Venture Everywhere Podcast: Aaron Holland with Jenny Fielding
Aaron Holland, co-founder and CEO of Attend chats with Jenny Fielding, Managing Partner of Everywhere VC, on episode 73: Swipe, Tap, Attend.
In episode 73 of Venture Everywhere, Jenny Fielding, co-founder and Managing Partner of Everywhere Ventures, talks with Aaron Holland, co-founder and CEO of Attend — a leading B2B ticketing technology company modernizing how people access live events through flexible, scalable products. Aaron shares Attend’s evolution from its origins as a consumer-facing app to a high-growth B2B platform now powering ticketing for major sports teams, universities, and entertainment organizations. He also discusses how Attend is building mobile-first, revenue-generating tools that align with the behaviors of modern fans and drive innovation across the live events industry.
In this episode, you will hear:
Using modular, API-first tools to meet high-volume, diverse ticketing needs
Creating ticketing experiences to meet the next generations’ demands
Blending online and offline fan experiences as the future of live events
How mobile browsing and after-hours behavior influence product design decision
Attend’s roadmap to international and non-sports markets
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TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 VO: Everywhere Podcast Network.
00:00:14 Jenny Fielding: Hi, and welcome to the Everywhere podcast. We're a global community of founders and operators who've come together to support the next generation of builders. So the premise of the podcast is just that, founders interviewing other founders about the trials and tribulations of building a company. Hope you enjoy the episode.
00:00:33 Jenny: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Venture Everywhere, where today we're super excited to have our guest, Aaron Holland, all the way from Montana. He's the co-founder and CEO of Attend, which is a leading ticketing technology provider.
00:00:50 Jenny: I remember very clearly when Jordan called, and I would say his description was a little bit lackluster. And he said, you've gotta talk to Aaron. He's got this great ticketing thing. You should hear about it. You gotta meet Aaron.
00:01:02 Jenny: Then I met you. This is one of those cases where this person was put on this earth to be building in this space and I really felt that gravitational pull. Thrilled to have you on the show today and love to hear a little bit more about your founder journey because it is such a good one. Welcome.
00:01:20 Aaron: Thank you so much for having me and excited for the opportunity to chat. Grateful for the whole Techstars experience in Jordan and him connecting us. He's a good guy to know, like I tell many people.
00:01:31 Aaron: In terms of my journey and how I wound up here, I grew up in the Bay Area. My dad was an early cell phone tech pioneer working for a company called Air Touch, which was eventually acquired by Verizon. But I got a lot of early access and visibility on tech. We were not super well off. We lived in Vallejo. If anyone knows the Bay Area, they know what that means.
00:01:55 Aaron: I remember my dad really invested to get us one of the first Macintosh computers and certainly went out over his skis financially to do so. But in the rearview mirror, what a cool and great investment. And so grew up in that environment with a good point of view on tech.
00:02:09 Aaron: My family actually moved from the Bay Area to a small town in Southern Utah. So my dad quit his job. We moved to a town of 500 people. We're not Mormon, and everyone there is Mormon. Some great people, but some serious culture shock for a teenager.
00:02:24 Aaron: So my graduating class from high school had 19 people. I went to the University of Utah where I actually studied Sports Management, and that was my first move into the sports space. While I was in school, I founded a digital agency. So we were developing web applications, which became mobile applications. And then finally doing the marketing and just building tech and just loving it, but studying sports.
00:02:49 Aaron: Fast forward a couple years, got through some varying degrees of success and failure, and moved to LA, co-founded our company. At the time, it was SeasonShare. So we co-founded SeasonShare, launched in 2019, initially to be a direct consumer app for splitting and sharing season tickets.
00:03:06 Aaron: And as you may recall, 2019 might be the worst time ever to launch a ticketing company, But it became this really beautiful gift, so to speak, in hindsight, although quite painful at the time. So we launched in 2019. We had some traction, raised a little bit of money. Then we went into 2020 and sports just goes completely dark.
00:03:26 Aaron: So anyone that had raised VC or private equity just went out of business. It really opened up a ton of opportunity just very rapidly. We pivoted the business to B2B. We launched the products that are in market today and began growing very quickly. So really relaunched, I would say, in our current state in 2021 and began growing very quickly. And '22 got into Techstars, which is where I met you.
00:03:50 Jenny: What grabbed me about Seasonshare was that was a problem that me and my friends and people I knew had experienced, which is, “Wow. Season tickets are a big commitment, super expensive. If you travel, if you work, it's hard.” So I love the idea of having the access, but not necessarily the responsibility or the guilt when you don't go and the financial. What gave you that first idea for a SeasonShare?
