A Smarter Way to Buy and Sell Tickets Gets Venture Capital Funding SeatGeek's engine for predicting ticket pricing in the secondary market attracts a $1 million VC infusion.
By Gwen Moran •
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SeatGeek was inspired by frustration. Jack Groetzinger and Russ D'Souza, both avid concertgoers and sports enthusiasts, were fed up with the unpredictability of the secondary ticket market--reseller pricing that can swing from significantly higher than face value to cut-rate, depending on an event's popularity.
"From a consumer's perspective, it's confusing to know when to buy tickets because you can buy them one day and see prices go to half that price a couple weeks later," Groetzinger says.
So in 2009 they founded SeatGeek, a ticket search engine that tracks ticket pricing trends. The duo had previously founded the blogging community Scribnia and also had general business experience: Groetzinger worked as an associate consultant at Boston-based management consulting firm Bain & Co., and D'Souza was an analyst at management consulting firm Monitor Group in Cambridge, Mass. Together, they developed an econometric approach to ticket price prediction that considers factors such as venue, ticket supply and popularity of the performer or team to determine whether prices are likely to head up or down in the secondary market. This helps customers make more accurate decisions about when to buy their tickets, D'Souza says.
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