Contact Information: Eventbrite Contact: Melissa Klein or Melissa Biles eventbrite [at] launchsquad [dot] com (415) 625-8555
Eventbrite Closes Series C Round of Funding From Sequoia Capital
| Source: Eventbrite
SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - November 9, 2009) - Eventbrite announced that it has
closed a Series C round of funding from Sequoia Capital, with partner
Roelof Botha (previous backer of YouTube) joining as director. This
brings the company's total funding to over $8 million. Previous investors
include Bebo co-founders Michael & Xochi Birch, Jeff Clavier, YouTube
co-founder Jawed Karim, former PayPal founding executives, David Sacks and
Keith Rabois, prolific Silicon Valley angel, Ron Conway, and Flixster
co-founders Saran Chari and Joe Greenstein.
"Eventbrite exhibits many of the same traits that were present in many of
the wonderful companies Sequoia Capital has been in business with:
passionate and driven entrepreneurs, addressing a large underserved market,
and organic growth driven by a laser-like focus on the customer
experience," said Roelof Botha, partner, Sequoia Capital. "Events are an
enormous market where organizers are relegated to using mostly manual tools
to promote and monitize their offerings. By providing them with a simpler,
more economical model, Eventbrite makes the event experience more
successful for planners and rewarding for attendees. This is an exciting
time for the company and we're thrilled to be involved in the growth of
what we see as an industry-disrupting offering."
Evenbrite is an event planning marketplace that optimizes the planning and
hosting of events, giving organizers a simple, automated way to sell
tickets, organize events and promote these gatherings through social media
platforms.
"With Eventbrite, we've branched out from the 'old world' model of ticket
registration and democratized it, empowering anyone with the ability to
sell a ticket to an event and bring people together," said Kevin Hartz, CEO
and co-founder of Evenbrite. "We see a massive opportunity here in terms of
the socialization and optimization of events and are excited to play an
enabling role in making this happen."
The company was founded in 2006 by Kevin, along with his wife Julia Hartz
and Renaud Visage. Kevin was previously co-founder and CEO of Xoom
Corporation, an international money transfer company that provides services
to over 40 countries worldwide. He has also been an active early stage
investor and advisor to startups including PayPal, Flexilis, Boku, Milo,
Yammer, AdNectar, Flixster, Trulia, Tokbox, Geni, Tripit, iControl, Three
Rings, and Friendster.
This round of funding validates significant company success to-date,
highlighted by consistent triple-digit year over year growth, 3 million
monthly uniques, and projected ticket sales of over $100 million in 2009. A
vast number of different event types can leverage Eventbrite, from fairs
and festivals, to fundraisers, workshops, reunions, conferences or special
holiday events. Customers to date have included notable names such as
TechCrunch, Craigslist Foundation, Kiva, PayPal, and LA Times.
About Eventbrite
Eventbrite is an online events marketplace where tens of thousands of
individuals, businesses and organizations of all sizes manage, promote and
sell out their events. With over five million registrations to date and
over ten thousand new events published every month, Eventbrite is bringing
explosive growth to the events industry by making it easy for anyone to
host a successful event. With a suite of free and easy-to-use online tools,
Eventbrite empowers event organizers with everything they need to create a
professional online presence and to effectively promote their events on the
Web. Eventbrite collects a fee only if you sell tickets, and free events
are totally free. As the World's Marketplace for Events, Eventbrite proudly
serves event organizers from almost every industry, as well as thousands of
non-profits, universities, libraries and faith-based organizations from all
over the world. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and
additional information is available at www.eventbrite.com.
About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital provides venture
capital funding to founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring
companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs," Sequoia
Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Larry Page and
Sergey Brin of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear
Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven
of Network Appliance, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang
of NVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of
YouTube, Dominic Orr and Keerti Melkote of Aruba Wireless Networks,
Jonathan Kaplan of Pure Digital and Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin of Zappos. To
learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.