00:04:12 Aaron: We were splitting and sharing season tickets, my friends at the time. But prior to that at the University of Utah, we're sharing season tickets, and it's a macro problem.
00:04:21 Aaron: Season tickets represent up to 80% of the gate revenue for sports teams. Yet depending on the league, the average season ticket buyer is 45 to 65 years old. So you have an old and aging demographic with a user experience that just categorically does not fit the next generation of sports consumers.
00:04:41 Aaron: So we saw that as an opportunity. We know there are millions of Millennial and Gen Z live experience fans that go to more than six events a year but the user experience has not been adjusted to fit their needs and their expectations.
00:04:56 Aaron: The season ticket is basically like selling a mortgage to someone that only understands renting. That was the opportunity we saw. The initial solution was exactly that. We were trying to be Airbnb for season tickets. We learned a lot during that initial stage. Some complexities to that will always remain, specifically the secondary market.
00:05:15 Aaron: So just as some background, there's primary and secondary tickets. Primary tickets are any ticket you buy directly from the team. Secondary tickets are the tickets you buy on StubHub. They are the tickets that have a 20% to 30% service charge and what you hear all the gripe about typically.
00:05:30 Aaron: Just attacking and making primary tickets, of course, more affordable, available, accessible, but also just more known to consumers as being an option is really the mission and that has stayed consistent from our initial take to where we are today.
00:05:45 Jenny: So you talked about the pivot really being out of necessity. Many businesses had to change their model in COVID. And you guys were pretty fast to get on your feet and think of some other ideas. Tell us a little bit about the shift.
00:05:58 Jenny: Shifts are always painful for multiple reasons. Starting from scratch and sometimes the team needs to be reshuffled. And so what was that like to pivot? Then I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you've closed the NFL and other big brands.
00:06:11 Aaron: It was about an eighteen month hackathon for us moving out of COVID. We had four people. We had no money in the bank. We had two engineers working for equity. My cofounder and I were funding everything just to keep the lights on, to keep the website up so that people knew we were still around.
00:06:26 Aaron: That was where we were and where we started. The products that we have today are really backfilling several successful products that were in market. Taking some things, certainly, but leaving many things behind and just overall trying to make them more scalable and less service oriented.
00:06:43 Aaron: So we had a good vision of where we were going and what we were doing right out of the gate. It was just all about building. Getting the right people together is really hard for a startup when you're resource constrained and you don't have funding and getting engineering talent and product talent and leadership and sales talent.
00:07:01 Aaron: So having to wear many of those hats and as we speak about the transition to where we are today, it's a challenge for CEOs and founders. I'm dealing with it right now. As you grow a business from $0 to $5,000,000 ARR, it's not just your revenue numbers that are growing. It's really up to the founders to continue their evolution with the business and that's really hard.
00:07:23 Aaron: And some people, frankly, aren't up to the challenge. It's been challenging for me and an opportunity to learn. And inversely, how you deal with your board, how you deal with investors, all of these things you have to continue growing and learning. Where we are today is incredible. We have 15 people. We grew 222% last year while keeping our headcount consistent.
00:07:45 Aaron: We really think about scalability. It is our North Star. A big thing for me is I don't wanna just raise money to raise money again and again and again. I want to have a line of sight on profitability. I want to have a clear vision on what the future and what success looks like for this organization.
00:08:02 Aaron: And that has been, like I said, our North Star guiding light for us as we move forward through our growth. But today, 15 people, nearly 100 partners. We'll do a hundred million GTV this year and be pretty consistent on our headcount. It's been a journey.
00:08:18 Jenny: Tell us what the product is today. There was a name change and a few changes as you moved into B2B. Talk us through that a little bit.
00:08:27 Aaron: Three core products today, all B2B. First is our Pass product, which is like Netflix for season tickets. You subscribe, you have access to the game or the event, but you don't know your seat location. So imagine you were gonna fly on an airline today. You'd get a text. You check-in, but then you would get a seat location based on the available inventory on the flight and how often you fly.
00:08:51 Aaron: That's exactly what we've done for live events. So you get a text. You check-in. Then you get a seat location based on how often you're going to the game and what seats are available. So from a user experience perspective, you move around the venue.
00:09:03 Aaron: For a low demand game, you might be down low. For a high demand game, you might be up high or even in the standing room section. But it really aligns with how younger fans consume sports.
00:09:14 Aaron: The game is an aspect of their experience, but it's not the only aspect of their experience. It's really more like a bar with a game going on and there's a lot of in venue development that's aligned with that experience. And we're spot on with that. That's our Pass product.
