6. Starting a Business
It has never been a better time to be a startup.
The costs starting a business are dramatically lower, it is simpler and
scalable solutions are much easier and faster to deploy and
distribution to a market with social networks, search and Apps Stores.
7. @jd
• MD of Techstars
London
• Co-founder of F6S &
tech.eu
• Co-founder of Ignite,
Startup Wise Guys,
Eleven
• Ex Accountant & VC
• #pretenddad
8. @techstars
• Founded 2006
• David Cohen & Brad
Feld
• Originally in Boulder
• Now 20 programs
• 700+ Companies
• $2bn+ raised
53. @dugcampbell | Digital Thinking
“How seriously should
you take this? About as
seriously as the
concept of the internet
in the early 1990’s. It’s
a big deal”
“The blockchain is the financial
challenge of our time. It is going
to change the way that our
financial world operates. The
market for financial blockchain
applications will ultimately be
measured in the trillions”
Blythe Masters, former Head of Global
Commodites at JP Morgan, led
development of credit default swaps, now
CEO of Digital Asset Holdings
70. 200 million tickets processed in 187 countries
$1 billion in gross ticket sales
500 employees on 4 continents
$200 million VC funding raised
$1 billion valuation
Created in 2006 in SF
At a time when tech was already revolutionizing our lives
But tech also has a tendency to isolate people. 3 in 5 people spend more time at their keyboards than they do with their significant other
So Eventbrite was created around the disruptive idea to use technology to bring people together through live events
Idea: enable anyone anywhere in the world to manage, promote and sell tickets for their events
Launched in 2006 with 3 co-founders in SF
Placed a bet that the live experience would explode and become ever more.
Fast forward to 2015:
Today
Fast forward to today
We ticket hundreds of thousands of events every year - from conferences, to exhibitions, from music festivals to networking events, from cookery classes to marathons
Today we’re global in scale.
Innovation is the most buzzy word of them all. It can mean a lot of things and we can spend all day trying to define it.
Innovation for us is about seeing what a better future could look like and make the long term strategic investments that can make this future possible.
<when we launched, this is how most events were promoted and sold>
a flyer on the wall with your phone number
<i think we’ll all agree that we’ve come a long way from that>
now it’s online, easy to use, easy to buy, and easy to monitor
When innovation is part of your DNA, you’re always on the lookout for the technological changes that will give your business an edge.
<For example, in 2008>
Modified freemium model has helped us scale
2/3 of our events are free
same functionality and 24/7 customer support as paid events
buidl inventory, makes us a powerful marketplace
we have the largest community of event goers in the world
we were one of the first to integrate with Facebook Connect and all of a sudden made it possible for event attendees to start become the promoters of the events they were attending. It was the beginning of the social media revolution and Facebook is now one of the leading source of ticket purchase referrals.
two years later, we capitalized on the smartphone revolution and created the first app that renders a whole generation of barcode scanners obsolete
now organizers use the device in their pocket to scan their attendees in at the venue
and this year, we launched the first self-service tool that lets you create your own seat map to manage reserved seating events. this opens a vast new market for our company for events that the likes of Eventim and other large ticketers had a hold on.
Again a great example of how to leverage technology to shake the status quo.
These products make us big believers in innovation. We’re such big believers that we’ve made it part of our
<culture>
We’re building our culture around innovation
We leave and breathe innovation, discovery and learning and we incentivize all our employees to do the same by organizing internal hackathons, training sessions on new technologies, opening brainstorming sessions to everyone who wants to join, and just being constantly on the lookout for advances that be can be leveraged into making our target audience’s lives easier.
<Another one of our strength was that our company is heavily data-driven>
more data scientists and analysts than QA engineers
we use data for everything: track sales and marketing, track engagement and behavior, conversion funnels, cohorts, performance at every level
we’re constantly running experiments and altering our course by looking at the hard truth that the data tells us
while i’m sure you’re all looking at your data to inform your business decisions, we’re almost making our users benefit from all the data we collect and have the best analytical tools at the disposal of our clients
<here is what their dashboard looks like>
and finally we also leverage our data obsession and use the latest big data (another buzzword should believe the hype about) to the benefit of our end users to generate fully personalized event recommendations for them
While Eventbrite never pivoted, we have shifted our focus in a two key ways over the years.
#1 - We didn’t get into this business to go after Ticketmaster as many people claimed –and probably wanted. We actually started Eventbrite to go after the millions of smaller events that were lacking a solution.
(TRANSITION SLIDE)
But we recognize that there’s another shift happening for us right now: We’re seeing increased demands from our users to service larger events.
Even though this isn’t what we initially set out to do, we’re adapting to the needs in the marketplace.
By embracing these opportunities, we are structuring our organization to fit this new model and creating new offerings/platforms to service this trend in demand.
If you do feel that events might be something you want to test, you can check out our blog on Eventbrite Ireland for lots of great free resources on making your event a success