Founder’s Corner – Eventbrite’s Weakness is Ad Strategy

Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. Eventbrite has had a history of overstating things a bit too much. This blog digs into the details of how Eventbrite is: There are plenty of customers who will begin to understand these impacts in the coming years and why they will move to TicketSignup for our free websites that they […]

Eventbrite Q2 2021 Report

We have been following Eventbrite since they are a similar company serving events and having a similar business model of charging for their services only with processing fees since they went public. We are also beginning to overlap with them more as nonprofits discover the GiveSignup Ticket Platform that is purpose built for nonprofits. We […]

Eventbrite Q1 2021 Report

We have been following Eventbrite since they are a similar company serving events and having a similar business model of charging for their services only with processing fees since they went public. We are also beginning to overlap with them more as nonprofits discover the GiveSignup Ticket Platform that is purpose built for nonprofits. We […]

GiveSignup Closes Series A Funding Round To Compete With Eventbrite, GoFundMe and Classy

The First Purpose-Built Event and Donation Platform for Nonprofits Launches Into $50B+ U.S. Market for Online Giving as Virtual Events Heat Up and Live Events Return CloudBees founder and former Eventbrite CFO invest 100+ new nonprofits onboarding weekly to base of 9,000+ nonprofits Highly vertical technology stack delivers 2,000+ annual updates with zero downtime MOORESTOWN, […]

Eventbrite Q3 2020 Earnings

We have been following Eventbrite since they are a similar company serving events and having a similar business model of charging for their services only with processing fees since they went public. We are also likely to begin to compete with them more as nonprofits discover the GiveSignup Ticket Platform that is purpose built for […]

Eventbrite Q2 2020 Earnings

We have always eagerly studied Eventbrite since they are a company with a business model very similar to ours – earning money based solely on processing fees for events (and for us nonprofit donations). During their Q1 report, we learned how COVID-19 was impacting their business. And we have been awaiting these numbers as we […]

Eventbrite Q1 Earnings Report – COVID Edition

Wow! Eventbrite said yesterday that transaction volume in March was down 90% and was still down 85% in early May, 2020. Before we get into the analysis, here are the links: Q1 Earnings Press Release Q1 Letter to Shareholders Earnings Call Transcript The news they shared was simply extraordinary, and made us feel good about […]

Eventbrite Update on Implications for the Endurance Registration Business

Eventbrite reported first quarter earnings yesterday to general disappointment. Net Revenue growth had slowed to 9% totaling $81M for the quarter with Gross Profit of $50M and a loss of $10M. These were below expectations, and expectations for Q2 also disappointed – resulting in a drop of about 30% in stock price this morning from […]

EventBrite IPO and Implications for the Race Registration Market

EventBrite had a sparkling (pun intended!) IPO debut this week. They sold over $230M of stock and their fully diluted valuation now hovers around $3.4 Billion. Their S1 filing with the SEC provides a treasure trove of information that is very interesting to registration companies like RunSignUp. This will have implications that will impact the […]

Founders Corner – Tax Impact of R&D Expense Amortization Due to 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act taking effect in 2022

Exciting title, huh? But changing R&D taxability from a simple expense to a capital investment requiring a 5 year amortization will have a profound impact on all software companies if the current law stays in place. To put a headline on it – it will cost RunSignup about $870,000 in additional federal taxes this year. […]

2022 Year in Review

One of our Year End Wrap-up Blogs. Others include 2022 Availability Report, RunSignup 2022 Product Recap, TicketSignup 2022 Product Recap, RunSignup 2023 Product Roadmap, and TicketSignup Product Roadmap. Also, here is our 2023 Roadmap Webinar. RunSignup helped our customers process $400 Million for their events in 2022. We have continued our growth in our core RunSignup endurance […]

Founders Corner – RunSignup Company Strategy

As with other Founders Corner blogs, I like to write these blogs to help myself make sure I am thinking about things clearly, as well as communicate important information that I want available to all employees and customers so we can get feedback and we all understand the path forward. I’ve written about pieces of […]

20 Things We’re Thankful For This Thanksgiving

On this Thanksgiving Eve, we wanted to take a little time to say our thanks as a team! Here are 20 things we’re thankful about this year. 1. Thanks to Our Customers (that’s YOU!) First and foremost, we are SO THANKFUL for our customers. Our business only exists because of your business, and we’re thankful […]

Founder Corner – Thoughts on Layoffs

Part of Bob’s continued ramblings. There have been tons of layoffs recently in the technology sector. The major factor driving this is a shift from investor perspectives of value on growth vs. profitability. And that was driven by very low interest rates. That is not the point of this blog, but just to follow that […]