00:09:28 Aaron: Our Flex product is our fastest growing product today. It's really been the catalyst for a lot of our growth. Initially, it was developed as a dynamic upsell, cross-sell product. What that means is if you buy three games, you get 5% off. Five games, you get 10% off. Seven games, you get 20% off, and you unlock the next game. Something like that.
00:09:48 Aaron: Where we've grown into that product in the last, more recently, six to twelve months is we started adding suites and premium. So today, you can buy a car on your phone, but you can't do that with suites traditionally. You have to call and talk to someone and give them a spiel, and no one wants to do that. It doesn't matter how old you are. No one wants to do that.
00:10:07 Aaron: So we updated our Flex product to begin working for suites, and that has just been a growth catalyst for us. We've grown this year in baseball, 500%. We had four logos last year in baseball. This year, we have over 30. And a lot of it has been grown with that Suites product.
00:10:24 Jenny: What percent of the tickets are suites?
00:10:27 Aaron: It's a lower percent with a much higher average order value. So ticketing in general and our business in general is, as we say, a river of pennies. It's high volume, low margin. Just a lot of speed and transaction volume.
00:10:41 Aaron: Suites is categorically different. It's slow. We have suites with the Yankees that are $25,000 for one game. It's the cost of a car. So it's a much slower transaction flow, a much higher average price point. But there's some really cool data.
00:10:56 Aaron: We're seeing 72% of suite sales are taking place on a mobile device and over 50% are taking place outside business hours. So what that means to us is if you're not mobile first and if you're not always on, you are losing out on a tremendous amount of incremental revenue. So that's our Flex product and that is our fastest growing product today.
00:11:16 Aaron: And then the third and final product is our Flow product. So just a very slick online buy flow for single game inventory. We power the student ticketing for Ohio State, Florida, Oregon, just to name a couple. We do about 200,000 student tickets a week during college football, which is super fun and interesting.
00:11:35 Aaron: Flow also supports a last minute text-to-buy solution. So fans just register. They just sign up and register with their phone number and we text them if and when last minute ticket deals are available.
00:11:44 Aaron: As you think across the whole product and tech stack, you think about this consumer set that's last minute oriented, fee averse, flexibility focused. These products, as you think about them together, really are aiming to fill or cross that gap that is being opened by the lack of season ticket retention nationally.
00:12:04 Jenny: As a startup, I'm curious, you've raised a few tranches of capital. And do you get pigeonholed as a sports company? In a way, you are so many things. You're about transactions, and so you could fit in that bucket. You're about community in many ways and can be in that bucket. What I like about the business is it is multifaceted. Do people just think of you as, oh, that's sports tech. I don't invest in sports tech.
00:12:28 Aaron: We certainly get that. And how many teams are out there? We get that one a lot. And, look, if I put on my investor hat, I think that's really good feedback. But we have three products in market today, and we have the ability to add features and functions that deploy very rapidly through those three products and expand our revenue.
00:12:45 Aaron: We had 50% expansion last year and 100% retention. And so when you start to think about it from customer acquisition to LTV, yes, there are only so many teams globally, but landing and expanding into those teams is a huge macro opportunity.
00:13:01 Aaron: So, certainly, we do get pigeonholed into sports. But we have some really exciting news to share shortly on some growth into live events like music. And then we are functioning now in the arts and theater space.
00:13:15 Aaron: We have a partnership with a organization called Broadway Across America. They represent about 30 or 40 markets in The United States and promoting arts, shows, and theater into those markets. And so, yes, we do get pigeonholed into sports, but sports is just the beginning, so to speak.
00:13:30 Jenny: I actually didn't know that you guys were going into theater. I can probably help you there. So cool. I’d love to hear a little bit more, but that leads me into my next question, which is what's the big vision for Attend? Where do you see it going? If we could close our eyes and be five years out, where do you see the company?
00:13:47 Aaron: It's evolved a bit recently. You're seeing companies later and later stage say no to IPOs. That's a really interesting dynamic from both a venture perspective, but also a founder perspective because it's always been IPO focused.
00:14:01 Aaron: But you're seeing companies doing $5 billion a year saying no to IPOs now, and it's just a completely new dynamic. So from a user, from a traction, and from a product perspective, we want to be functioning globally in five years. We think there's a ton of opportunity in Europe.
00:14:19 Aaron: Ticketing and live events are very different in Europe when you just think about the premier football club. These are tickets that are handed down from generation to generation. They're very affordable as opposed to North American NFL football season ticket. They're often all on physical cards. And so to share that, I have to meet you in the parking lot. I have to give you my card, and then I hope you bring it back to me when you're done with the game.
