Eventbrite Doubles Down on Event Discovery, Lands Former eBay Executive as a New Board Member

Lorrie Norrington, a well-regarded veteran tech executive who got her start at General Electric and then Intuit, is joining Eventbrite’s board as an independent adviser. She replaces longtime board member Alan Braverman.

Norrington has had a long run in Web 1.0 marketplaces. She served as CEO of price comparison site Shopping.com and ran eBay’s international division after it acquired Shopping.com in 2005. She eventually became the president of eBay marketplaces, before resigning for personal reasons, which was considered a blow to the company at the time.

Her arrival comes as event ticketing service Eventbrite is looking to expand in Latin America and Asia Pacific. “This is the beginning of a huge market opportunity for experiences that never existed before,” Norrington said in an interview with Re/code. Because Eventbrite creates ways for organizers to reach communities, it can enable new types of events. A spokesperson pointed to trends like color runs, zombie runs and Tough Mudders as examples.

“You would have never thought in 1990 when eBay was starting that you could literally have had the birth of millions of retailers,” Norrington said. “I think the same thing will happen with Eventbrite. You’ll have people who are going to be [event] organizing entrepreneurs.”

Eventbrite is in a particularly good position to push itself as an events discovery engine, the company said. “As early as six months ago you would go to our website and there was not a search bar.” But these days, there’s monthly calendars of events for different cities and ways to filter listings by topic, location and time.

Since it’s the de facto self-serve ticketing choice for organizers of small- and medium-size events, it already has a plethora of regular content across the world — last year alone it processed $1.5 billion in gross ticket sales for attendees in more than 180 countries.

It has the hard part — event collection — taken care of. It just wants to do a better job of surfacing it for people, and that’s where Norrington will come in. “You’re going to see a lot more focus on the front end of the marketplace,” she said.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple reasons that we can't rely only on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on.

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. We can’t do that if we have a paywall.

That’s why we also turn to you, our readers, to help us keep Vox free. If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via