CEO Kevin Hartz tells me he still had $5 million in the bank from his previous rounds of funding, but he is now ready to expand aggressively. Only about 15 percent of Eventbrite’s gross ticket sales come from outside the U.S., and he wants to make that bigger. (In Europe, Amiando is a competitor).

Tickets sold through Eventbrite overall are on track to double this year to $200 million worth of tickets, and it has already processed 7.5 million tickets this year. About half of those tickets are free. The average price of a ticket is $60. Eventbrite only takes a fee for tickets with a price, but all those free events are terrific marketing for the service. “The No. 1 source of new customers for Eventbrite are people who have attended an event,” says Hartz.

Hartz also wants to make Eventbrite itself into more of a destination site for discovering events: “Today, there is only one destination site, Ticketmaster, to find events that are going on. We think that needs to change”

Eventbrite recently took steps to add more social discovery features to its site by showing people who sign in through Facebook the events their friends are attending. Social sharing is a huge driver of traffic and ticket sales for Eventbrite. Last quarter, Facebook passed Google as the single largest driver of traffic to Eventbrite.

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Authors: Erick Schonfeld

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