Jack Groetzinger is the co-founder of SeatGeek, a mobile-focused ticket platform that enables users to buy and sell tickets for live sports, concerts and theater events.
Early life and education
Jack Groetzinger was born on August 18, 1984 in Cleveland, Ohio. Groetzinger graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in economics and mathematics in 2007.
Career
Groetzinger began web apps while he was still attending Dartmouth College. At that time, Groetzinger co-founded Evolving Vox, a furniture rental platform for college students, which grew into the largest student-run business in Hanover. They franchised it out a few other schools before they decided to sell it upon graduation in 2007 to a younger group of Dartmouth students.
From September 2007-May 2008, Groetzinger worked as Associate Consultant in Bain & Company in Boston. The following month, Groetzinger co-founded Scribnia, an online blogging community for reader reviews of the Web’s bloggers and columnists. The company produces a source for people’s opinions about reporters, columnists, bloggers, and other writers whose work is accessible online. It allows readers to review on arts, academic, automotive, business and management, entertainment, culture, education system, health, food and drink, personal and lifestyle, home and family, politics and law, society, shopping, sports, technology, and travel and recreation topics. The company is based in Rosemere, Canada. In July 2009, they sold it to an ad network.
SeatGeek
Jack Groetzinger and Russell D’Souza co-founded SeatGeek from DreamIT Ventures, an early-stage startup accelerator program in Philadelphia. They launched SeatGeek in September 2009, at TechCrunch50, where CNET and VentureBeat labeled the company as one of the top 5 companies from the conference.
SeatGeek is a mobile-focused ticket platform that lets users sell and buy tickets for concerts, live sports and theater events. SeatGeek provides both desktop and mobile app users to complete purchases, view interactive color-coded seat maps, browse events, and receive electronic or print tickets. SeatGeek had gained $20k in May, in seed funding from DreamIT Ventures. In January 2010, the company acquired an estimated amount between $500k and $1 million in seed funding from Arie Abecassis, Sunil Hirani, Allen Levinson, Mark Wachen, Stage One Capital, PKS Capital, and Trisiras Group. SeatGeek earned a further $1 million in July, in a Series A funding from NYC Seed and Founder Collective. Later, in October 2010, the company accepted an additional $550k from the Series A investors. SeatGeek began interactive seating charts in September for NFL stadiums.
SeatGeek stated in February 2011, a strategic investment from Guy Oseary and Ashton Kutcher through their fund A-Grade Investments. The level financing was not revealed. In August, the company stated that Yahoo! Sports had renewed its partnership with SeatGeek. In August 2012, SeatGeek got $1.7 million in Venture funding from Mousse Partners, Entrée Capital, Red Swan Ventures, Founder Collective, and NYC Seed. SeatGeek stated the acquisition of FanSnap in December 2013, a competing ticket search engine. SeatGeek suspended the FanSnap search engine and turned it into their existing ticket search platform. The company also received $2.2 million in venture funding. In August 2014, SeatGeek received a further $35 million in Series B funding. Telecharge and SeatGeek declared that they had begun a partnership in November.
SeatGeek earned $62 million in their Series C funding in March 2015, led by Technology Crossover Ventures. In July 2016, SeatGeek confirmed a deal to build an open ticketing network with Major League Soccer to let third-party websites sell tickets to MLS games. SeatGeek also turned to be the official ticketing partner of MLS team Sporting Kansas City as part of the deal. Seattle Sounders FC announced in September 2017 that SeatGeek would be their official ticketing partner starting in 2018. SeatGeek obtained Toptix in 2017, a company from Israel founded by Yehuda Yuval and Eli Dagan. SeatGeek also became the official primary ticketing partner of the New Orleans Pelicans and New Orleans Saints.
SeatGeek appointed James Mcclure in 2018, as international general manager to extend the company’s global reach. SeatGeek reached a deal in 2019 with the in-car vending company to give exclusive ticket deals to ride-share passengers. The Dallas Cowboys also declared an agreement on April 3, 2018, with SeatGeek to assist as the team’s primary ticket office, replacing Ticketmaster. It was published that the Dallas Cowboys acquired an undisclosed equity stake in the company.
Technology and Functioning
SeatGeek’s list of events show prices for ticket inventories aggregated from ticket exchanges such as TicketsNow, TicketNetwork, and Razorgator. Using the company’s DealScore algorithm, tickets are sorted which finds the combination of best seat location and available price for a particular event. Historically, the company contributed price forecast information in a similar way to Farecast, an airline ticket aggregation and forecasting site acquired by Microsoft in 2008. SeatGeek has seen a benefit in the mobile space, adopting Apple Pay to give payment and seamless purchase. SeatGeek partnered with Lyft in August 2018, on a feature that enables event-goers to be dropped off closer to their exact seat.
Awards and Recognition
In 2010, SeatGeek received the PC Magazine’s The Top 100 Web Sites. In the same year, in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, founders D’Souza and Groetzinger was listed as America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs and The Silicon Alley 100: New York’s Coolest Tech People by Business Insider.