00:14:41 Aaron: That's all happening. There's a lot of pressure in Europe to modernize some of the ticketing ecosystem there, and I think we're really excited and aligned with that. So five years for us, we wanna be in Europe. We wanna be helping modernize the ticketing business there.
00:14:56 Aaron: When it comes to just speaking to founders, all of us are here for liquidity event. And that hopefully can have a multifaceted benefit, not just for us as founders, but for our employees who have been here for a long time, our investors like you who have been here for a long time, and just making it a great outcome for everyone.
00:15:15 Aaron: I just get really excited about this space. I go actually to more concerts than I do sports shows, but I get to go to sports events for work, and that's really cool. It's hard to think about a cooler job than that for me right now. As long as that's the case, I'm really happy here growing it. We're not looking for a quick and easy exit by any means, but at some point would like a positive outcome for everyone that's supported us over such a long period of time.
00:15:40 Jenny: How have these audiences changed over time? Particularly, I'm wondering about young fans and audience expectations for just their experience. When I was a kid and family members had season tickets, we were just happy to go. I feel like now people really want engaging experiences. So I'm just curious how things have evolved and where you think they're going.
00:16:01 Aaron: The hybrid experience models, where you're unlocking online value or aspects with your in person location, elevated premium and group experiences where it makes it easier for me to go to games with my friends and unlock the experience that we want.
00:16:18 Aaron: From a trend perspective, it is less fans going to less games but they're spending more at those games and trying to have a great experience. That is a trend line we are seeing in North America.
00:16:28 Aaron: You look at airlines specifically, like I mentioned earlier, they've done such a good job with their loyalty programs and monetizing loyalty. I think there's still some aspects of sports and live that could be unlocked there and cross channel monetization, like experiences or packages that have both online and offline. Maybe it's travel with an experience. Those type of things are growing now very rapidly.
00:16:54 Aaron: But from a trend line and consumer perspective, this is what people want. This is what they expect. The fact that it's not happening in sports and live or it's taken longer to get up to speed, I think is just really interesting. There's still a ton of opportunity to bring this sector more closely in line with what's going on in other areas.
00:17:13 Jenny: What are some of the interesting technologies that you've seen shaping live events these days? What are some of the things that could use improvement and technology is really the fuel?
00:17:24 Aaron: I actually haven't seen this yet, but I would love to see AI-driven personalization in live events. I want my website traffic and what I'm spending money on in the store should inform the user experience I have both online and offline. I know there's big companies like Fanatics who are thinking about this, who are really well positioned to execute on it.
00:17:48 Aaron: Another aspect I'm seeing more and more that I just think is really cool, and it's an area we're not in, but this idea of the venue becoming a casino. When it comes to gaming and when it comes to live betting, the idea that the casino is not going to be the one and only place to do live gaming. It's going to start happening more and more in the venue.
00:18:08 Aaron: That is another trend line I just think is so cool, super exciting. There's some really cool companies involved in investing in that space. Those are the two I would say that are the coolest to me and the most uniquely positioned to capitalize on those opportunities.
00:18:23 Jenny: Interesting. Casino in the arena. Okay. I'll have to think about that one. Jumping around to your founder experience and how you got there, you mentioned Jordan Fliegel, who is the founder of a few sports related companies, and then he was the MD at Techstars for many years, running the sports programs.
00:18:40 Jenny: Any other key moments or people that have helped shape you and put you on your path? Even if you don't say their name, what were some of the learnings from some of those people, whether they were mentors, advisors, or just supporters?
00:18:52 Aaron: First and foremost, my dad just being so involved in tech and in mobile at the very early days.
00:18:58 Jenny: What year are we talking? Because my first company was a mobile start up in 2007.
00:19:03 Aaron: We're talking mid to late ‘90s and setting up the first cell phone networks in Europe and Asia. We're not talking mobile web yet. My dad went from installing car phones, physically bolting car phones into cars, to being an executive. Like I mentioned, leading the first cell phone networks being stood up in Europe and Asia. So that just gave me a really unique perspective.
00:19:26 Jenny: That car phone that we all had in our cars, but we couldn't use because they were so expensive?
00:19:30 Aaron: Exactly. I have to say that's been a huge aspect and a huge piece of my puzzle, so to speak. He was in the Bay Area. He was involved in tech and in mobile, and then he quit his job. He moved our family to that small town in Southern Utah and he started a KOA campground.
00:19:45 Aaron: If you talk about the risk appetite and risk tolerance of a founder, that is, to me, still nuts, especially with our daughter. I think a lot about my own risk appetite and how that's changed over the last two years with her. Just being able to look that amount of risk in the eye and just take it head on, I think is really cool. So those are early informative experiences.
