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Our YC Interview Experience

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Our YC Interview Experience

#1

Post by abelcuskelly »

1. our company is called pogoseat and we've developed a web app for in-game seat upgrades. we're monetizing empty seats for the venue and giving fans the freedom to roam and an fan entertainment platform to find & engage with other fans, players and local business services at and around the venue.

2. the interview was exhilarating to say the least. like other groups (i think), we got in about 25% of what we wanted to say and the 10 minutes felt like

3. we wanted to discuss our different pricing model options, our ability to license our technology and partner with different white label ticketing system solutions and talk about how we've got 4 more hackers who we just brought on board but that we didn't have come to the interview and we got to none of that. i think yc was concerned that we actually had 5 founders, which we dont. We just brought extra folks from the team so careful about doing that bc you likely wont get a chance to introduce them as non-founders. we didn't start out with a pitch and we didn't show our demo. PG launched right into the questions and we were off and running.

3. i think it's important to keep in mind that PG and co. have strong reasons for asking the questions they do. they usually get right to the heart of the matter and in our case, our entire conversation basically centered around 2 key points. i would say the conversation was fairly cordial for the most part and was way closer to a lively discussion that to an interrogation. i think personally i talked too much and listened too little (hard when you're excited about the discussion, but something to keep in mind).

4. how did we do? well, we definitely didn't hit a homerun but i don't feel that we totally crashed and burned either. from what i've heard from yc alums, almost no groups that think they killed the interview get accepted, so i guess we've got that going for us.

5. we hung around yc campus for a couple hours after our discussion with YC partners and it's awesome to network and meet all these exceptionally talented and intelligent people doing exciting things. Not only that, but Amir, one of the founders of another yc applicant company, i think called tinkerheavy, already introduced our team to a MIT buddy who works for the Houston Rockets business strategy group on ticket pricing, partnerships with vendors and providing business intelligence to the Rocket's their various biz units.

looking forward to a phone call this evening but even if we dont get it, the experience and the people you meet make it worthwhile.

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#2

Post by allanscu »

Is the assumption that all seats do not get sold at a game/concert so people that already have tickets to the event can upgrade their seat just prior to the event starting - so you're trying to capture that incremental revenue that otherwise would have been flushed down the toilet?

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#3

Post by evanowens »

being a founder of pogoseat, i'd like to add that our new friend amir connected us with his bud at the houston rockets, winston. winston has already setup a meeting with us tomorrow morning and indicated that the rockets have explored in-game seat upgrades and would be interested in learning what we do and discovering how upgrades can work in conjunction with dynamic pricing. great example of cool people meeting cool people and helping each other out! thanks again amir!

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#4

Post by evanowens »

allanscu wrote: post #2

Is the assumption that all seats do not get sold at a game/concert so people that already have tickets to the event can upgrade their seat just prior to the event starting - so you're trying to capture that incremental revenue that otherwise would have been flushed down the toilet?

yes, we're targeting the teams/concerts with the highest percentage of unsold seats and we're focused on upgrades once a game/show starts. fans will have to have a ticket and already be at the game/show. we're giving fans the freedom to roam while at the same time generating revenue for all seats that would otherwise have been empty (13,000 seats per game at tampa bay rays games for example - MLB averaged 68% occupancy in 2010).

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#5

Post by coryl »

Great idea! You always see empty seats at sporting events, and wonder if you could sneak into them.

Being able to sell them at discount allows stadiums/venues to gain revenue they otherwise wouldn't have.

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#6

Post by allanscu »

evanowens wrote: post #4
allanscu wrote: post #2

Is the assumption that all seats do not get sold at a game/concert so people that already have tickets to the event can upgrade their seat just prior to the event starting - so you're trying to capture that incremental revenue that otherwise would have been flushed down the toilet?

yes, we're targeting the teams/concerts with the highest percentage of unsold seats and we're focused on upgrades once a game/show starts. fans will have to have a ticket and already be at the game/show. we're giving fans the freedom to roam while at the same time generating revenue for all seats that would otherwise have been empty (13,000 seats per game at tampa bay rays games for example - MLB averaged 68% occupan…

There's definitely a market for such a service. I've been to many games and concerts and would gladly pay an upgrade if I could. However, I see this as a feature and not a full blown product. Tickets.com or LiveNation can easily add this feature in since they are already heavily integrated into the team's ticket inventory. What's keeping the big boys from adding such a feature already?

(I'm not knocking your product, b/c I'd love to use it once it becomes a available).

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#7

Post by kholmes79 »

Great job Abel and Evan! Great to see Founders Network members doing well. Pogoseat is a simple idea, easy for consumers to get, easy to use and a strong business case for venues ~ additional revenue per attendee.

