News
TicketFly rounds up $3 million to fight Ticketmaster
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010Article by Peter Kaftka, originally published in the Wall Street Journal, All Things Digital, May 13, 2010
Average concertgoers go to two shows a year, and there’s a very good chance some of the money they spend on those shows goes to Ticketmaster, which dominates the ticketing business.
So here’s a company that wants a piece of that: TicketFly, a New York-based start-up that just raised a $2 million Series A round led by High Peaks Venture Partners and Contour Venture Partners. The company had previously raised $1 million in convertible debt last year, via angels Howard Lindzon and Roger Ehrenberg, among others.
If TicketFly works, there’s a good chance you won’t ever know about it, because it’s a B2B business: Consumers fund the operation via surcharges on their tickets, but the real customers are the concert venues, which strike exclusive deals with ticketing companies.
So most of the features are designed with the venues and promoters in mind. TicketFly says it can help with Web site design and management, promoting shows on Twitter and Facebook, tracking sales data in real time, etc.
All of this sounds like fairly straightforward stuff, but the ticketing business is an old, archaic one. And Ticketmaster, the industry’s eight million-pound gorilla, now owned by Live Nation (LYV), is particularly slow-moving when it comes to all things tech. So some of this really will feel fresh for the concert guys.
More interesting are TicketFly’s plans, which involve giving venues the chance to sell tickets using the same dynamic pricing/yield management techniques hotels and airlines use: That is, prices for hot shows may shoot up, and if you want to see a band no one else wants to see, you may end up paying very little.
TicketFly has about 50 venues signed up so far, and most are fairly intimate places like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, N.J., or the Triple Rock Social Club in Minneapolis–the kinds of of places where you could see Nirvana before Nirvana became Nirvana.
They’re also the kinds of places that used be served by TicketWeb, another Web-based upstart that Ticketmaster acquired a few years back. No coincidence: TicketFly co-founder Andrew Dreskin used to run that company.
HPVP regional office hours offer open door for entrepreneurs
Monday, May 10th, 2010As published in Democrat and Chronicle, April 18, 2010
Money is the grease of the business world, smoothing the way for things to happen. Without it, everything seizes up.
John R. Slocum has an idea — the FloodWatch, a sensor unit that mounts on a wall or ceiling and gives off an audible alarm when it detects a leak or floodwaters. What he and his Penfield startup company, FloodWatch LLC, need is about $800,000 to get to the point where it can begin selling units early next year.
Meanwhile, Bela Musits perhaps has the solution. The managing partner of High Peaks Venture Partners, an Albany-area venture capital firm, Musits is also venture-capitalist-in-residence at the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology. Once a month, he comes to UR and RIT and spends a few hours answering questions from university employees, students and local entrepreneurs about the ins and outs of raising cash for startup businesses.
“Nobody has money, that’s the unfortunate thing,” Slocum said, a prototype of the sensor unit on the desk in front of him as he sat in Musits’ borrowed office space at UR earlier this month.
Musits has no easy answers. FloodWatch is too young a company for High Peaks’ current fund. And the venture capital firm is busy trying to raise money itself for a new fund for early-stagecompanies, but that effort likely has months to go. The money-raising environment “is challenging, as you guys know certainly well,” Musits said.
High Peaks has invested $26 million in 13 companies around the state, including East Rochester telecommunications firm Allworx Corp., which was acquired in 2007 by PAETEC Holding Corp. Musits’ stint as venture-capitalist-in-residence started early this year. ”He was coming to Rochester on a monthly basis already,” said Duncan Moore, UR vice provost for entrepreneurship. “So we thought about making him available on a regular basis.”
And the fact that he’s willing to spend the time doing so could help attract other venture capitalists to the Rochester area, Moore said.
In meetings that typically last 30 to 60 minutes, Musits’ role is that of sounding board. ”I’ve had people come from ‘here’s my business plan, I’m looking to raise X amount of dollars’ to ‘gee, I’ve had this idea for five years, what’s the next step?’ and everything in between,” including direct requests for investment by High Peaks, Musits said.
Eric Leinberg and Sheree Savo, CEO and vice president of operations, respectively, of InfoPreserve, sat with Musits looking for insights on what possible investors want to see in terms of financial projections. The Rochester company, which specializes in digital preservation of data and documents, is looking to raise around $500,000.
“We’re about this close to product launch,” Leinberg said, holding his fingers closely together. “We’ve got beta customers. The core software is working but it’s not something I’d feel comfortable doing full sales yet. A couple more months, though.”
Musits is not the only source of advice. The area already has a variety of such sounding boards, he said, pointing to High Tech Rochester and the entrepreneurship programs at UR and RIT. “I’m just another stop along that path.” Musits previously was director of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s business incubator in the Albany area. ”I do this because I’ve had the good fortune of starting a few successful businesses and having worked at both IBM research and GE research,” he said.
“I want to share that. If something I pass on is important to somebody, that’s wonderful. I’m not in here just looking for investments.”
Ticketfly named to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Company list
Friday, February 19th, 2010February 18, 2010 – HPVP portfolio company Ticketfly was named today to Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Companies, coming in amongst the top 10 innovators in music. Ticketfly is the youngest company on the list, and poised to move up that list in future years as it increasingly shakes up the ticketing industry. See the full list in Fast Company.
