StubHub's IPO erases a co-founder
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Ticket resale marketplace StubHub last week filed for an IPO, and rewrote part of its history in the process.
The big picture: StubHub's IPO filing refers repeatedly to CEO Eric Baker as the company's singular founder, including in its 915-word corporate history section, without a single mention of company co-founder Jeff Fluhr.
- That history lays out how Baker came up with the idea when trying to find tickets for a sold-out Broadway show in 1999, founded the company while a student at Stanford Business School, and then left shortly before it was acquired by eBay in 2007.
- He then founded Europe-focused Viagogo, which bought StubHub from eBay for $4 billion, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Reality check: Baker and his Stanford classmate Fluhr developed StubHub together, with Fluhr dropping out to run the company while Baker remained enrolled.
- Baker formally came aboard as company president in 2001, but within a few years the pair was at odds over strategy.
- Fluhr had more stock and support of the StubHub board, which fired Baker. But there was no non-compete deal, so Baker opted to launch a clone in Europe, knowing that StubHub wasn't yet ready to compete overseas.
- Fluhr exited the company via the eBay purchase, while Baker reentered when Viagogo bought StubHub.
Zoom in: When asked about the selective history, a StubHub spokesperson said it's because the "lineage of the entity being listed" is really the parent company of Viagogo (which Baker did found solo), not the original StubHub.
- Fluhr is now a venture capitalist, serving as a partner alongside David Sacks at Craft Ventures. In a LinkedIn comment, he wrote: "At a time when we should all be celebrating StubHub's success, it appears old wounds are deep enough to lie about the company's founding story."
The bottom line: Founding stories get told by the winners. Or at least by the survivors.
