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Students create website for promoting, buying tickets for local events

September 16, 2015
<p>Marketing senior Griffin Goble, left, and computer science junior Sean Ainsley pose for a portrait on Sept. 8, 2015, at Spartan Innovation, 325 E. Grand River, in East Lansing. Ventatti is an online event ticket promoting business. "We decided to start this business to bridge gaps between students and the community," Ainsley said. Treasure Roberts/The State News</p>

Marketing senior Griffin Goble, left, and computer science junior Sean Ainsley pose for a portrait on Sept. 8, 2015, at Spartan Innovation, 325 E. Grand River, in East Lansing. Ventatti is an online event ticket promoting business. "We decided to start this business to bridge gaps between students and the community," Ainsley said. Treasure Roberts/The State News

About a year ago, computer science junior Sean Ainsley realized there was no direct place for students to find out about and buy tickets for events. 

And so he created Ventatti

Ventatti is an event ticketing and promoting website that makes it easy to plan an event from one convenient source. 

The fee is paid when people pay for the tickets and the promoter gets to keep the full value of the ticket sales two days after the event is over.

Ventatti includes live streaming for promoters, free branding and secure ticketing for anyone who signs up. 

The site also has group systems for events dealing with student organizations and in need of student verification. 

“There were tons of event calendars and no one place to promote," Ainsley said. "I just really wanted something locally exclusive to tie it all together." 

In the beginning, Ainsley didn’t know how to get the business up and running and so he contacted MSU’s own Spartan Innovations

Spartan Innovations is a program which provides support for start up businesses and research technologies. They help with the planning, initial financing and assist with promoting the business.

Ainsley also works with psychology senior Michaela Marks and marketing senior Griffin Goble to run the business. 

What sets their business apart from most is that it is exclusive to the East Lansing and MSU communities. 

“Eventually, we’d consider expanding to different communities, but for now, we would prefer to stay in the East Lansing area,” Marks said.

Since the website has been functioning for about a year, the group has been working to promote it and get more users. 

“The website has been up about a year now and it’s interesting to see how it grows and gets better as time goes on," Goble said. "Everything is all about the timing for us now." 

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