People often ask us what we look for in a company and entrepreneur before we will invest. The short list is:
1) company is or has the potential to be #1 or #2 in its space either nationally or globally.
2) either the CEO or CTO is well known, connected and respected in his/her industry (and experienced), is ethical and is someone we want to build a business with.
3) the business model is compelling and clearly scales. By compelling, I mean that we are happy with each dollar that comes in. We want to avoid the story: I am losing money on each unit, but I will make up for it with volume. By scalable, I mean that we can see the mechanism or approach by which the company can ramp to be a sizable business.
4) the company is rationally priced
It is a rare situation when we come across a company that is a leader in its space, is doing nine figures in gross revenue and has never taken outside capital. It is even more rare that such a company, given its size, is growing 70-100% a year. TicketsNow, located in Crystal Lake, IL, enjoys all of these and I am pleased to say that it is the latest addition to our portfolio.
Started on $100 by Mike Domek from his dorm room, TNow is the highest trafficked site worldwide in the premium ticket world. We could not be more excited about backing Mike and his team which includes Kenneth Dotson (formerly CMO uBid and co-founder CBS Sportsline), Mike Stein & Mark Hodes (formerly ran CRM and online marketing at Orbitz), Frank Giannantonio (former Land’s End CTO) and Sridhar Murthy (former CFO or VP/Finance at Ariba, Collabnet & Get2Chip).
All readers are encouraged to get their next premium sporting, show or concert ticket at www.ticketsnow.com!
The ticketsnow investment seems very good. But I wonder how you can call it a venture capital investment? A venture investment into a company doing nine figures in revenue? Isn’t this really a private equity investment? What entrepreneur having done an angel round with a growing company could hope to meet these “venture” expectations?
The ticketsnow investment seems very good. But I wonder how you can call it a venture capital investment? A venture investment into a company doing nine figures in revenue? Isn’t this really a private equity investment? What entrepreneur having done an angel round with a growing company could hope to meet these “venture” expectations?
Marc,
Great question. Since half of our deals are seed deals, we don’t require 9 digit revenue companies. We do an occassional late stage growth deal if it is extraordinary, but our bread and butter is early stage. On the other hand, the other criteria are core in our decision to do a seed/early-stage deal. In the Midwest region, the key variable we have found in determining success or failure has been industry rank. We do well when we have the industry leader and linear growth at best when we are further down the food chain.
Marc,
Great question. Since half of our deals are seed deals, we don’t require 9 digit revenue companies. We do an occassional late stage growth deal if it is extraordinary, but our bread and butter is early stage. On the other hand, the other criteria are core in our decision to do a seed/early-stage deal. In the Midwest region, the key variable we have found in determining success or failure has been industry rank. We do well when we have the industry leader and linear growth at best when we are further down the food chain.
Thanks for taking the time to answer Matt.
Thanks for taking the time to answer Matt.
Looks like a nice site, but determining seat location is a cumbersome process that requires repeated trips to the stadium seating chart – which is not that easy to read anyway. How about a system that simplifies the process of seat location….
Looks like a nice site, but determining seat location is a cumbersome process that requires repeated trips to the stadium seating chart – which is not that easy to read anyway. How about a system that simplifies the process of seat location….
There is a major new version of the website that will launch in about a month that will have a broad array of new features and functionality, including stadium seat selection and even more improvement later in the year. Let me know how you like the new site when it rolls out.
There is a major new version of the website that will launch in about a month that will have a broad array of new features and functionality, including stadium seat selection and even more improvement later in the year. Let me know how you like the new site when it rolls out.