The new reality: Ticketstumbler ($15,000 in funding) vs Fansnap ($10.5 million) | Hacker News Reader

The new reality: Ticketstumbler ($15,000 in funding) vs Fansnap ($10.5 million)

siteanalytics.compete.com

99 pointspg83 comments

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.

> Tom in Australia floating between cities.

In the ocean? Or on a zeppelin?

Magic school bus.

Steam powered?

Soul powered.

"Do we have enough soul in the tank to get furthur?"

Just to the bars. And with that we'll be back in a bit.

Songkick & Polleverywhere are in town.

or maybe u mean spirit.

puffing the magic dragon? :)

We call that "brainstorming sessions".

yeah the numbers don't really say that you guys have achieved the top spot...instead the numbers say that fansnap has failed.

12,241 users for 10 million "people" ends up being $816 per person.

I still think it's too early to tell. I'm sure they still have a lot of the $10 million left.

yeah they have a nice chunk, since all the money is pretty recent:

Series A, 1/08 General Catalyst Partners - $5M

Series A, 11/08 General Catalyst Partners - $5.5M

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.

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.

Setting your own location is coming soon. In the interim you can search via zip code:

http://ticketstumbler.com/search/?query=20009&x=0&y=...

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

Agreed. It's way too early.

I think PG is trying to jinx us ;p.

But congratulations anyway, you've made it further than most :-)

I think PG is trying to jinx us

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

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

This man is a liar. And a thief.

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

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

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

If pg says you're the superman - it's better than Nietzche :)

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.

I completely agree and have been wondering about this lately.

Any studies or articles to back it up?

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?

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/

I 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!

Got 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.

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!).

We have 4 blogs (which is why we don't have an RSS feed on the front page). Here's our company blog:

http://ticketstumbler.com/new-stuff/

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!

Coming soon :).

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 )

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.

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.

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. :)

Congrats guys. Just read your backstory with YC - 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."

Thanks - we're both big fans.

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!

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

Are we really sure about this? Look at what Kiva does with microlending. Granted, the path to profitability is a lot clearer when you are buying a sewing machine or something.

I think the difference is that VCs specialize in businesses that require large amounts of capital, connections, etc., to work. Supposedly this is their forte.

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

We're not for sale.

Everything is for sale. The only question is price.

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.

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.

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.

"We're not for sale" often translates to "Our price is much higher than (we think) you will ever offer or can afford".

If the offer was e.g. $500M cash, "we're not for sale" would simply become "sale".

I'm not a very materialistic person. All my possessions can fit in to one room and I've never even owned a car. What difference does it make if it's 50 M or 500 M? I wouldn't spend it all. It would obviously be a team decision (and if a family/friend emergency came up that would change things), but my answer would be "No". This could change in the _long term_ if we want to move on to different projects.

You don't have to believe me, just know that money does not equal happiness and in my humble opinion success is the amount of life you control.

You can control a whole lot of life with 500M. 50M for that matter. I'm not saying you're wrong, but having that kind of money in the bank opens up a lot of possibilities. You don't suddenly have to become materialistic just because you could.

I'm honestly not trying to be rude by saying this, but it's hard to believe that your ultimate goal in life is to sell tickets to people. If it is, more power to you, seriously, but isn't there something else you want? Something that TicketStumbler is a means to achieve later?

Sure. It isn't but you have to give up time at the acquiree 99% of the time. My "ultimate goal" has nothing to do with tickets.

I'm curious... what is your ultimate goal?

I think it would be great to work with founders who are also hackers and love what they do. But if I were an investor I'd be rather concerned with the notion of passing a $500M offer for an investment of $15k and a couple of years.

Dividends, baby.

PG and Co. are already aware of all of this.

How did you know what I was planning to buy with my share of the VC?

Great minds think alike!

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.

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.

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

You should tell the founders what you dislike about it. They'd listen.

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.

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?

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?

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

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?

I'm talking about them, not necessarily the typical startup:

http://www.fansnap.com/leadership

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.

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...

Ask HN: What do these startups need so much money for?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=455687

You believe there is a link between; how much it costs to build a site, how much to ask for and how much a VC will invest and of course - how much money it will make?

The market is $4 billion. We think there's room for both of us to succeed.

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

Please elaborate.

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.

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com