Ticketstumbler (YC summer 08) "growing 50 percent a month"

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/11/10/weekly15-Software-startups-are-launching-with-just-bootstrap-funds.html

by ksvs • 18 years ago

42 26 18 years ago

I have to say, Congratulations to Tom and Dan. Turning a profit from the get-go is very rare, and they managed it quite well. It's great to see that snowball rolling downhill...

Cheers!

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Thanks.

Things are/were pretty close though. If we would have moved to SF, bye bye profitability. That's one of the main reasons we're in Boston.

hooande• 18 years ago

I think Ticketstumbler's unofficial motto is "Love us with money". Buy tickets y'all

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Now with concert ticket goodness. Hopefully theater tickets, more providers and roughly $2 billion worth of total tickets in early 2009.

palish4• 18 years ago

Hmm... It's probably prudent to reach $2 million before talking about $2 billion.

Wait, are you saying you'll actually sell $2 billion worth of tickets, or just offer them for sale?

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

I actually didn't want this article submitted so I flagged it. Kidding, kidding. There are, however, some out of context quotes and a ridiculous looking picture (the photographer was nice, but quirky). Oh well, I <3 press.

To clarify:

-We've never said that we'll never take money. In an ideal situation, startups would not have to take money and if we can get away with it great, if not that's okay. We're well aware that the odds are against us on this one.

-We've been very open with this with our potential investors. The sharp money is still investing in this economy and luckily some of them are still interested in us. You think a VC will argue with you when you say you want more months of operational information so you can make a better informed, data-driven decision? Nada. I've talked to four potential investors this week alone.

-Due to the economy, sales have stayed relatively flat as average sales have gone down while volume has gone up. However, we're still working out bugs and have over $1 billion worth of tickets on the site. Most people don't even know we have concert tickets yet, which is by design. We'll be chasing more PR soon, which will hopefully lead to real salaries for myself and Tom.

-We don't have a model, a deck, a pitch book or executive summary. We'll make them on demand if they are ever needed. If you want to do it right, it's a very time consuming process. In the short term we thought it was a better use of our time to talk to our users (I respond to literally every non-form letter email), create content, develop and sell.

-Obviously models can reflect growth rates. My point was: when you are growing quickly in the early stages, by the time you get to the final boardroom meeting, everything can very easily be out of date. This is especially true when you haven't spent any money on advertising.

-Month over month traffic is up 67% as of today. This is largely due to Obama Tickets, more pages being indexed, SEO and good ol Google.

-I haven't had a haircut since I quit my job. \m/

Edit: Of course as I write this our contact page is down. We're on it.

Edit 2: It's back up.

thedob• 18 years ago

Quality picture on top of the article Dan...if your hands were feet they'd probably be size 26.

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Yeah I'm 6'3'', 220, but I don't have Shaq hands. They should have had Garry Tan take the picture.

Here's what I actually look like:

http://danhau.posterous.com/

Here's what PG actually looks like:

http://danhau.posterous.com/our-fearless-investor-paul-gra

Here's an older picture of Livingston, but she still looks the same...adorable:

http://danhau.posterous.com/when-ticketstumbler-met-living

pchristensen• 18 years ago

Willikers, Dan, you're like the uber-caveman in this picture!

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

PG prefers to call us "barbarians".

grag• 18 years ago

In the interview you mentioned that your monthly burn rate was “in the low four figures". Does that include salaries for your team? Just curious what your cost breakdown is, how much of that goes towards servers, etc (if you don't mind revealing that).

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Yes - stipends. We have enough for food, rent, shitty health care insurance, internet, etc.

I'll write about everything once we're further down the line.

zacharye• 18 years ago

Congrats once again on the growth guys, fantastic numbers. And you both look dead sexy in the pic - don't let anyone tell you any different.

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Even Livingston made fun of us. That's how you know it's bad.

Usually she hugs you while you're down.

galenmoore• 18 years ago

Can't comment on the photo, but I think "out of context" is a little harsh. Here's why: http://tinyurl.com/5bvwzz -Galen (the MHT reporter)

fallentimes13• 18 years ago

Yeah I just wanted to make sure everyone had the whole story. I certainly understand why it happens (I wasn't mad or anything) and how articles get trimmed down often outside the writer's control.

I just didn't want people to think we'd never ever take money. For angel funding you often don't need a model and sometimes don't need a deck. Rest of the article was great (even if the picture was a bit embarassing :-D). The other clarification points were for the Hacker News headline (I didn't want people to think revenue or profits were growing 50% per month), the picture (ha) and to expand on points made within the article.

Nothing tops this picture, however: http://is.gd/7yx4 (This one was at Tom's expense instead of mine)

Ticketstumbler (YC summer 08) "growing 50 percent a month"

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