00:20:07 Aaron: More recently, I do have to just double click on the Techstars piece. You learn so much as founders in your domain. I specifically studied sports management in college. I learned a lot about sports in American society and what sports mean to people and live events more generally.
00:20:23 Aaron: That's really cool, but what I learned in Techstars will go with me forever because I didn't get an MBA. And even the folks I know who have MBAs, who are all quite bright, certainly, they don't have the same foundational knowledge about raising capital and telling your story and selling yourself and painting a narrative around your journey. I think that was just imperative.
00:20:46 Aaron: And the opportunity to be in close proximity to a guy like Jordan and working with him and how just gracious he was with his time when I was in the program, I have to say Jordan would be one of the other people that has made a huge impact on me.
00:20:59 Aaron: And more recently, our board. We have a really cool board. We have Andrew Steinberg from Phoenix Capital Ventures and Brett Verkaik. He's from Eleven Tribes Ventures in Chicago. Brett comes from more of a consumer packaged goods background, and Andrew is the Chief Revenue Officer at the Atlanta Hawks. So two very different backgrounds.
00:21:20 Aaron: And so the opportunity to have those guys work with me, coach me. I would say that's where I've been most deficient probably and had to learn the most as a founder is running a board. It's super unique. There, of course, are books for it, but nothing beats experience and a board that's willing to coach you up and being open to the coaching. So I would say those three people along the journey have been probably the most impactful for me.
00:21:45 Jenny: Boards are one of those things. When you have a great board, it's such an accelerant. And when you have a crappy board, it's just a drag. Excited that you have a real great one. Tell us what keeps you up at night, Aaron.
00:21:57 Aaron: Oh, I already mentioned it, my two-year-old. Both literally and figuratively. I mean, being on the founder journey and having a child is so unique and so challenging. My wife, my partner, is just incredible and allows me to continue doing what I love here at work, but she literally is keeping me up at night.
00:22:16 Aaron: And then I mentioned earlier risk tolerance and risk appetite and how that changes as you grow and as the business grows and what you want your outcome to be and how far are you willing to go, how much are you willing to bet on yourself, and how does the dynamic change, how does the relationship with yourself change over that time has been really interesting for me more recently.
00:22:38 Jenny: Alright. We will move to our speed round. Just quick answers to a few fun questions. A book, podcast, or some type of content that you are reading or listening to right now that you're enjoying?
00:22:51 Aaron: Huberman Lab podcast, the biohacking stuff, the performance stuff. I just love it. I think all founders can take some from it. It's such a demanding job. I just finished Art of the Impossible. It's a performance-related book. And then I'm rereading Good to Great. I find myself reading that book every five years or so. I love business literature, and it's just a good read. I would say those are what I'm on right now.
00:23:16 Jenny: If you could live anywhere in the world for one year, where would it be?
00:23:19 Aaron: I just got back from Kauai. Don't tell anyone. Kauai is incredible. We were on the North Shore in Hanalei Bay, and it's just an intoxicating, very healthy place. And I'd be hard pressed not to say I'd try to live there for a year if I could. The time zone's difficult, but it's a cool spot.
00:23:35 Jenny: It is a very cool spot. Favorite productivity hack to keep you moving fast?
00:23:41 Aaron: You gotta get up early, 101. It's tough because not everyone's a morning person. I think some people unlock their productivity at night. For me, it's getting up early between 4 and 5 AM, even if I'm traveling. Getting a workout in, getting going before other people are on while it's still dark out, super empowering for me.
00:23:58 Aaron: It's just a low tech productivity hack, and it requires full commitment. You have to go to bed early. You have to have a wind down process. All of those things come into making that possible and sustaining it. And I think it's super healthy for those that have the discipline to do it, and it is a bit of a superpower.
00:24:16 Jenny: I'm a morning person, but I have many non-morning people in my life, and it's really hard for them. So last one, where can listeners find you?
00:24:27 Aaron: LinkedIn is the only place I really keep updated. I'm not a Facebook guy or an X guy. LinkedIn is the place to find me.
00:24:33 Jenny: I love it. Alright, Aaron. This was so fun. It's a joy watching your journey at Attend and can't wait to see what's next. So thanks for joining us.
00:24:42 Aaron: Thanks for having me.
00:24:44 Scott Hartley: Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoyed today's episode. For those of you listening, you might also be interested to learn more about Everywhere. We're a first check pre-seed fund that does exactly that, invests everywhere. We're a community of 500 founders and operators, and we've invested in over 250 companies around the globe. Find us at our website, everywhere.vc, on LinkedIn, and through our regular founder spotlights on Substack. Be sure to subscribe, and we'll catch you on the next episode.