallentimes
What would you change? Feedback helps us more than praise :).

If you want to contact me off of HN my email is dan@ticketstumbler.com.

------
comatose_kid
So, this begs the question - why did Fansnap's investors feel that 10.5M
(roughly 3 orders of magnitude more) was necessary to build their business?

~~~
unalone
That's the question that astounds me. What do web sites _do_ with that sort of
money? After servers, maybe marketing, maybe a round of hiring a graphic
designer, what's left?

~~~
fallentimes
10 people at 100k per year plus benefits plus taxes/fees plus office space
adds up really fast.

~~~
unalone
Huh! I'd have thought a start-up would work from an apartment or something to
save costs.

And forgive my ignorance, but isn't 10 people a lot for a start-up? Isn't 100k
a year rather a lot? And when you get investments, is that what part of the
money goes toward, your own salary?

~~~
aston
10 people is still a pretty small company, all things told. You can draw the
line for "startup" wherever you like, but a million dollars goes pretty fast
for most businesses.

~~~
moe
Yup, but we're talking 10 million dollars here. Imho the term startup becomes
a bit misleading when you're going at it with that kind of money. "Corporate
spinoff" or something might be the better term.

I'll freely admit that I'm a bit jealous here (talking from the perspective of
a self-funded startup), figures like that just make my head spin. You keep
reading that VCs would rather fund 10 startups instead of one, because 8 of
them fail either way. Then you read about A/B rounds in the millions...

------
jonursenbach
This same "new reality" can also be applied to Twitter vs Yammer.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Please elaborate.

~~~
aston
Yammer took very little funding relative to Twitter, especially if you ignore
the fact that the engineers and product designers on it were stealing time
from their core work on Geni. The comparison unfortunately falls flat once you
go to the graphs, though, since Twitter's numbers are incredible.

~~~
jonursenbach
Sorry, I was referring to how feature complete Yammer is compared to Twitter.

Also it's not really "fair" to compare their traffic graphs as both company is
in a different category. Twitter is mainstream, while Yammer is built for
intra-business communication.

And isn't Yammer already profitable?

