💯 The Next Big Things
What's the story behind Eventbrite's IPO? What six startups should you excited for in 2018? What's the link between Football and Blockchain? Would you use a government-run Facebook?
Exciting eh? Read below for the answers.
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A Marriage Made in Ticketing Heaven ❤️
Read time = 107 Seconds
In 2009, 3 years after starting the company, husband and wife dream team Julia and Kevin Hartz had been turned away by almost every venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. They had one choice: give up or stick it out with their own money?
Fast forward to 2018, and their company Eventbrite - a platform used to notify people about a range of activities from yoga sessions to music festivals - is set to raise $200m with an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
A Long Journey
It’s easy to see the IPO as inevitable but it hasn’t been simple. Just one illustration of this is that Julia joins a tiny list of female founders to steer their companies public. It’s especially impressive when only 3% of companies that went public in the US between 1996 and 2003 were led by women.
A much easier task was choosing the idea to pursue. The duo wanted to democratise an industry using online payments. They saw ticketing as ideal - it had high fees, poor customer experience and a lack of innovation.
And so, they launched Eventbrite in 2006, completely self-funded. This made things challenging. In fact on the day their first child was born, doctors had to take away Julia’s laptop because she wouldn’t stop answering customer service emails. Where was Kevin? He had to pop out to open up the office for their first employee.
One of the best mistakes? They accidentally allowed people to charge nothing for tickets and therefore host an event for free. The idea of people using their product for free was terrifying but it was the turning point - it made people more aware of the service & fueled growth.
Since those scrappy days, they’ve processed at least $8bn in gross ticket sales, raised $350m from investors, grown to 900 employees and acquired 8 other companies.
More Challenges Ahead
They’re not yet profitable - losing $38.5m last year
The model is quite reliant on Facebook and Spotify to publicise events
Facebook & Google are expected to create their own ticketing platforms which could be cheaper
They’re betting on consumers spending more on experiences, rather than products (a similar stance to Airbnb)
IPOs are like London Buses…
Not long ago, there was a drought among tech IPOs. Now, the market is flowing. Dropbox and DocuSign IPOs earlier in the year helped make it the most active first half of the year since 2014. Sonos and SurveyMonkey are set to join Eventbrite later this year. Which ones will you be betting on?
Unicorns In The Making 🦄
Read time = 103 Seconds
Y Combinator is a US investment firm with a radically different approach.
Twice a year they invest $120k in 100 + start-ups, who then move out to Silicon Valley for three months of intense workshops, growth, coding and pitching workshops.
Since 2005 Y-Combinator has invested over $221m in 1281 companies (see the full list here) including heroic success stories such as Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, and Coinbase. Their stats? 94 of these firms have been acquired while 158 have subsequently shut down, with the rest remaining active.
Why are we talking about them?
This week Y-combinator announced their latest string of investments, and we’re here to give you our top picks.
Our Top Picks
Titan lets you run your own hedge fund from your pocket. Titan picks the top 20 stocks based on data that's mined from other hedge funds, then invests your money depending on your personalised risk portfolio. Get more detail here.
Emojer creates animated emojis from real photos. Using “deep learning algorithms” they can quickly create your own dancing versions of you and your friends. Gimmicky? Yes. Potentially a future Snapchat acquisition? Definitely.
Momentus Space - Water propulsion technology for space travel. With firms like SpaceX fighting hard to get the cost of space travel down, could water propulsion be the answer?
Bot M.D. gives doctors in emerging markets access to an artificially intelligent clinical assistant to answer questions on drugs and diseases.
Phiar is building an AR navigation app for drivers who don’t want to take their eyes off of the road.
Oxygen is the challenger bank/lender built for the gig economy. Freelancers can wait months before paychecks come into their accounts. Oxygen fills that gap with an affordable loan.
Keen to see the entire batch? Check out the first 63 startups from day 1 here and the next 59 from day 2 here.
The Grapevine Newsflash 🔥
7 key tech & startup stories in 97 Seconds
The Crowd Unicorn? Digital bank Monzo is planning an addition $20m of crowdfunding as it gears up for a $1bn valuation. Back in 2016, the firm raised $1m on Crowdcube in just 96 seconds, will we see a repeat?
Weaponised Chatbots: The Computational Propaganda Project (catchy eh?) have completed research into how “weaponized chatbots” employ big data to spread fake news and ultimately sway election results. Read more here.
The Mobility Mafia. Japanese investor Softbank has invested $300m in peer-to-peer car rental service GetAround. This isn’t Softbank’s only investment in transport, with previous investments in Uber, Didi, and Grab.
Facebook.Gov? Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a new venture that would create a series of government initiatives to rival big technology firms. Among his suggestions are a government-run Facebook and an expansion of iPlayer to tackle Netflix & Amazon Prime. Want more? Click here.
Robo-Dog. Sony’s new robot dog ‘Aibo’ has been released. The dog is a fully functional “robot pet” and can sit, shake your hand and pick up a plastic bone. The price tag? $2,899. Yikes. Check out the puppy at play here.
Slack Raises...? Having hit 3m paying users, business messaging app Slack has raised $427m at a $7.1bn valuation. Interested in how Slack has spent their money so far? Click here.
Crypto FC. Cryptocurrency trading app eToro has signed an advertising deal with seven premier league football clubs. This follows the announcement last week by the Union of European Football that they are implementing a blockchain based ticketing system for matches
Brought To You By Tempo 🔥
From Scrappy Startup to Unicorn: How Tempo is Helping the Next Generation of Startups
It all begins as a ‘cool idea’.
Months of hard work later and you’re running your very own startup.
Customers are flooding in, revenue begins to rise and a big investment round seems all but certain. Could your startup be the next Facebook?
Whether you’re selling coffee, your own cryptocurrency, or creating Uber for planes, scaling your business can be very tricky. To give you a headstart, the team at Tempo have written a short guide on how to ‘scale’ your startup.
They key? Great people who believe in your mission as much as you do. There’s no arguing people make your company, and you don’t find them accidentally. Tempo helps you find the right people to take your business to the next level.
Check out their short article here.
As always - much love,
Louis & Nick
DO IT 👇