3 ms·
The new reality: Ticketstumbler ($15,000 in funding) vs Fansnap ($10.5 million)
- aston 18y agoMight be a little too early to call it an absolute win for the home team. But then again, they are profitable already...
- fallentimes 18y agoAgreed. It's way too early. I think PG is trying to jinx us ;p.
- mixmax 18y agoBut congratulations anyway, you've made it further than most :-)
- pg 18y agoI think PG is trying to jinx us I certainly wouldn't have done this to everyone, but you guys are fairly indestructible.
- fallentimes 18y agoI don't know, Tom bruises like a peach.
- tdavis 18y agoThis man is a liar. And a thief.
- pageman 18y agoIf pg says you're the superman - it's better than Nietzche :)
- robg 18y agoI'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 18y agoFansnap 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/ http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/category/map-mondays/
- pedalpete 18y agoI don't use either site, but there is little question that you (ticketstumbler) have a better UI and overall look. Your attitude is right, it's far from over, but you are off to a great start!
- robg 18y agoGot it, thanks to you both. Wow, it's obvious on the first visit. That map is pretty nifty from them though. I can see why you're headed in that direction.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jgilliam 18y agoI 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!).
- 18y ago
- comatose_kid 18y agoSo, 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 18y agoThat'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 18y ago10 people at 100k per year plus benefits plus taxes/fees plus office space adds up really fast.
- unalone 18y agoHuh! 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?
- fallentimes 18y agoI'm talking about them, not necessarily the typical startup: http://www.fansnap.com/leadership http://www.fansnap.com/leadership
- aston 18y ago10 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 18y agoYup, 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...
- fallentimes 18y agoHi 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.
- ph0rque 18y ago> Tom in Australia floating between cities. In the ocean? Or on a zeppelin?
- fallentimes 18y agoMagic school bus.
- jwilliams 18y agoSteam powered?
- fallentimes 18y agoSoul powered.
- wheels 18y ago"Do we have enough soul in the tank to get furthur?"
- fallentimes 18y agoJust to the bars. And with that we'll be back in a bit. Songkick & Polleverywhere are in town.
- 18y ago
- acangiano 18y agoI'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 18y agoI completely agree and have been wondering about this lately. Any studies or articles to back it up?
- paul7986 18y agoCould 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 18y agoThis 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 18y agoI 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 18y agoIt could work, but I'd worry about fees and the build up of bureaucracy.
- sharpshoot 18y agoActually, a lot of the 'angel boutiques' are funded this way. This is how the VCs get some of their dealflow from trusted sources.
- fallentimes 18y agoAre those the same as angel groups? How effective are those? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457100 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=457100
- sanj 18y agoFrom 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.
- jonursenbach 18y agoThis same "new reality" can also be applied to Twitter vs Yammer.
- rokhayakebe 18y agoPlease elaborate.
- aston 18y agoYammer 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 18y agoSorry, 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?
- chwolfe 18y agoFansnap should acquire Ticketstumbler (This assumes Fansnap has not spent $10.5 million on coke and hookers).
- fallentimes 18y agoWe're not for sale.
- ivankirigin 18y agoEverything is for sale. The only question is price.
- fallentimes 18y agoNot 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 18y agoSo 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 18y agoI'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.
- thorax 18y agoDoes 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 18y agoWe 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 18y agoYou 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. :)
- catone 18y agoFor 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.
- revorad 18y agoCongrats guys. Just read your backstory with YC - http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/11/03/when-ticketstumbler-met-livingston/ http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/2008/11/03/when-ticketst... Very exciting stuff. Especially loved the FC reference - "Starting a company isn’t a seminar; it’s not a goddamn weekend retreat."
- fallentimes 18y agoThanks - we're both big fans.
- jonursenbach 18y agoAm I the only person on this site who isn't a huge fan of Ticketstumbler?
- pg 18y agoYou should tell the founders what you dislike about it. They'd listen.
- fallentimes 18y agoWhat would you change? Feedback helps us more than praise :). If you want to contact me off of HN my email is dan@ticketstumbler.com.
- nir 18y agoI 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse )