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Ticket Evolution hires former TicketNetwork staffer as deadline for funding raising nears
Broker-owned ticket exchange Ticket Evolution this week announced the hiring of its first employee with the company's self-imposed deadline for raising $4 million only one week away.
Paul Harris, formerly a senior sales representative for TicketNetwork, was hired to be Ticket Evolution's director of broker relationships, and he told TicketNews that he has also invested $10,000 in the new company to be one of its stakeholders.
"It would have been hard to try to talk brokers into making a commitment to this venture without having made one myself," he said. Harris has more than 15 years of experience in the ticketing industry, building relationships along the way. "I think brokers feel they can trust me, and I hope to be able to build on that trust."
His hiring, however, comes as questions swirl around the company as it relates to its financing and its chosen technology.
In a three-page letter posted on the company's Web site yesterday, August 5, co-founder and President Ram Silverman reached out to an unidentified number of brokers who are "teetering on the fence" about whether to invest in the company. Speculation has spread through the secondary ticket industry that the company has not yet raised its total, which the letter would appear to confirm. TicketNews asked the founders how much the company has raised, but they did not respond.
"I have talked to a couple hundred brokers the past 2 weeks and for those of you who are waiting to see what the next broker is doing; I encourage you to take a small leap of faith and jump on our side of the fence. Please take a hard look at what your downside is and if you truly do not see the benefit or need for this exchange then don’t join. Change is going to happen with or without you!" Silverman wrote.
The company initially set a deadline of today, August 6, to raise the $4 million but extended that by a week to August 13. If the $4 million is not raised, the founders vowed to return all of the money to the investors.
On the technology front, the company is planning to use Amazon's cloud computing option and the open-source Ruby on Rails platform, which it displayed to potential investors during a splashy presentation last month in Las Vegas. Yet, the company's choice of technology is rife with questions about its security and other issues.
TicketNews posed several questions to the founders about their choice of technology, but those inquiries have gone unanswered. Drew Gainor, the former chief marketing officer at National Events Company who is now chief technology officer for Ticket Evolution, said he intended to respond to questions about the technology, but had yet to after several days.
Among the questions posed by TicketNews included:
-How will [Ticket Evolution] handle [Payment Card Industry] PCI compliance, and how will broker data be secured? Will you have access to their data and where/how they obtain tickets?
-Based on [TicketNews] research, [we] found that Twitter is only using Ruby on Rails (ROR) for its front end, but it has abandoned it for back end operations because of its limitations, slowness and lack of scalability. Does this alter [Ticket Evolution's] perception of the platform, and/or what is [Ticket Evolution's] opinion of Twitter’s decision?
-Which version of ROR will [Ticket Evolution] be using? 2.0 or 3.0?
-[Ticket Evolution] mentioned that the technology used by other [ticket] exchanges is dead or dying. Could you elaborate on that, and why ROR is better considering its limitations?
-Continuing with that line of questioning, what other high-transaction, e-commerce sites can [Ticket Evolution] point to that are using ROR for all of their operations, not just front end interface?
Earlier in the week, Steve Parry, one of Ticket Evolution's founders, forwarded TicketNews a copy of a press release from the University of Texas Dallas about a research team from the university who are working on software applications to secure cloud computing operations. But, when asked whether Ticket Evolution had contacted the team about possibly using the applications, or whether those efforts met PCI compliance standards, neither Parry nor Gainor responded.
TicketNetwork is the parent company of TicketNews.
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ANYTHING ELSE IS BETTER THAN DONNY AND HIS "RULES".
Many huge web sites use RoR. Twitter and Hulu handle 10,000 the traffic an exchange would. Comments about the technology choice are ill-informed.
http://storecrowd.com/blog/top-50-ruby-on-rails-websites/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9934187-16.html
Okay here is deal.
Can someone explain what platforms are being used by peers in ticket industry (Primary and Secondary)?
Used this to try to figure it out for you ...
http://www.yellowpipe.com/yis/tools/craftnet/
StubHub - Java
TicketNetwork - Microsoft ASP.Net
TicketsNow - Microsoft ASP.Net
RazorGator - Microsoft ASP.Net
If these ASP.Net technologies are that great, why those peers are unable to provide web based front end client for better service to all?
Why we have so many performance issues and glitches with StubHub?
Does those platforn have an ability to change attitude of business?
Doesn't matter how great a platform would be or not, if business management, software development quality and dictatorship decisions are taken place, all those wrong business fundamentals would get them on ground.
As long as there is an attitude of customer (a broker or end consumer) is always wrong all those business (an exchange or broker) are in wrong direction.
that was from 2008
twitter did move away from ruby on rails because it couldn't scale (only using ror for user interface), someone already posted something about this, scroll down
http://www.alexa.com
Load Time for Scribd.com
Slow (2.69 Seconds), 75% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Yellowpages.com
Slow (2.023 Seconds), 63% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Hulu.com
Very Slow (3.128 Seconds), 82% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Crunchbase.com
Slow (1.992 Seconds), 62% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Justin.tv
Very Slow (3.931 Seconds), 89% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Slideshare.net
Slow (2.61 Seconds), 74% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Medhelp.org
Slow (2.43 Seconds), 71% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Funnyordie.com
Average (1.74 Seconds), 55% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Odeo.com
Very Slow (3.792 Seconds), 88% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Jango.com
Average (1.853 Seconds), 58% of sites are faster.
