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“Eventbrite”:http://www.eventbrite.com is the best way to publish, promote, and sell-out your next event. Kevin has founded 3 Internet companies, Connect Group (acquired by Lodgenet Entertainment), “Xoom”:http://www.xoom.com, and most recently “Eventbrite”:http://www.eventbrite.com. He has invested in advised in a number of start ups including PayPal, “Flixster”:http://www.flixster.com, and “Trulia”:http://www.trulia.com. He is also a limited partner in three venture funds, “The Founder’s Fund”:http://www.thefoundersfund.com, “Outlook Ventures”:http://www.outlookventures.com, and “Sequoia Capital”:http://www.sequoiacap.com, so do drop him an email if you are looking for funding.

Which feature of Eventbrite’s website was the most fun to develop?

Our goal is to help event holders sell out their events. So, when we are able to add new tools that contributed to this goal, it was very rewarding. For example, when we improved the ticket purchase flow on the event registration page, overall ticket purchase conversion rose. Or, as we enabled our event holders to publish their events publicly throughout the Internet by simply checking a box, our event holders were able to attract more attendees from this increased exposure. The success of our business is based on how many tickets our event holders sell, so as we better enable our event holders to do this, we see a significant lift in the business. Furthermore, as our event holders achieve greater success with our service, they tell others about our service which brings a noticeable lift in new Eventbrite customers.

What kind of advice would you give to an entrepreneur who is hoping to have their company acquired by a public entity?

Aspire to build a great company with great products and delighted customers. Don’t aspire to be acquired. If you do the former, you’ll have lots of suitors.

What was the biggest stumbling block that you faced while building up the site?

Currently, customer acquisition remains our biggest challenge. In fact, it is the greatest challenge of most start ups on the Internet. In other words, can we spend less to get new customers using our service versus the profit they will yield over the customer’s lifetime? As the Internet economy heats up again and outside capital flows too freely into our sector, advertising rates are climbing precipitously. A survey of general search marketing spend finds marketers are overspending to “win” keyword buys and driving up their cost per acquisition. Our next big challenge will come in 2007 as we staff up. There is a scarcity of great talent as this same outside capital dries up the available people resources. The environment of 2006 is astoundingly different from the tight times of 2003 when I founded “Xoom”:www.xoom.com – we had our pick of great talent back then. We’ve got to really fight for it now.

Bonus: Have you ever used your site for a special event? What event did you enjoy most that you organized with Eventbrite?

I’m an Old Member (Alumni) of Oxford and I’m involved in the annual Oxford Cambridge Boat Race Dinner here in San Francisco. This event was one of our first Eventbrite customers and it was really rewarding to see a huge adoption of online payment from a group predominantly over 60. Over 80% of payments were done online last year and we anticipate over 90% this year.

Copyright © 2006 by Sonia Aggarwal