Hungry start-ups (Anyvite & TicketStumbler) on a drastic diet

"Every day TicketStumbler.com scours the web for the best deals on roughly $1bn (€750,000, £670,000) worth of concert and sports tickets from secondary sellers."

Okay, so the dollar exchange rate is low, but not that low. I'm guessing they mean $1 million?

fallentimes16• 18 years ago

Their calculation was wrong. The interview was during the NFL season where we had roughly $1 billion (with a B) worth of tickets. It's a little less than that now since the NFL regular season is over. It'll be over $1 billion again as the MLB season draws near.

pmjordan2• 18 years ago

Wow, good going! $1m seemed a bit on the low side but I wasn't expecting that much!

rms• 18 years ago

Are you guys going to release any of your historical data? What I am most curious about is the tendency for prices to go up or down as it gets closer to showtime -- I'm sure ticket scalpers united would love a widget to play around with those numbers.

timcederman• 18 years ago

Change the "false.html" to "true.html" in the URL.

eg - ft.com/cms/s/59d78f42-e713-11dd-8407-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=true.html

(doesn't work if you click on it, you need to manually change it)

edit: this used to work on ft.com for me, but doesn't seem to be working at the moment (at least on FF3/OS X).

curiousgeorge• 18 years ago

Good job guys.

andrewljohnson2• 18 years ago

Living outside of the Bay area fit into our calculations when my co-founder and I started TrailBehind.com too. We moved to a 3-bedroom cabin in Truckee, which costs us about as much as sharing a single room in a 3-bedroom apartment in SF.

jmorin0074• 18 years ago

That actually sounds really sweet. Working in the mountains on your startup with decently close proximity to the Bay Area if you want to come into the city for events. Great plan!

andrewljohnson2• 18 years ago

Yeah, we really like it. Here are the offices at TrailBehind HQ: http://www.flickr.com/photos/33766454@N02/3146045372/in/set-...

We're going to be putting a third workspace in there this month.

smokey_the_bear2• 18 years ago

yeah, it's only 30 minutes from Reno, which has most big city creature comforts. Amtrak goes straight through town too. Might be hard to find new hires here, but perfect for buckling down to get it off the ground.

lacker• 18 years ago

It especially makes sense since trailbehind is focused on hiking/camping/etc and there's a lot more outdoors near Tahoe than there is near SF.

smokey_the_bear2• 18 years ago

yeah, expect particularly good maps of the Tahoe area!

blackguardx• 18 years ago

I live in the "bay area" up in Sonoma County. There is tons of stuff to do up here. I live 15 minutes from a redwood forest and 45 minutes from the coast, which has good bouldering. Mount St. Helena is 45 minutes in the other direction, with great top-roping.

I actually don't know much about the south bay or east bay, but the north bay has tons of good outdoor possibilities.

indiejade• 18 years ago

I always thought it would be kind of not smart to take out a loan (get lots of VC)just to pay rent in the Bay area. It's an okay place, but hardly worth the extraordinary cost of living, if you're just wanting to build a web site.

vlad• 18 years ago

Congrats!

daveambrose• 18 years ago

This is a great piece. Congrats! I couldn't help but laugh at the phone bill comment - I do the same. :)

Dan, would you mind sharing any tips/feedback how the piece came about? Did you pitch the FT?

fallentimes16• 18 years ago

We did not pitch him. A free lancer we were intro'd to was looking to talk to startups regarding the recession, and how we were coping.

He did an excellent job and was very thorough, but I had no idea it was going to land in the Financial Times until recently. I would have been happy with a mention on the back of a Count Chocula cereal box.

We'll talk to anyone.

brandnewlow2• 18 years ago

And that, my friends, is a winning attitude with the press. You never know when that random writer's going to catch a break and land their piece in the FT.

ojbyrne4• 18 years ago

I find it interesting that ticketstumbler is theoretically a utility that allows the savings of time at the cost of money and the article focuses on the savings of money at the expense of time.

fallentimes16• 18 years ago

Actually, since over 50% of events don't sell out, you can often find below face value tickets on TicketStumbler. The ticketmaster fees are comparable to the ones charged by our ticket providers.

This is even more true now that we're in a recession. NBA tickets are at all time lows. Expect similar deals for baseball season.

ojbyrne4• 18 years ago

I said "theoretically." Boiled down, you're collecting commissions to aggregate ticket inventory and find the lowest prices for buyers. If every buyer spent the time to find the lowest price (including spending the time to develop the knowledge you guys have of pricing, etc), those commissions would disappear.

anuraggoel• 18 years ago

Congratulations on the FT mention! Can you shed some light on the 'calculations' that go into the decision to live outside the valley? While living outside the bay area does reduce expenses, what kinds of things do you give up on (e.g. easy access to X, Y, Z) and why are they less valuable than the immediate monetary benefits?

fallentimes16• 18 years ago

Sure. It really wasn't as tough a decision for us as it could be for other startups. We aren't hiring and aren't actively raising money (though we keep in touch with many potential investors just in case). Also, our families are in the midwest. The only thing we "gave up" was that our startup friends almost all moved to San Francisco. But since we're working most of the time, it's not that big of deal.

If and when we have a war chest of cash, we'll likely move to San Francisco; it's a kick ass place but is as expensive as NYC.

physcab2• 18 years ago

When everyone gets their startup going, you should all just move to North Florida. Admittedly we don't have the resources like the Bay Area, but if this post is about cost savings, then North Florida is your best bet. My rent here is $500 a month and I pay $40 a week for food. No car. When I lived in Santa Clara, my rent was $750 (lived with 7 people) and food was over $120 a week.

fallentimes16• 18 years ago

How do you get around? One of the things I love about Boston is the public transportation.

physcab2• 18 years ago

The glorious public transit system and my t(rusty) bike. We're nowhere near Boston in transit...or California for that matter. I practically lived on Cal Train when I lived in Santa Clara. In Florida, you just need to be creative. Zipcar also helps.

Hungry start-ups (Anyvite & TicketStumbler) on a drastic diet

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