Load Time for Mog.com
Slow (2.721 Seconds), 76% of sites are faster.
------------
Rails ranks #12 out of 12 frameworks in performance:
http://www.evansdata.com/reports/viewRelease.php?reportID=28
It's slow.
Is that faster among its peers in ticket industry?
From what I understand, Ticket Evolution is going to be primarily (if not entirely) broker to broker. Since the total universe of brokers is in the thousands, scaling won't be an issue. Twitter was going to take any technology it used to its breaking point since its dealing with millions upon millions of Tweets. Arguing that this makes Ruby on Rails a bad choice is like saying that Memcached is a poor technology decision because Facebook had to struggle to get it to scale.
I am tired of hearing about this deal. I hope it actually goes away next week. Let's cut through the crap. The reason the deal will fail is because it is a reaction by a bunch of brokers with poor TN broker ratings whose cost of business on TN was high enough to negatively impact their bottom lines and competitiveness. They were unable to get TN to lower their percentage, so they decided to compete. Now the question everyone must ask themselves is: Why would you trust these guys to build an exchange with your money if their broker ratings are lousy? You and I both know this means they are not good at what they do. I am a broker with a high rating and low costs on TN as a result. I don't want anyone with a low rating touching my money. It's like the kids with the worst grades in the class opening their own school. I think it is ludicrous and if they can raise money in this terrible private placement market despite their poor broker ratings and a target investor group of ticket brokers who are not multi-millionaire investors and whose ROC from their ticket businesses blows away any return this investment can provide, it will be a major miracle.
i agree with this poster, i am a partner at TN and would not have been able to continue if the bad broker situation wasnt cleared up. Once the broker rating system was implemented i saw a drastic shift in filled orders. I think TN did excellent work with the broker rating system, i can only imagine the hours and hours of meetings it mustve taken to come up with the correct formula. theres enough money in this ticket thing for everybody, why not just be straight up and honest, its a much easier way to conduct business, less stress , more long term clients and success & profit
Hello Partner,
There is nothing wrong with rating system, rather how it has been enforced / implemented and depend on variables those are beyond broker control.
E.g. Fill rate, you can only achieve full 50 points, worst case scenario, if you have 1 drop order less than $225 or no drop order, doesn't matter if you sold $20K during that period or $200K. How that is practical when you don't have control on what happens on overnight and become a double sold situation?
Customer service calls, customer places an order and next minute calls TND site toll free number. How that consider towards broker customer service? After receiving tickets, customer emails an excellent feedback, of course through one of feedback survey sent out by TND web site, now CSR entered them into your order details, now it is counted towards your service call. Based on this kind or rating counts, a broker would never have less than 8 service calls for a period of 300 orders.
If rating system is foolproof, publish % of brokers achieving what points in each category. E.g. a histogram represents 10% has fill rate points of 50, 20% has fill rate of 45 etc.. TN can do that for each category and that will reveal how truly good brokers are being hurt by false implementation.
I am sure other brokers can provide more examples as well.
I could agree more with you, PLus the POS has glitches and messes up shipping and on hand dates, we use the shipping program and use 100% of the time. We still never get all our points, we try and get help and ge t the situation fixed... and no one will help us because they are making more money by NOT helping getting the POS fixed. We have been lied to and promised for our rating to be fixed and a refund for all the $ lost due to a false broker rating. We have waited nearly 4 months to ge this wile situation resolved... TND wont help, mean while I am invoiced weekly for a few thousand/ but they cant help us ? the truth is we brokers are TND customers, and they treat us THEIR customers extremely poor. SOme thing has to give, change has to occur for them to treat us better. So be all for the new exchanges, its only going toi help us sell more tix and get TND to perhaps step back and look at the BIG picture here... THEY WOULD NOT EXIST W/ OUT US AND OUR INVENTORY!
My broker rating is 90 & I am in they are getting my 10k
Amen. Couldn't have said it any better.
I did a little due diligence on this, why wouldn't anyone investing $$$?
I think Al is right; there should be some serious questions asked.
"Twitter blamed the technical problems on the programming language, called Ruby on Rails, that it initially used to build the service. Over time, it became clear that the language couldn't allow the site to scale. So Twitter turned to a relatively obscure programming language called Scala that seems to be helping the company grow. In addition, engineers have been breaking up the service into little modules that can crash independently without affecting the entire system (a task that's produced a few more Fail Whale sightings than usual lately). Cofounder Biz Stone explains in a Q&A with Elise Ackerman of San Jose Mercury News:
The popular Web programming language Ruby on Rails is responsible for the look and feel of Twitter's user interface, as well as that of many other websites. Since the user interface, known as the "front end," relied on Ruby, it also made sense to use Ruby for back-end operations like queuing messages. But as Twitter's popularity grew, the Ruby-built back end wasn't able to handle the torrent of messages that came its way--a situation that created the sudden popularity of the "Fail Whale," the error message that Twitter sends to users whenever the service crashes. "
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/tags/fail+whale/
I fear more smoke and mirrors from Drew. Lipstick on a pig is still a pig.
