Seatwave tops UK ticketing and goes for Germany

Old venture knowledge: It's not about how much cash you raise, it's about how well you execute.  Seatwave, which was seeded by Atlas Venture and has raised an $8M second round of funding from Mangrove VC recently, has just launched in Germany on the back of its phenomenal first year of trading in the UK.  Jetzt koennen Sie auf Seatwave nach Tickets suchen !

You know the syle of this blog, I don't tend to inflate our own portfolio companies.  But Joe Cohen is really in the process of giving us all a master class in how to build a great business ... fast.



Since creation in early 06 and launch very late last year, Seatwave has become the #1 most trafficked secondary ticketing site in the UK (Hitwise August 07), offers over 500,000 tickets for events in over 40 countries and signing some interesting deals.  I cannot talk about conversion or financials, but let's just say Joe pays for breakfast these days.  To quote HoiPolloi, Seatwave brings people power and the people like it.

Seatwave wants to make buying tickets a consumer friendly endeavour.  It has innovated around its core service and site and with its agressive "consumer insurance" stance (including a deal with Mondial).  Secondary ticketing still has a perception issue with customers (as evidenced on this post from John Wilson) which is a legacy of fraud days on eBay and dealing with the ticket tout, but likely to disappear over time as the market matures.  Sites like Seatwave are essentially impossible to defraud (except by the buyer) since the seller gets payed after the event. Seatwave is also working on a Fan Charter and taking the lead in making ticket exchanges great for users.

Technorati Tags: seatwave, viagogo, secondaryticketing, atlasventure

Comments

[Robin Klein]

Joe is just the kind of entrepreneur we all love to back. Focused, practical and fast. I must also add that the support that Atlas have provided has been pretty awesome too. Have seen it fairly close up.

[Mark Callaghan]

I met Joe recently. From an entrepreneurs point of view he was pretty inspiring guy. Here's wishing the best for SeatWave