On the same day, Ticketfly also trumpeted it’s arrival as a player with major venues, announcing that it had signed Merriweather Post Pavilion, the nation’s 3rd largest summer music pavilion and previously a key Ticketmaster client. Read more about that announcement in Billboard Magazine.
High Peaks’ 2010 Annual “Peak Pitch” Event
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Troy, NY – High Peaks Venture Partners announces its fourth annual New York Peak Pitch event to be held Friday, March 12th at Hunter Mountain. Peak Pitch brings entrepreneurs and investors from across New York State together for a unique version of the classic “elevator pitch.” In the traditional elevator pitch, entrepreneurs take advantage of an unexpected opportunity to share an elevator ride with a potential investor and present their business idea. At Peak Pitch, a shared chairlift ride is substituted for the elevator, giving entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their business plans to venture capitalists and other private investors as they ride up the mountain together. Last year’s Peak Pitch was a great success, with more than 60 CEO’s and investors participating.
“Peak Pitch is a really unique event in that it offers investors and entrepreneurs a productive way to make a large number of connections in a fun and casual environment,” said Russ Howard, Managing Director at High Peaks Venture Partners. “Each year the attending CEO’s have been very pleased with the valuable connections they made and the advice they received from experienced investors. The venture capitalists also get a lot out of the event by being able to quickly meet and review a variety of new deals that they otherwise might not have found,” added Howard.
Peak Pitch is a series of networking events organized by local Village Ventures affiliate funds to support entrepreneurial communities across New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Peak Pitch NY is hosted by High Peaks Venture Partners and sponsored by the law firms of Duane Morris, Nixon Peabody and Phillips Lytle and the insurance agency Parmele, McDermott, and Thomas.
More information and registration details on Peak Pitch ’10 are available at www.peakpitch.com or by contacting Christy Douglas at 518-720-3090 or christy@hpvp.com or Russ Howard at 518-720-3090 or russ@hpvp.com
Sponsors:
HPVP Announces Successful Sale of Soft Sight, Inc. (d/b/a Threadsmith) to Vistaprint (NASDAQ: VPRT)
Thursday, January 7th, 2010High Peaks Venture Partners is pleased to announce that Endicott, NY based Soft Sight, Inc. (which does business under the name Threadsmith.com), a High Peaks portfolio company funded in early 2008, has been acquired by Boston-based Vistaprint (NASDAQ: VPRT) in an all cash transaction. The deal closed on December 30, 2009. While financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed, the deal generated an excellent outcome for HPVP, with a high double digits annualized return rate. (more…)
The NewsMarket Closes Medialink Acquisition
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009Positions Company for Aggressive Growth in Evolving Global Video Market
NEW YORK, September 29, 2009 – The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com), the innovative worldwide distributor of video marketing services, today announced the completion of the previously announced acquisition of Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (NASDAQ: MDLK), creating the global leader in the creation, execution and distribution of video-based marketing services. Investors in the privately held company include Softbank, Hearst Interactive Media, Battery Ventures, Apax Partners and High Peaks Ventures. (more…)
38,000 College Students to Save $3 Million Utilizing Flat World Knowledge Open Source Textbooks in Fall 2009 Semester
Monday, August 24th, 2009Flat World Knowledge Reduces Average Textbooks Costs By 80 Percent, Leads the Race to Deliver Affordable Higher Education Learning Materials
High Peaks Venture Partners’ portfolio company, Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of commercial open source college textbooks, today reported a dramatic increase in the number of colleges and classrooms adopting its textbooks. . This Fall semester, 38,000 college students at 350 colleges are enrolled to utilize Flat World textbooks, up from only 1,000 in Spring 2009 at 30 colleges. (more…)
TxVia Raises $15.5M in Series C Financing
Monday, July 27th, 2009TxVia has announced it has raised $15.5 million in Series C financing, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Also participating were all current institutional investors, including Espírito Santo Ventures, High Peaks Venture Partners and Village Ventures. New York City Investment Fund joined as a new co-investor. (more…)
The NewsMarket to Acquire Medialink (NASDAQ: MDLK)
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009Strategic Transaction Increases the Company’s Market Share, Content Archive and Service Offerings.
NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire – July 1, 2009) – The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger with Medialink Worldwide Incorporated (NASDAQ: MDLK).
The NewsMarket will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Medialink’s common stock at a price of $0.20 per share in cash. Once approved by Medialink’s shareholders, Medialink’s employees and services will be combined under The NewsMarket, Inc. This transaction combines The NewsMarket’s digital video distribution platform with Medialink’s professional services and production capabilities to create a complete video solution for corporate customers. (more…)
Applied NanoWorks Changes Name to Auterra, Inc.
Thursday, April 16th, 2009Originally founded as a nano-materials technology company, Auterra has expanded its work into advanced chemical processes. The company is targeting the flame retardant additives and the oil refinery catalyst markets with its first products from the trademarked Molecular Control Process. The company also recently relocated to the Saratoga Technology + Energy Park, more than doubling Auterra’s lab and office space.
The full article in The Business Review can be found here.
