Ticket Stumbler
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Ticket Stumbler was a Boston secondary-ticket-market search engine founded in 2008 by childhood friends Tom Davis and Dan Haubert, who grew up together in Sylvania, Ohio. A Y Combinator Summer 2008 startup, it launched on August 5, 2008 as the 'Kayak for sports tickets': it aggregated listings from brokers like StubHub, RazorGator, TicketNetwork and TicketsNow into one searchable database — 1.5M listings representing 7M tickets at launch — letting users compare seats by price and location without holding any ticket inventory. Built on Django, it offered a free API and planned to take 6-15% of ticket sales conducted through its site.
02 / Ticket Stumbler FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Ticket Stumbler ended for a deeply personal reason: co-founder Dan Haubert died unexpectedly, and the two-person company had no way to continue without him. Davis shut down the site soon after, per TicketStumbler.com. With a team of two and no successor structure, the startup's entire operation — product, broker partnerships and upkeep — rested on the founders, so Haubert's death was effectively the end of the company.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Launches (YC S08)
Founded by Tom Davis and Dan Haubert, Ticket Stumbler receives $15K in YC seed funding in June 2008 and launches on August 5, 2008 with 1.5M listings from major ticket brokers.
- Shutdown
Co-founder Dan Haubert dies unexpectedly; Tom Davis shuts down TicketStumbler.com soon after, redirecting the site to his new project, Swaptitude.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
After Dan Haubert's unexpected death, co-founder Tom Davis shut down TicketStumbler.com.
- 02
The site was redirected to Davis's new project, Swaptitude.