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Ticketstumbler (YC Summer 08) launches
- lg 18y agoI like the simple interface. I wish you could extend it to the actual buying phase though, so I don't need to go to StubHub and make an account there just to buy it, which (when I get a look at the overwrought stubhub site) might make me throw up my hands in frustration. Also, a couple tickets I clicked on had already been sold; it'd be great if you could prevent that... (btw, add concert ticket search and I will probably use this all the time.)
- fallentimes 18y agoThanks for the feedback. We thought about this but including the buying phase on our website would not only expose us to significantly more liability but it would essentially destroy millions of dollars in brand equity that places like Stubhub and Tickets Now have built. Although we agree that it's not as convenient, we're pretty set on sending our visitors to the actual providers (like Kayak does with airlines). Not doing that carries a lot of wrongly addressed customer service issues and liability exposure we're not prepared to and don't want to, deal with. We're going to be adding servers soon so our crawls will approach closer and closer to real time. Sorry we didn't have your tickets still available.
- utnick 18y agoIts a tough market to be in because stubhub is so good right now.
- fallentimes 18y agoStubhub is one of our ticket providers although we'll be competing for the same traffic. And yes Stubhub rocks - our other providers are so far behind them it's not even funny.
- chwolfe 18y agoIf the other providers do not catch up with Stubhub, won't TicketStumbler end up being a nice front end to Stubhub?
- fallentimes 18y agoTicketsNow (coming soon to TicketStumbler) is close behind Stubhub. Ticketnetwork is pretty big too. The real value we provide is showing the niche places. I never used to fly Jetblue or Frontier airlines before Kayak.
- utnick 18y agoThats what I thought at first sight, but its not exactly true. If all you want is a cheap ticket than stubhub seems like the place to go, stubhub is the cheapest on all of the ticketstumbler searches I have done. However, If you want something rare like courtside at the lakers.. Stubhub might not always have it, but ticketcity or some other place will. Thats where the value of TicketStumbler comes in I think. Its a useful site.
- rantfoil 18y agoCongrats guys -- superb job, very well done.
- mattmaroon 18y agoGrats on the launch guys. Wish I had this back during the Stanley Cup finals.
- fallentimes 18y agoThey were going for ~$300 a pop. But I'm from Detroit so I would have gone had I been in the area. At least you can still buy your Browns season tickets.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI nearly did buy tickets to game 5. Glad I didn't though. Would have spent $600 per and still missed the presentation. I'm actually a 49ers fan somehow.
- rit 18y agoNo kidding. Everytime I DID manage to grab tickets, the Flyers finished out the series before the game I had tickets to.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI was tempted to talk some trash about the Flyers, but figured the code base of this site might implode if we got into a sports-related discussion.
- fallentimes 18y agoYour Flyers broke my capitals' heart (I was living in DC before YC). You guys have a heck of a fan base.
- pius 18y agoGreat idea!
- fallentimes 18y agoGod this website blows. Just kidding. Hi, I'm Dan one of the cofounders of TicketStumbler.com. If you have any suggestions or feedback please leave them here no matter how minor. If you have scathing criticism and are worried about being down modded, please email me directly - dan [at] ticketstumbler (dot) com.
- pius 18y agoSomething I'd really find useful for this service would be an API. If I were working on an app (totally hypothetically, of course) where people can meet each other by connecting over shared interest in events, it would be great to automatically associate TicketStumbler results with the events where applicable. Just a thought.
- tdavis 18y agoThis is planned, though in the beginning we're planning on it being a sort of private API so we can know who's using it. From there, we'll see what happens. I totally agree though, I love APIs ;)
- pius 18y agoPrivate works too, as long as I get a key. :P
- fallentimes 18y agoPius can you please email us if you're still interested in testing our future API. Email is in my profile. Thanks!
- pius 18y agoDone and done. :)
- kyro 18y agoWhen I click any of the ticket categories, such as NHL, I get 'led zeppelin' in the search bar. Not sure if that's supposed to be a humorous example, but I don't get any search results for it. Perhaps populate the search bar with relevant events to the ones being searched for already so that there are results, and hopefully, ticket purchases. :P Are you hoping to add NBA? Besides that, congrats.
- maxklein 18y agoWell, this is not something that applies to me, as I rarely buy tickets. I do have one question: how do people get passionate about tickets? I mean, I LOVE the stuff I am working on, I NEED the stuff I am working on for myself, and I would not want to do anything else, but if they asked to me make a startup about tickets with a guaranteed 1 million payout, I'd really have a hard time doing it. I just cannot imagine myself being passionate about tickets. It's a freakin ticket, I'm not going to devote a good chunk of my life towards making them a bit cheaper.
- fallentimes 18y agoWhat's even more hilarious is that maxklein was one of our beta testers. Guess we did a piss poor job conveying the message.
- maxklein 18y agoUmm, that must be another maxklein. I don't recall using the site, as I'm not even located in the U.S and it would not be relevant to me...
- fallentimes 18y agoOops you're right - sorry about that. We did have a Max beta tester from Copenhagen though. I need sleep.
- fallentimes 18y agohaha, well I think this is why: "as I rarely buy tickets." But other than that, tt's not about the tickets; it's about the events. I _love_ attending sports and concerts. I probably go to (and will continue to go to) 20-40 sporting events per year and 5-10 concerts per year. Now going to them is a business write off.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoHow often do you buy tickets to said events through a reseller?
