Online ticket seller Eventbrite raised a $20 million round of funding from DAG Ventures, Sequioa Capital, and Tenaya Capital (formerly Lehman Brothers Venture Partners). DAG led the round (Sequioa led the last one). The D round is twice the amount of capital as all three previous rounds combined, bringing the total raised bey the company to $29.5 million.
CEO Kevin Hartz tells me he still had $5 million in the bank from his previous rounds of funding, but he is now ready to expand aggressively. Only about 15 percent of Eventbrite’s gross ticket sales come from outside the U.S., and he wants to make that bigger. (In Europe, Amiando is a competitor).
Tickets sold through Eventbrite overall are on track to double this year to $200 million worth of tickets, and it has already processed 7.5 million tickets this year. About half of those tickets are free. The average price of a ticket is $60. Eventbrite only takes a fee for tickets with a price, but all those free events are terrific marketing for the service. “The No. 1 source of new customers for Eventbrite are people who have attended an event,” says Hartz.
Hartz also wants to make Eventbrite itself into more of a destination site for discovering events: “Today, there is only one destination site, Ticketmaster, to find events that are going on. We think that needs to change”
Eventbrite recently took steps to add more social discovery features to its site by showing people who sign in through Facebook the events their friends are attending. Social sharing is a huge driver of traffic and ticket sales for Eventbrite. Last quarter, Facebook passed Google as the single largest driver of traffic to Eventbrite.
Eventbrite believes that anyone can be an event organizer. That’s why they offer tools that make it easy to sell tickets to all kinds of events whether it’s a photography class or a sold-out concert, an inspiring conference or an air-guitar competition. With Eventbrite, organizers can create a customizable event page; spread the word with social media; collect money; and gain visibility into attendees and sales. Eventbrite is for anyone planning or attending an event. It empowers event organizers to...
The DAG (Duff Ackerman & Goodrich) Ventures partnership began with investments in the cable TV, infrastructure, media, and wireless industries in the 1980’s. The firm now invests in a variety of IT, energy, and life sciences companies.
Sequoia Capital is a venture capital firm founded by Don Valentine in 1972. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital “one of the highest-caliber venture firms” and noted that it is “one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture-capital firms”. It invests between $100,000 and $1 million in seed stage, between $1 million and $10 million in early stage, and between $10 million and $100 million in growth stage. The firm has offices in the U.S., China, India and...
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