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eCommerce - Monday, April 18, 2005

StubHub - Profile

HQ: San Francisco, CA

Founded: 2000

Management: CEO is Jeff Fluhr who started the company when he was just shy of 30 years old and had dropped out of Stanford Business School. Before school, he worked at Thomas Weisel Partners for a year. Fluhr co-founded the company with biz school chum Eric Baker.

Investors: In January 2001, StubHub raised $2.1M led by escottVentures (BEA Systems co-founder Edward Scott's VC arm) with additional funding from angels including retired San Francisco 49er quarterback Steve Young and Scott Welch, a partner with Los Angeles-based Mosaic Media Group. In March 2002, it closed Series B with Allen & Company, former CEO of HBO and Time Warner Music Group Michael Fuchs, former Starwave Chairman Mike Slade, and former Robertson Stephens Chairman and current Francisco Partners co-founder Sandy Robertson. Total funding is less than $5M.

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Business Model: StubHub is a matchmaker between buyers and sellers of sports and other entertainment tickets, either at fixed prices or by auction. It has partnered with a number of sports teams and gives them a share in the take. The company claims its gross revenues in 2004 were $100M, its net revenues were $25M and that it is growing 300% per year. The company currently has over 100 employees and lists a dozen or more open positions on its site.

Competitors: RazorGator, eBay, Craigslist, TicketsNow.

Dirt: eBays' tickets revenues may have been 3 times as high as StubHub, at $300M, but StubHub is happy to be in this position against the goliath. And StubHub has a better user experience so we suspect it will continue to do well. This is yet another example of a vertically-focused eCommerce company that is doing well against eBay's do everything, but do nothing great business. The company did get a lot of negative publicity when it was sued for allowing tickets to the Oscar ceremonies to be sold on its service, at $30K+ per pop.