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#8

Post by abelcuskelly »

allanscu wrote: post #6
evanowens wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, we're targeting the teams/concerts with the highest percentage of unsold seats and we're focused on upgrades once a game/show starts. fans will have to have a ticket and already be at the game/show. we're giving fans the freedom to roam while at the same time generating revenue for all seats that would otherwise have been empty (13,000 seats per game at tampa bay rays games for example - MLB averaged 68% occupan…

There's definitely a market for such a service. I've been to many games and concerts and would gladly pay an upgrade if I could. However, I see this as a feature and not a full blown product. Tickets.com or LiveNation can easily add this feature in since they are already heavily integrated into the team's ticket inventory. What's keeping the big boys from adding such a feature already? (I'm not knocking your product,…

Great question Allan, thanks for asking. Number of reasons here, one being that mobile ticketing technology is at beginning stages of adoption. Second, its not too tough to integrate with some venues and team's ticket inventory, at least for the open systems.

Also, ticketmaster is required by their existing contracts to return all unsold tickets (and they sell about 70% of the tickets) and $$$ to the venue for tickets they did sell for the venue 2hrs before game begins. We will fit into the ecosystem at game start and will be selling any unsold venue inventory (including the inventory sent back from ticketmaster).

From our conversations with industry consultants, ticketmaster is a mess, built on old technology and given the size they have reached with merger with Live Nation they would have a lot of trouble managing a real time tech given their tech foundation. They are focused on their core business and for them to get into upgrades with mobile technology would strain them too much at this point. More importantly, most fans we talk to hate ticketmaster- notably due to their unreasonably high fees due to their top position in the industry.

We are approaching the problem of empty seats from a social angle and looking to create a social engagement fan platform where fans can do everything from our mobile platform from winning a free upgrade, to ordering concessions, to finding their friends and upgrading to a seat near them. We understand social networks and how to drive increased spend thru smart marketing such as competitions vs. other team's fans in the stadium, promotions with budweiser and so forth.

This is not either ticketmaster's or tickets.com's core business or even one they have indicated an interest in. We see a huge opportunity here and hope to become the provider of in-game data analytics from how the score, time left in game, weather, player injury during game, etc effect prices of their tickets. Since we will be facilitating and tracking not only where a fan is initially sitting but also any activity they engage, including moving to a better seat, it will be easy to collect a ton of useful data.

There are about 150 ticketing systems out there, tickets.com being one of the major ones and there is a lot of fragmentation and chaos happening in the industry. We want to provide an option for white label ticketing system providers (white label just means they sell thru the venue's website rather than their own like ticketmaster.com does) to license our pogoseat platform or just the ticketing upgrade saas.

So if we execute correctly and bring enough value from the fan interaction, social engagement and excitement angle we will be partnering with someone like tickets.com rather than competing against them.

Look forward to feedback.

Thanks!

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#9

Post by zachcuskelly »

abelcuskelly wrote: post #8
allanscu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a market for such a service. I've been to many games and concerts and would gladly pay an upgrade if I could. However, I see this as a feature and not a full blown product. Tickets.com or LiveNation can easily add this feature in since they are already heavily integrated into the team's ticket inventory. What's keeping the big boys from adding such a feature already? (I'm not knocking your product,…

Great question Allan, thanks for asking. Number of reasons here, one being that mobile ticketing technology is at beginning stages of adoption. Second, its not too tough to integrate with some venues and team's ticket inventory, at least for the open systems. Also, ticketmaster is required by their existing contracts to return all unsold tickets (and they sell about 70% of the tickets) and $$$ to the venue for ticket…

Our primary competition will be ticketing systems that decide to create the functionality of in game seat upgrades. However, such ticketing systems like Veritix, Outbox and Pacolian will be fundamentally limited in that any upgrade functionality they create will likely only be used within their family of venues (AEG being the largest with 105 venues) and they are unlikely to license to their competitors or their competitors to pay them money for this add on features. Our goal will be to create groundswell from the fan perspective.

As Abel said, the 800 pound gorilla in the room, LiveNation/Ticketmaster (around 3000 venues) is having enough trouble just trying to put out daily fires, thus effectively stifling any innovation designs they may have.

Re: Our YC Interview Experience

#10

Post by togasystems »

coryl wrote: post #5

Great idea! You always see empty seats at sporting events, and wonder if you could sneak into them. Being able to sell them at discount allows stadiums/venues to gain revenue they otherwise wouldn't have.

I may or may not have snuck into platinum hockey seats. When standing room only tickets are over $100, I couldn't imagine forking over the cash for platinum seats.

Side note: How about integrating selling your Premium seat half way through or maybe trading?

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