Test your nerd knowledge. Dec. 13, 2022
- What is the name of the popular ticketing platform, launched in 2009, that enables users to buy and sell tickets for live sports, concerts and theater events?
- What networking device, used every day in today’s computer connectivity, was invented in 1976 by computer engineer Ginny Strazisar?
- What Australian software company was founded by “accidental billionaire” Mike Cannon-Brookes in 2002?
And here are the answers:
- Answer: SeatGeek. SeatGeek was founded by Russell D’Souza and Jack Groetzinger at DreamIT Ventures, an early-stage startup accelerator program, in 2009. The company is based in New York City and has over 400 employees. Originally launched as a source for secondary ticketing, it now provides both primary and secondary sources for ticketing. Since its humble beginnings, SeatGeek has forged major partnerships with Ashton Kutcher’s A-Grade Investments, as well as Major League Soccer in the U.S., English Premier League Football in the UK, and Jujamcyn Theaters, its first partnership for Broadway theater ticketing. In 2020, SeatGeek was named one of the “17 hottest brands in influencer marketing” by Insider.com, and its president, Danielle du Toit, was named “Gamechanger of the Year” by Sports Business Journal.
- Answer: Router. Ginny Strazisar was working for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) during the “bread truck” experiments taking place in San Francisco in 1979. Their work was crucial in the development of TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), and after a year of preparations, Strazisar revealed the gateway software she had written, which paved the way for the type of routers that power today’s internet. Fifteen years later, the TCP/IP technology that she had created became the dominant standard worldwide for internetworking systems.
- Answer: Atlassian. Looking more like the drummer in a jam band than a tech entrepreneur worth $30 billion, Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes is infamous for saying, “Most days I feel like a fraud. Like I don’t really know what I’m doing.” While this show of vulnerability is rare among the titans that dominate tech culture, Atlassian’s success tells an entirely different story. Basically a tech firm that serves other tech firms, Atlassian develops products for software developers and project managers that allow collaboration and agile organization practices. Their primary offering, Jira Software, allows users to “break the big ideas down into manageable chunks across teams with user stories, issues, and tasks.” Its global headquarters is located in Sydney, Australia, the same city where Cannon-Brookes once rented a tiny office for his new start-up in 2002. Its U.S. headquarters is in San Francisco. Atlassian employs almost 9,000 people.