The Origin Story: Part 1
17 Years Ago We Started Spotlight Ticket Management. How The Journey Started
The Origin Story - Part 1
17 years into our business, the question I get asked the most is: What led to the beginning of TicketManager.
It is a simple story.
Part one:
In 2006 I was working for StubHub in Corporate Sales. My job, simply put, was to get companies to buy and sell tickets on our new marketplace for sports, concert, and theater tickets. Nobody knew what StubHub was and we would refer to ourselves as "you know - the stub of a ticket and the hub of a bicycle."
I would cold-call companies and offer them a discount for using our website to buy tickets. We'd even offer a higher level of service.
I was working out of the San Francisco office pretty much every week - commuting from LA. One day, I had a lunch meeting with a prospect from Bowne named Noah. Bowne was a financial printer - a highly competitive business who took customers to games often.
Noah had come to the meeting with an ask: If he told all his reps (about 12 of them) to buy all their tickets through StubHub, could we give him a report of everything they bought at the end of the month. He wanted to use that report to see who was getting the most business from their tickets by comparing their sales numbers.
So we did. And he liked it.
A few months later, I was in New York City meeting with a C-level exec at CBS, Charlie. He had an enormous office and we were sitting at his conference table as I went through my sales pitch. He stood up, mid-sentence, walked over to his desk, and opened the bottom drawer. It was full of baseball tickets (remember, this was 2006, e-tickets weren't a thing yet. The iphone would be introduced a year later.) And then he said the sentence that would change our lives:
"That all sounds great but I can wallpaper my office with Mets tickets at the end of every year. You solve for that, and I'll consider buying more tickets from you."
The problem: Charlie has tickets he can't get used. Noah wants to know which tickets work and which don't so he can better use his budget.
It was that simple.
And it changed our lives
From that point, every meeting I took, I'd go through the usual pitch, then I'd ask "what if we had a way to better get your tickets used and track them?" After a while, I had to stop. They'd get so focused on the management idea they wouldn't pay attention to what I selling at that moment.
My co-workers and I, Aric and Joe, had been looking for something to venture off and do on our own. And here it was.
September 27th, 2007, seventeen years ago today, was TicketManager's first day.
What I learned from the origin story - Part One:
The idea is the hardest part.
I think about the idea the most. What a blessing. And for it to be in sports and tech? That was my dream when I got into the industry. I see so many talented people starting businesses. The only problem: they don’t' have a good idea yet.
Be ready to move fast when opportunity knocks
When we started TicketManager, there were other companies in the ticket management space - we learned this after we put Noah and Charlie's needs together. But their vision was different than ours. They didn't track purchasing. They didn't make distribution easier. They weren't looking to build a platform.
If the problem was that obvious to us, others would see it too. They did. But moving when we did gave us a huge advantageThe best ideas are in the wild
All the best ideas we've had in building TicketManager came from clients, customers, partners, and friends. Get out. Meet people. Talk to them and ask lots and lots of questions. #bethere - on-site. Always =)
I'll share much more on this topic in the coming weeks. For now, Happy Anniversary TicketManager!