LiveStub hopes to nuke StubHub, others, with commission-free scalping
Updated
Thanks to the internet, selling tickets on the secondary ticket market — the act formerly known as scalping — has gone legit. EBay bought the market pioneer, StubHub, for $310 million. TicketMaster dropped $265 million to get its hands on TicketsNow, and top-tier VC firm Kleiner Perkins led a $26 million investment in RazorGator back in 2005. All of these companies make money charging sellers a 15 percent commission on the tickets they sell.
However, LiveStub,… Continue Reading
United Mobile raises round, offers cheap international calls from your mobile
United Mobile provides SIM cards for mobile phones. The cards allow you to call or make mobile data connections cheaply, anywhere in the world from your cell phone. The company’s secret sauce is deals with more than 300 partners worldwide, so its users can roam across these partner networks at low rates.
Zurich, Switzerland-based United Mobile says its service is especially useful for Americans who travel abroad. If you exchange your standard SIM card for a… Continue Reading
Zecco raises $25M to beat crowd on zero-dollar trading
Zecco, the online brokerage that hopes to use social networking to drive traffic, has raised $25 million more in financing.
We wrote in detail about this company’s promise here, concluding that the zero-dollar trading service it offered is here to stay. It has now raised $35 million.
The company, now based in Burlingame, Calif., is growing at a break-neck pace — at least on the employee front: It plans to hire about 65 people by the end… Continue Reading
Avanoo, a “community wisdom bank”
Avanoo, a site that aims to tap into the “wisdom of communities” to offer answers to your questions about life, is officially launching today.
There are several question and answer sites already out there, such as AllExperts and new start-up Megabuzz, of Seattle. Each seek to maximize page views, and therefore advertising.
Avanoo appears to want to go deeper. Its idea builds on the “Wisdom of Crowds” theory, laid out in James Surowiecki’s book of the same… Continue Reading