- briancooley 18y agoWill you be adding venue maps? I know I could look it up elsewhere, but it would be nice to be able to pull up from the ticketstumbler site.
- fallentimes 18y agoAgreed. We have them all downloaded. Should be up within a week.
- omakase 18y agoWhy not just preview and link to a google map?
- fallentimes 18y agoI should have clarified...by maps I mean: stadium seating charts. We want to have stadium seating charts and directions so it will be a combination of both ideas.
- sachinag 18y agoI hope you guys can implement something a little more interactive, like what SeatQuest has, rather than just static jpg/gif of the stadium. SeatQuest has it decently there, but I bet you guys can do it better.
- fallentimes 18y agoSeatquest is so slow and having tiny dots on a screen, in our mind and most of our testers mind doesn't add too much value. Everything they have is pretty much educated guess work (i.e. the accuracy of the dots is not very high). The holy grail of seating maps (and what our users have requested many times) is what Stubhub has (interactive, sortable, clickable). This is just really really difficult to implement when we have listings from multiple providers who all call things slightly different names. We'll get there though.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoI'd rather see more competitors to Ticketmaster. I never buy tickets from resellers and I rarely have a problem seeing a concert (not a sports fan).
- fallentimes 18y agoWe looked in to this. Ticketmaster buys all their competitors. Seriously - the only "real" competitor they have is Livenation.
- anthonyrubin 18y agoThrough the end of this year Live Nation tickets are still sold through Ticketmaster. I'm hoping that next year we see some effect on Ticketmaster. Front Gate is another growing competitor.
- r7000 18y agoAnother big competitor are white label companies. When you buy direct from a (larger) venue/club/sports team/etc. they are using a white label solution.
- fallentimes 18y agoThere's a lot of them but as a percentage of total primary ticket revenue it's less than 1 percent.
- rms 18y ago;) Makes for an easy exit strategy.
- rms 18y agoOr maybe buy was a euphemism for crush.
- okeumeni 18y agoThe site is nicely design, being a search hacker myself; I have to say this site pass the test of great relevancy search. Your search model is as good as Intelliverb’s PageScale algorithm if not better, I think we should get in touch and share some tricks. : ) Nice Job guys!
- fallentimes 18y agoEmail is in my profile - definitely contact us.
- apexauk 18y agoplus points for not naming it ticketstumblr..
- okeumeni 18y agoI personally think a missing ‘e’ is among the least problem in domain naming these days, it may actually help engrave the name in someone memory. How about flikr.com, scribd.com, tumblr.com and lately karatr.com? Not that bad as compare to all the strange names I’m not going to mention here so I don’t offend anyone.
- daniel-cussen 18y agoIn my experience, it's very difficult to describe any of those names in Spanish without writing the name down for people. Latin America may not necessarily your main market, but why alienate people? Fotolog is readily pronounceable, and has been doing very well here, despite getting little traction in the US market. Not saying the name is everything; it's just one of the little details that helps word of mouth.
- okeumeni 18y agoI hate to disagree with you on this, in fact I agree with you on most of what you say but reality is most of today’s names must be spell to someone who never heard of it, even Fotolog.
- daniel-cussen 18y agoI see what you mean, but really, in Spanish, and in this particular case, fotolog is really easy to convey: "Fotolog. Fotolog.com, se escribe como suena." [You spell it the way it sounds; it's phonetic.] I agree with you that most names are hard to spell, but in Spanish having a phonetic name is important because the language itself is phonetic.
- fallentimes 18y agoI know you were kidding, but seriously thanks for saying this. We just scooped up the domain as a misspell redirect.
- johns 18y agoI resell a fair amount of tickets, and I rarely make a sale through StubHub and my prices are always lower than market. I sell 95% of the tickets I have through Craigslist. So here's a challenge for you: incorporate Craigslist ticket listings.
- fallentimes 18y agoCraigslist doesn't have buyer guarantees or anything that holds the seller accountable. All the ticket providers we list do. The guys who consulted with us sell over $1,000,000 (one million - not a typo) of tickets per year on Stubhub. Not sure why you're having problems.
- mattmaroon 18y agoScammers are far too prevalent on Craigslist for me to buy tickets from. It might be worth working in eBay.
- fallentimes 18y agoThey'd lessen list integrity as well as they'd show up as the "cheapest" every time due to their auction format.
- mattmaroon 18y agoGood point, but many have a buy it now price. Maybe only show ones with fixed price from reputable sellers?
- fallentimes 18y agoThat's a good idea. We might apply some of our interface and geotracking features to a yet to be determined part of our site featuring ebay auctions. Still don't know how I feel - ebay is crappy even with buy it now.
- breck 18y ago
- Ticketwood 18y agoHow is this different from http://www.ticketwood.com http://www.ticketwood.com I think they are the leaders in this sold out tickets market?
- fallentimes 18y agoOh hai Ticketwood sock puppet person, it’s your pal Dan from TicketStumbler. I noticed that Ticketwood has spammed at least five other TicketStumbler articles with the exact same comment. Actually this might be time #11. Are you guys really this desperate for visitors and attention? How much do spam commenters cost anyways? Love always and forever, your friends at T-Stumbler. P.S. Maybe instead of spamming our press coverage you should focus on building a good product. kekekeke
- fallentimes 18y agoConcerts are now available at TicketStumbler. http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/10/18/oh-the-horror-and-new-tickets/ http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/10/18/oh-the-horror...