

 Hungry start-ups (Anyvite & TicketStumbler) on a drastic diet - fallentimes
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

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fallentimes
It's making some people register; here's a link to text only:

<http://tinypaste.com/pre.php?id=ddb2e>

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paulgb
Might not work for everyone, but removing ?nclick_check=1 from the URL made it
work for me:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2ac.html)

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andrewljohnson
Living outside of the Bay area fit into our calculations when my co-founder
and I started TrailBehind.com too. We moved to a 3-bedroom cabin in Truckee,
which costs us about as much as sharing a single room in a 3-bedroom apartment
in SF.

~~~
jmorin007
That actually sounds really sweet. Working in the mountains on your startup
with decently close proximity to the Bay Area if you want to come into the
city for events. Great plan!

~~~
smokey_the_bear
yeah, it's only 30 minutes from Reno, which has most big city creature
comforts. Amtrak goes straight through town too. Might be hard to find new
hires here, but perfect for buckling down to get it off the ground.

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fizx
Especially if the ski season continues to suck!

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ojbyrne
I find it interesting that ticketstumbler is theoretically a utility that
allows the savings of time at the cost of money and the article focuses on the
savings of money at the expense of time.

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fallentimes
Actually, since over 50% of events don't sell out, you can often find below
face value tickets on TicketStumbler. The ticketmaster fees are comparable to
the ones charged by our ticket providers.

This is even more true now that we're in a recession. NBA tickets are at all
time lows. Expect similar deals for baseball season.

~~~
ojbyrne
I said "theoretically." Boiled down, you're collecting commissions to
aggregate ticket inventory and find the lowest prices for buyers. If every
buyer spent the time to find the lowest price (including spending the time to
develop the knowledge you guys have of pricing, etc), those commissions would
disappear.

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tdavis
Well of course if everybody spent all that time to find the lowest prices and
developed knowledge of pricing we'd stop making money. But they're not going
to do that, just like everybody isn't going to randomly decide to learn the
way air travel works and put Orbitz et. al. out of business.

Even if it cost 10% more to buy a ticket through TicketStumbler, which it
doesn't (it costs 0%), it would still be worth it. You have to consider the
opportunity cost.

~~~
ojbyrne
I totally agree and didn't mean it as a criticism in any way. Just that in
theory, you're providing a service that lets people convert money (someone's,
not sure whose, perhaps completely fanciful) into saved time, and that the
article is about you sacrificing time to reduce costs. The vonage example
specifically is about that - some slight increase in inconvenience (i.e. lost
time) for a cost savings.

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fallentimes
Ah I see. Though with cell phone day time rates being what they are, the
slight loss in time is well worth it :).

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mikeyur
I'd toss Vonage and go for Skype-out, save $11/month :P If you're only calling
out from it, skype-out is $3/month or $30/yr and allows unlimited calling to
the US/Canada.

~~~
fallentimes
In my experience, Skype hasn't been near as reliable.

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mikeyur
Really? That's odd, I've never had problems with Skype. Worked amazingly even
when I was on vacation in Jamaica (sharing a DSL connection with the whole
hotel) calling back home to Canada.

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pmjordan
"Every day TicketStumbler.com scours the web for the best deals on roughly
_$1bn (€750,000, £670,000)_ worth of concert and sports tickets from secondary
sellers."

Okay, so the dollar exchange rate is low, but not that low. I'm guessing they
mean $1 million?

~~~
fallentimes
Their calculation was wrong. The interview was during the NFL season where we
had roughly $1 billion (with a B) worth of tickets. It's a little less than
that now since the NFL regular season is over. It'll be over $1 billion again
as the MLB season draws near.

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rms
Are you guys going to release any of your historical data? What I am most
curious about is the tendency for prices to go up or down as it gets closer to
showtime -- I'm sure ticket scalpers united would love a widget to play around
with those numbers.

~~~
fallentimes
This is tricky; since we're a third party it's difficult to know if the
tickets were sold or delisted. However, it's certainly something we'll look
into.

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daveambrose
This is a great piece. Congrats! I couldn't help but laugh at the phone bill
comment - I do the same. :)

Dan, would you mind sharing any tips/feedback how the piece came about? Did
you pitch the FT?

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fallentimes
We did not pitch him. A free lancer we were intro'd to was looking to talk to
startups regarding the recession, and how we were coping.

He did an excellent job and was very thorough, but I had no idea it was going
to land in the Financial Times until recently. I would have been happy with a
mention on the back of a Count Chocula cereal box.

We'll talk to anyone.

~~~
brandnewlow
And that, my friends, is a winning attitude with the press. You never know
when that random writer's going to catch a break and land their piece in the
FT.

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timcederman
Change the "false.html" to "true.html" in the URL.

eg - ft.com/cms/s/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=true.html

(doesn't work if you click on it, you need to manually change it)

edit: this used to work on ft.com for me, but doesn't seem to be working at
the moment (at least on FF3/OS X).

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brandnewlow
Congrats on the coverage. I haven't seen many YC startups in the FT.

~~~
fallentimes
Jeff's so dreamy, it's hard to say no.

~~~
jmorin007
And just so for the record, so is that other founder of Ticketstumbler:

[http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/f9833f0a6c_ti...](http://multimedia.heraldinteractive.com/images/f9833f0a6c_tickets08262008.jpg)

~~~
jobenjo
What, no love for me, just because I'm not a YC company? I was still in the FT
article.

[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/business/smal...](http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/23/business/smallbusiness/share600.jpg)
or <http://www.fluther.com/404>

Okay, now I'm embarrassed.

~~~
jmorin007
Hey Ben, totally didn't mean to leave you out! Like Dan said, the pic of Tom
(wearing lipstick) is a running joke. You get just as much love as the other
YC companies involved!

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physcab
When everyone gets their startup going, you should all just move to North
Florida. Admittedly we don't have the resources like the Bay Area, but if this
post is about cost savings, then North Florida is your best bet. My rent here
is $500 a month and I pay $40 a week for food. No car. When I lived in Santa
Clara, my rent was $750 (lived with 7 people) and food was over $120 a week.

~~~
fallentimes
How do you get around? One of the things I love about Boston is the public
transportation.

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physcab
The glorious public transit system and my t(rusty) bike. We're nowhere near
Boston in transit...or California for that matter. I practically lived on Cal
Train when I lived in Santa Clara. In Florida, you just need to be creative.
Zipcar also helps.

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anuraggoel
Congratulations on the FT mention! Can you shed some light on the
'calculations' that go into the decision to live outside the valley? While
living outside the bay area does reduce expenses, what kinds of things do you
give up on (e.g. easy access to X, Y, Z) and why are they less valuable than
the immediate monetary benefits?

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fallentimes
Sure. It really wasn't as tough a decision for us as it could be for other
startups. We aren't hiring and aren't actively raising money (though we keep
in touch with many potential investors just in case). Also, our families are
in the midwest. The only thing we "gave up" was that our startup friends
almost all moved to San Francisco. But since we're working most of the time,
it's not that big of deal.

If and when we have a war chest of cash, we'll likely move to San Francisco;
it's a kick ass place but is as expensive as NYC.

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bradgessler
u: muellernews p: 50505050

~~~
tlrobinson
<http://www.bugmenot.com/view/ft.com>

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you
feed him for a lifetime."

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curiousgeorge
Good job guys.

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vlad
Congrats!