Buyer beware.
I heard that these guys get permanent board seats?? i will keep my 10 grand thank you. you are not getting it. ram can send all the begging pleading emails he wants. i remember this is the same guy who doesnt fill orders when he oversells like the superbowl we all remember so i wont fall for his sales pitch. my money is not fueling this mockery of my fellow brokers and me. From what they showed me during the presentation and since then they are not capable of leading this fight. Almost every single part of their initial plan and the promises made in the presintation have been abandoned. And every day the truth gets clearer. This is a cash grab for golden tickets and drew gainor. and the cash will come from fees they will charge me and you! no fees was their battle cry and now the fees are higher than every other board i list on.
Why didnt drew reduce his take to 5% like ram and steve? hes greedy and doesnt care about me and you. thats why.
and paul harris kicking in 10 grand? thats a joke and more smoke and mirrors too. he didnt mention his signing bonus, or that he is taking no risk at all because if the funding doesnt happen he is not out the money. so ticket evolution gives him a twenty grand signing bonus when the funding comes in and he gives them back ten as his "investment". or something like that. this whole thing stinks.
Ticketnetwork made all its brokers become pci compliant or it goes against you in your wonderfull broker rating. But they will NOT PAY with a credit card when they place orders??? y not they dont think that PCI compliacne works???????
haha..another funny post. TicketNetwork has multiple credit cards and multiple merchant accounts to run its business. Anyway, this statement is ridiculous, "Ticketnetwork made all its brokers become pci compliant or it goes against you in your wonderfull broker rating", actually the CREDIT CARD companies forced everyone to comply to the PCI standards in order to reduce theft/fraud and the costs involved. TicketNetwork was simply the first company in the broker community that met those standards and tried, the only way they knew how, to get brokers to follow suite and do the right thing. You make it sound like PCI compliance is some sort of option that can be disregarded.
But they will NOT PAY with a credit card when they place orders???..
Can you elaborate that?
they will omly send a check or want to use pay pal they will not pay with a credit card
TICKETNETWORK will not pay with a credit card
I am confused. Why Ticketnetwork has to pay me anything, they don't buy from me anything. Please educate me.
Who they? it seems I am totally naive due to lack of information..
I think its hilarious that the last sentence says "TicketNetwork is the parent company of TicketNews". It might as well say "Everything you just read was biased and unbalanced".
ya, hilarious!!! all the questions he asked looked pretty legit to me. Why not answer them? Or maybe it's all smoke and mirrors?
Why should they answer them? Some of that information is proprietary. I could send all kinds of questions to TicketNetwork highlighting all kinds of issues. Do you think they would answer those?
What about the endless security issues with Windows Servers and ASP?
What about the stability problems that comes with windows based systems in general?
What about the clear decline in windows based technologies in general?
Why is it that every week I have a problem with their software?
What about quality control and having a test suite? I know for a fact they have no kind of test suite behind their software. Ever wonder why there are issues every time a new update is released?
What about the general attitude towards the community and the dictatorship style?
People can speculate all day about whats going to happen and which technology is better. But here's what I know now: all of the solutions that exist today are sub-par. They clearly don't meet expectations.
Guess what I have been told repeatedly, yes repeatedly, everybody is working fine and I am only one who complaints about software quality being newbie on TN. At least somebody echoed my experience as well.
Now anybody noticed that reply to any comments for this news runs slow? May be we reached high watermark for whatever platform we have for this site.
It uses Ruby on Rails.
Well being PCI non-compliant, we won't have 0 point rebate !!!!
...and being "non-compliant" you won't have a merchant account to worry about either. Maybe the fancy new web site will have a slot for quarters and consumers can just use their loose change to buy tickets.
I know for a fact about a year ago TicketNetwork stored full credit card information in plain text in the database. So why is everyone all up in arms about PCI compliance now. Its hilarious that Ticket Network is highlighting that, they have some of the worst security I've ever seen.
Lastly, this goes to show how far behind this industry is. Ever heard of a credit card vault? Why bother storing credit cards and jumping through the hoops when you can leverage a vault that is more secure than anything in this industry. In regards to keeping CC information secure and safe, Ticket Evolution will be the CLEAR leader simply because they are leveraging a system built by experts, not a bunch of half rate programmers.
so what comes first PCI compliant or merchant account? Do you truly believe someone would prepare a fancy web site just to use as slot machine?
The broker rating is scam to charge us more money per order. I've NEVER had a busted order and rejected about 5-6 in 3 years. The customers ALWAYS got their tickets but, because they call on near term delivery it goes against you. The shipping deal is another story, TN makes a killing just on the FedEx. My rating went from 86 to 0, how?? My rebate is 10%, it's easier to use Stubhub and TicketExchange and have no worries. The rebates should be about 5-7 for everybody,unless you can't deliver tickets,then you should be fined or kicked off.