Upgrade to Aurora 2 Database – Potential Downtime

We are planning to do an upgrade to Amazon AWS Aurora MySQL 2 sometime in the next week and a half. We expect less than 5 minutes of potential system impact. Another blog will be posted the day before we do the upgrades. Planned Impact There should be minimal impact with the whole upgrade process […]

Founder’s Corner – Copying the Long Term Thinking of Warren Buffet and Amazon

Part of my series on what, why and how we do things at RunSignup, Founder’s Corner. I was a bit of an economics nerd growing up. I subscribed to Barrons for a while and read my Dad’s Forbes and Fortune magazines. At Easter, we would drive to visit my Grandparents in Parkersburg, West Virginia. We […]

Founder’s Corner – Guiding Principles

This is the initial post for the Founder’s Corner Series. It is fitting, because this is what we use as our core set of principles. Almost every decision we make can come back to this as a root set of principles to guide what the decision should be. We have had these in place since […]

2022 Product Roadmap

As we enter a new year, we are producing multiple blogs that give a full 2021 Product Recap, our 2021 RaceDay Recap, a 2021 Business Recap, our Vision for 2022 and Beyond, and this one – which will talk about our Product Roadmap for 2022. We have a single robust, highly available platform and integrated database that we […]

2021 Year in Review

As we enter a new year, we are producing multiple blogs that give a full 2021 Product Recap, 2021 RaceDay Recap, Product Roadmap for 2022, our Vision for 2022 and Beyond, and this one – which will review 2021 from a business perspective. 2021 was a year of “kind of” returning to normal. Our business recovered more than […]

December 7 AWS Outage

A major set of problems at Amazon Web Services East Region started around 10:30 AM on December 7. Fortunately, GiveSignup | RunSignup continued to process transactions and serve our customer’s tens of thousands of websites during the entire time. Here is the post mortem description from AWS. The impact was very widespread: Ticketmaster had to […]

Q2 2021 GiveSignup | RunSignup Report

Q2 marks the quarter where our business and our customer’s business returned to growth. Vaccination rates going up, cases, hospitalizations and deaths going down dramatically caused states to open up. As we had been expecting, that is great news for live events. The cover photo above is from the Scott Coffee Run. We wrote about […]

Now Hiring: HR Manager

Do you… Want to work with a dynamic, cutting-edge company that uses innovative technology to make a difference in the endurance and nonprofit markets? Have experience in hands-on human resource management for a growing technology company? Love working with passionate, smart people? GiveSignup | RunSignup is the leading all-in-one platform for endurance and fundraising events. […]

Navigating Facebook’s New Ads Changes

We reported back in February that the squabble between Apple and Facebook over user privacy was probably going to result in changes to the Facebook Ads platform.  Here is the latest update on how Facebook is changing their ad system and what you need to do to prepare for the change. What Sites are Impacted […]

Race Registration Market Analysis

We usually do a Race Registration Market Analysis twice a year – March and September. 2020 was an unusual year, but we did a special one in April, 2020 and September, 2020 to try to capture what was happening in the endurance market. We will share our data and then share observations from the market in general and specific […]

GiveSignup Strategy

In September we announced a Series A funding round from Payroc that allows our company to accelerate the growth of both RunSignup and GiveSignup. In our typical openness, we wanted to share why GiveSignup is a key and complementary initiative to drive that growth. Allison Bickel, GiveSignup’s Lead, wrote this as an assignment for one […]

GiveSignup – The New Alternative for Nonprofit Ticket Events

GiveSignup has steadily built a ticket platform that’s purpose-built for nonprofits and serves as a modern alternative to Eventbrite, Crowdrise, Classy, and Blackbaud. GiveSignup Tickets is built on the core RunSignup platform, with the same payment processing integrity and cutting edge features that continuously improve. There are a number of reasons to move to GiveSignup for your […]

Q3 2020 RunSignup Results

This is our second full quarterly report during COVID-19. As we have discussed over the past several months, this has impacted our entire community, and certainly RunSignup/GiveSignup negatively. The good news is that we are all adapting and learning new ways of doing things. There is some return of in person events, but with new methods […]

RunSignup | GiveSignup Business Blueprint

We often get asked about the reasons for our success achieving 25-30% market share in the endurance market. And as we enter the Nonprofit market with GiveSignup, people are wondering where we fit and whether we will have success there as well. This will be a long blog about the blueprint we have followed for […]

