Ninja Tickets: Compare Ticket Prices

Website: Ninja Tickets
 
Interview With:  Cliff Mark

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?
 
Our CTO and co-founder is Dan Marsh; he can program anything.

What is your background and qualifications?
 
I heard once that entrepreneurship is something you’re born with, not something you study. I think this describes me pretty well but in terms of tangible qualifications, I graduated from American University with a Math and Philosophy background, and I’m enrolled in University of Maryland Business School.  Dan has an incredible resume; I think he once hacked into the Kremlin on a dare.

What does your website do?
 
Say you need some tickets to a hot concert or sporting event, how do you get them?  Do you go to ticketmaster to see if there are any left, then check out stubhub, ticketsnow, and maybe an auction site?  That’s how I used to do it, and I decided there had to be a better way to buy event tickets.  I ended up creating NinjaTickets, which indexes numerous ticket stores across markets. In other words, you can see all the available tickets and find the best price on the best ticket, just by going to Ninjatickets.     

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?
 
We don’t charge users any fees to use our site, and the sites which we index charge no additional fees for buying through us either.  

How have your marketed your site?
 
You name it, we’ve tried it.  I have been yelled at by parking police for putting flyers on cars, we’ve had radio ads, ad words, redirects and we have even sent out some unsolicited emails (we don’t do that anymore though).  I’ve found that just being a member of the community has yielded the highest ROI for us.  

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?
 
Most of our funding comes from friends and family. 

Are You currently looking for funding?
 
That’s a tough question, but the answer is yes.  Our goal is to raise about $500,000 dollars in the next three months. 

What type(s) of technology do you use?
 
We program in python, and run the site on LAMP. 

What is your favorite feature on your website?
 
When I use Ninjatickets to get seats at an event, I know I’m getting the best price on a ticket. That’s pretty cool.  We have a couple of unique features that makes me feel confident that I’m getting the best price, like Live Results (with a toolbar) which ensures that at the time of search, any ticket (on the sites we index) will be listed, no matter how recently added, and any sold ticket will be excluded, no matter how recently sold.  We have a patent pending for this technology.  The other great feature we have is that we rate the tickets based on value, so we look at the location of tickets within their venue, and then the price of the tickets and we assign impartial 3-star “value ratings.”
 
Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

I think in a couple of years a large number of event tickets will be bought through comparison shopping sites (just like plane tickets today).  I think we will likely see the use of RFIDs inside of basketballs, baseballs, and footballs which will enable more accurate referee calls for things like yardage, or if a ball is foul or not.