Eventbrite may look like a company on the verge of an IPO, but its latest bit of financing shows it’s quite content to stay private.
Eventbrite has raised a fresh $60 million in funding, thanks to T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global. While it’s a bit strange that a late-stage company like Eventbrite is still accepting financing, the tepid IPO market has made staying private an increasingly attractive option.
The funding, which brings Eventbrite’s total to $135 million, will help the company expand its international footprint, improve mobile presence, and hire more talent.
The company’s sales so far have been pretty good — to say the least. To date, Eventbrite it has sold roughly $1.5 billion in ticket sales — $600 million of which came in 2012 alone.
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All of that growth, coupled with the hiring of former Shutterfly exec Mark Rubash as its new chief financial officer, has added fuel to the Eventbrite IPO speculation fire. But don’t tell that to CEO Kevin Hartz, who has stressed again and again that Eventbrite is taking its journey to the public world slow.
“This gives us flexibility in setting the timeline for a later IPO on our schedule,” Hartz told the Wall Street Journal.
Eventbrite’s IPO is, of course, inevitable — but this latest bit of funding shows that the company is content to take things slow.
