Funding
• Newport Beach-based TicketGuardian, which provides insurance to protect consumers’ ticket purchases from unforeseen circumstances, secured $8 million Series A funding last month.
Proceeds will be used to fund further growth in products and services.
The funding, led by New York-based IA Capital Group Inc. and Wisconsin-based American Family Ventures, brings total funds raised by the company to $13 million, including $5 million in seed and debt.
TicketGuardian was founded in 2016 and targets the nonrefundable event market. It provides insurance products to protect consumers who can’t attend concerts and sporting events because of illness and health, traffic accidents and weather, according to the company, which calls itself an “insurtech provider.”
“While some are in beta, we now have over a dozen unique products, from insurance to fraud tools to automation, allowing us to offer solutions to the varied and diverse clients we interact with across the live event space,” President Casey Callinsky told the Business Journal.
He joined the company in March. TicketGuardian founder Bryan Derbyshire remains as its chief executive and chairman.
The company started with the goal of giving event attendees “the flexibility to purchase knowing there are options if things don’t go as planned,” Callinsky said.
The company has about 40 employees and has three engineer job openings posted.
Recent hires include Scott Matulich, who joined as chief financial official in September.
Callinsky and Matulich previously worked together at Wells Fargo where Callinsky was an area president in Oregon and Matulich served in senior roles.
— Meghan Kliewer
• Also in the event ticketing space, mobile technology company FlipTix is gearing up for expansion this year. It’s seeking $3 million, Chief Executive Jaime Siegel told the Business Journal.
The funding will help grow the company’s user base, as well as product development.
The event-ticket reseller, which currently employs about 10 at its Newport Beach headquarters and a San Francisco office—the latter opened in November—also plans to use the funding to double its headcount by hiring in engineering, marketing and sales, and a product manager.
The company aims to provide flexibility for concert, sports and festival attendees who want to leave early and “flip” their seats to waiting fans.
“We flipped more tickets than we or the promoters predicted,” Siegel said of the three-day Kaaboo Del Mar festival in San Diego. “There’s demand for our technology.”
Siegel, who co-founded the company with his brother Brian, said he got the idea based on a number of experiences, including “when I worked as security at Madison Square Garden when I was in law school, as well as seeing the large black market around the illegal transfer of wristbands for music festivals.”
Jaime said the company needs to scale rapidly to support the growing number of events it supports. It’s currently in California and Arizona.
This year, it signed on MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre in Tampa, Fla. It’s also supporting the organizers of the Kaaboo Del Mar festival’s inaugural event, called Kaaboo Texas, scheduled for May at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The stadium, home to the Dallas Cowboys, has a capacity of nearly 100,000.
Siegel is also currently chief executive of Cerebral Assets LLC in Newport Beach. Prior roles include vice president of senior IP counsel at Sony Corp. of America and executive vice president of licensing & litigation at Acacia Research Group LLC (Nasdaq: ACTG).
His brother Brian is a FlipTix board member and the company’s president. He was previously executive director of consumer sales and sales planning North America at Lenovo Group Ltd., as well as head of web and e-commerce at Sony.
Advisers to the company include Experian Chief Technology Officer Joe Manna and former Ticketmaster Executive Vice President Greg Consiglio.
— Sherry Hsieh
• Add Titan Fund LLC to the list of angel capital providers in OC. The fund was founded by John Jackson, director of the center of entrepreneurship at California State University-Fullerton.
The $1 million fund is an angel and pre-angel investment fund that aims to use its network and affiliation to locate and invest in very early stage companies and ideas. It’s not affiliated with the university.
“We look for very hands-on investors,” Jackson said.
The fund has invested in seven companies to date, including Sukkah Hill Spirits in Los Angeles. It makes high-proof fruit liqueurs.
Bottles from Sukkah Hill and its whiskey-making Cali Distillery affiliate retail from $29 to $32 each; its products are sold at Costa Mesa’s Hi-Time Wine Cellars, among other area locations.
The L.A.-based company plans to raise a $3 million Series A next year for supporting marketing and business development.
— Sherry Hsieh
