This great news must have given husband and wife cofounders Kevin and Julia Hartz much to celebrate over the holiday season—but has also renewed rumors that the company is in preparation for an IPO that began circulating more than two years ago.
In a July 2011, just after Eventbrite raised $50 million from Tiger Capital, bringing their total venture backing to $80 million, in a podcast hosted on ZURB Kevin Hartz said Eventbrite could file to go public as early as late 2012 dependant upon certain performance benchmark. While given today’s date it seems those benchmarks weren’t met, the announcement of company performance does give a sense that the company feels its earned some bragging rights over the past 12 months. But enough to go public?
Eventbrite, which Forbes named in 2011 as a Name you Need To Know (and surely you do by now) generates revenue by charging organizers a fee of 2.5% of the ticket price plus $0.99 cents per ticket sold, with the exclusion of free events, which are free for event organizers through the site. An additional source of revenue is the company’s “At The Door” iPad app and credit card processing unit which allows organizers to process will-call and same-day ticket sales.
The bundled package, which includes an iPad, a ticket printer and tethered credit card swiper and is being shipped as a free lease option to Eventbrite customers “puts the power of a box office into your hands,” Hartz told me at the 2011 launch, “no matter where you are.” Another app, “Entry Manager” processed scanned over 3 million tickets at the door in 2012.
While we can’t account for the earnings from “At The Door” of “Entry Manager,” given ticket sales alone, $1 billion in ticket volume could translate to an estimated $50 million in revenues for Eventbrite. Eager speculators have noted that, at a 10x valuation, Eventbrite could be estimated at a $500 million market cap.
As recently as this past June (when Eventbrite crossed $1 billion in ticket sales) Hartz told the audience at Portugal’s SWITCH conference that the company had $55 million in the bank and that the “next capital raise would be an IPO.”