Race Registration Market Analysis

We usually do a Race Registration Market Analysis twice a year – March and September. This is an unusual year, but we did a special one in April, 2020 to try to capture what was happening in the endurance market. We usually include a bunch of stats from different sources to compare the various registration platforms and […]

August 2020 RunSignup | GiveSignup Numbers

We began monthly updates in July after doing weekly updates that ended in Week 18, and are shifting to monthly updates. The monthly update is meant to give stats that are useful to the endurance and nonprofit communities we serve, but also to bridge the gap between our Quarterly Business Updates, and our Monthly Newsletter. We also published […]

RunSignup August 2020 Newsletter

Preparing for the Fall Race Season 2020 may not look like an average year, but preparation for fall race season is creeping up nonetheless. Race organizers, timers, and nonprofits across the country are reviewing their options and learning more about virtual options, modifying in-person events, and creating hybrid versions that incorporate both in-person and virtual […]

GiveSignup August Newsletter

GiveSignup Fall Cram Sessions The GiveSignup team hosted three sessions during RunSignup | GiveSignup’s fall cram session on August 25th. The sessions focused on ways nonprofits can raise money and engage supporters this fall: Peer to Peer Fundraising Options on RunSignup | GiveSignup; Giving Tuesday Campaigns; and Nonprofit Virtual Case Studies. All session recordings, slides, […]

July 2020 RunSignup | GiveSignup Numbers

We had been doing weekly updates on the numbers we are seeing since the pandemic began. We ended that in Week 18, and are shifting to monthly updates. The monthly update is meant to give stats that are useful to the endurance and nonprofit communities we serve, but also to bridge the gap between our […]

Q2 2020 RunSignup Results

This is our first full quarterly report during COVID-19. As we have discussed over the past several months, this has impacted our entire community, and certainly RunSignup/GiveSignup negatively. You can review past results here: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, Q1-19, Q2-19, Q3-19, 2019, and Q1-20. Summary Numbers As expected, the numbers are all down […]

RaceJoy Rocks: Demo of Race Anywhere

Launched at RunSignup’s Virtual Symposium RunSignup launched RaceJoy Rocks Virtual 5K demo run/walk during this week’s Virtual Symposium. This is race anywhere virtual 5K where race organizers are able to experience the participant perspective or the supporting spectator perspective. An audio tour of RaceJoy’s key features is provided. Those that register and enter their provided […]

Price Changes Coming Sept. 1

We will be rolling out new pricing on September 1, 2020 for all new and renewed races. Races created or renewed before then will have our current pricing until their event is complete. Our pricing has been the same for the past 10 years – RunSignup.com/Pricing and GiveSignup.org/Pricing, and the time has finally come for changes […]

Coronavirus Impact on Races Week 12

Please see RunSignup.com/Coronavirus, RunSignup.com/GoVirtual and Looking Forward: Guidelines for Races for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of May 17, 2020 from Week 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5,  4, 3 and 2 of the Coronavirus.  The transaction volume we saw the past week is 25% lower than the same week last year. The 25% is a very good improvement from the 37% the previous week […]

Race Registration Market Analysis

We usually do a Race Registration Market Analysis twice a year. We usually include a bunch of stats from different sources to compare the various registration platforms and track general industry trends. Usually, we publish the spring one in March. This year is obviously different because the Coronavirus really started impacting normal life in the […]

RunSignup’s Internal Coronavirus Response

We wanted to take time to document what has been happening inside RunSignup since the Coronavirus started. We have seen lots of different speculation from all sides – that we are small and therefore will be crushed by far larger competitors to speculation that we have all this money and are stealing from races by […]

Make Money with RunSignup

Every event organizer is trying to figure out how to generate revenue right now. Here is an overview of ways to can use RunSignup to potentially make some money. We also have a sister blog for ways to Save Money with RunSignup. Here is a quick list: New Virtual Race Replace/Extend Your Race with Virtual […]

Coronavirus Impact Week 7

Please see RunSignup.com/Coronavirus for recommendations and tools. Things continue to evolve as of April 11, 2020 from Week 6, Week 5,  Week 4, Week 3 and Week 2 of the Coronoavirus.  The transaction volume we saw the past week is 65% lower than the same week last year. The 65% is a pretty good improvement from the 76% the previous week but […]

Post Race Payment Policy Update

Note: On August 29, 2022 we announced the removal of the reserve requirement. Note: On Nov. 2, 2021 we announced new faster payment terms as the pandemic risks have subsided. We lowered the reserve to 2.5% and pay immediately after an event unless there are above normal chargeback risks. The Coronavirus is impacting us all. […]

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