

TicketStumbler.com (YC Summer 08): a new way to find tickets - fallentimes
http://www.ticketnews.com/TicketStumbler-com-a%20new-way-to-find-tickets88139871

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hooande
One thing I like about ticketstumbler? They are going to be very profitable
very quickly. Nice investment by YC

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fallentimes
We already are profitable - ramen profitable :).

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netcan
Ramen Profitable - Great term.

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truebosko
I really wish there was more to it then just sports but it's a good start. I
love the interface

Do you guys plan to expand into other markets?

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fallentimes
Concerts and theater are coming ASAP. Just has been hard with demo day and
VC/angel stuff.

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netcan
Concerts & theatre would sell it to me.

I've been complaining there is no decent way to find something to do online
(especially if you're visiting a city) for a while.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think some of the best options down here a government
run.

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babul
Have you tried <http://www.songkick.com>, also a YC startup? They are now
doing music and concert tickets.

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truebosko
Wow, that's a very nice site. Too bad no Canadian support. Always curious why
that is for sites like this

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ian
Sorry about that truebosko. We're working on extending our coverage to Canada
& Australia over the next months. We focused initially on getting as
comprehensive as possible in the UK and US (focusing on doing a good job in a
specific niche) before adding other countries. Live music has a really long
tail and we want to build a product that really hard core live music fans like
ourselves will trust. Canada is coming soon though. We've got a big
integration with Songbird launching next week and their community is asking
for that pretty loudly as well!

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netcan
Great site. I'm sold once you get going down here (Australia). Signed up with
Edinburgh to practice ;) Now I wish I lived there.

BTW, I'd love to see the long tail get taken care of properly. That's what I'm
really interested in. I'd probably use a 'what's on tomorrow' page for small
shows 100X more then a 'what's on this month' page for $100 + shows.

Any way crack away at the RIAA thing.

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dmpayton
Love the interface, but just sports? Concerts and other events would be
spectacular (though I'm assuming those are already in the plans for he
future).

Also, what about allowing users to sell their own tickets? I have a PAX badge
that I wont be using and would like to give to someone so it doesn't go to
waste.

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fallentimes
I agree - we're working very hard to get concerts and theater events added
asap. Regarding selling tickets, then we have to add our own massive customer
service department and handle outgoing payments, both of which I have no idea
how to do and have no interest in doing.

However, Stubhub is pretty great for selling your own tickets.
<https://www.stubhub.com/sell-tickets/>

Email me if you need any help.

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colvt
I like the geo cities feature. It's great to be able to see what's going on in
my area without having to do a thing!

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fallentimes
Customized user profiles are coming soon too!

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zacharye
Liked the site a lot when I checked it out. My only complaint was that I want
to see stadium seating charts before I pass to partner sites. Hated having to
go back and forth. Did I miss the chart links?

Otherwise it is indeed some great work.

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fallentimes
Due to strong demand, we added those within two days (although we are still
working out some seating chart bugs). <http://is.gd/1qVd>

We take our users very seriously. Please let me know if you have any other
suggestions.

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zacharye
It took two whole days huh? ;)

Looks like my stubhub bookmark gets replaced tomorrow. Thanks for letting me
know!

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fallentimes
Delicious "adds" are very much encouraged. <http://is.gd/1qW4>

Not only do their users tend to visit 3-4 more pages than the average user,
we've received a consistent flow of delicious traffic ever since appearing on
their front page. <http://i37.tinypic.com/20ghaom.png>

We have more delicious "adds" than Stubhub. Thanks guys.

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zacharye
I'll see your delicious add and raise you some blog coverage.

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fallentimes
Umm - Wow! You have no idea how much we appreciate this:
[http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/08/14/ticketstumbler-
put...](http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2008/08/14/ticketstumbler-putting-
aggregation-to-good-use/)

More (and better) traffic from you guys than Techcrunch yesterday. Thank you.

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vaksel
You are going to run out of space real soon as you add new categories, if you
keep your current layout. Maybe change it to "Sports" | "Concerts" | "Theater"
. And then on mouse over display the actual sub categories(NBA/NFL/NCAA etc)

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fallentimes
Definitely.

Look at Ticketmaster.com. That's what we're going to mirror in many respects
with more customization, more accurate geo tracking capabilities, better
search (which we already have) and happy customers (instead of TM's
angry/disgruntled customers).

Once this happens (hopefully in 1-2 months) please email me and let me know
what you think: dan@ticketstumbler.com

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DaniFong
Build a better mousetrap, basically?

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fallentimes
haha sort of. Ignoring the TicketsNow conspiracies, which I'll elaborate on at
another time, Ticketmaster doesn't do secondary tickets directly from their
main site until an event is sold out.

They can't list specific tickets (sections, row, seats) for purchase - they
assign it all to you after you pick a price level or section and enter the
Captcha crapshoot. But I have to hand it to them, they did a really really
good job on their new design.

The main problems with the secondary ticket market are fees, stigma and
safety, which are our three main priorities. And SEO of course:
<http://is.gd/1pQx>

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DaniFong
And presumably, once you handle those, the market becomes more efficient, and
almost everyone, including you guys, come out smiling. :-)

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fallentimes
Exactly - even if our commissions are slashed 75% we'd make it up in volume
(famous last words right?) because there's very little to no incremental cost.

But it doesn't really matter since we're not doing it for the $$.

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dallasrpi
I assume you have seen Ninjatickets.com which essentially does the same thing.
Competition never hurts.

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fallentimes
Yep and seats.com, seatservant.com, seatquest.com, ticketshock.com,
ticketwood.com, and tickex.com and some other ones that I'm not supposed to
know about who are in stealth.

Well, we’ve been launched about a week and we’re already profitable. Also, we
receive more traffic than about half of them and definitely have one of the
better user interfaces.

Luckily this market is so massive that there’s room for many players (e.g.
think of all the travel sites out there). Although we like to think we can be
the best one. :)

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stcredzero
Not only is the market massive, there's _tons_ of inefficiency to exploit for
profit potential. I'm very jealous!

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netcan
& it's about selling stuff.

If you're between buyers & sellers because buyers like you, you've got a
business model.

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rms
Expanding to concert tickets in the near to far future?

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ian
we (Songkick) have already built an aggregator for concert tickets - covering
17 ticket vendors in the UK and US. If you're looking for gig tickets I'd love
your feedback. Thanks

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fallentimes
Yes - definitely check Songkick.com out. TS is never going to be a music
recommendation site or community. And Songkick's database of information and
uncanny accuracy of its Itunes plugin download are unsurpassed. We have no
interest in being everything to everyone (it's why Oyaka.com and fatlens.com
failed) and Songkick does a lot of stuff we'll never try to do.

Originally, the plan was to stick to Sports tickets for at least a year and
then maybe add concerts (if at all). However, right after we launched, despite
having "sports" and sports leagues plastered all over our site, more than half
our search logs were concert related. Additionally, numerous publications said
they would cover us if we had concerts and we received email after email
demanding concert and theater listings from our users.

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fallentimes
Concerts are up!

