Can Eventbrite shine in Ticketmaster’s world? - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

For big rock concerts and sporting events held in huge venues, Ticketmaster dominates the landscape. For the kind of event you might find promoted with a flier on a telephone pole, there’s a budding start-up called Eventbrite.

The company, which is based in San Francisco and has fewer than 30 employees, announced this week that it had raised its first round of venture capital: $6.5 million from Sequoia Capital. The partner Roelof Botha — the man who backed YouTube — is becoming a director. The site gives organizers free tools to create Web pages for their event, issue tickets and promote it across the Web...