A crazy story of scalping tickets to keep his startup dream alive. Austen Allred

You may have heard of Austen Allred, the founder of Lambda School.  But have you heard his story about scalping tickets so he could fix his car and stay in Silicon Valley to build his company?

He originally shared the story on Twitter back on May 22, 2019.

When Austen first moved to Silicon Valley, he was living out of his car and showering at a local YMCA.  One day while driving to the Hacker Dojo to work, his car broke down.  Out of money, he couldn’t afford to pay the $600 to tow and fix the car.

Needed money fast

He saw a billboard for a Stanford Soccer game and wondered if he could make some money scalping tickets.

He started calling and emailing everyone he could find who had posted tickets online. Austen found a guy who had 200 tickets that if weren’t sold, would soon be worth nothing. Austen convinced the guy to send him the tickets and Austen would split the money he made 50/50.

Vegas. The leader of the scalpers.

Showing up the night of the game, Austen found the scalpers and their leader, a guy named Vegas.  He worked a deal with Vegas, selling him discounted tickets for $10-15 each.  Vegas distributed the tickets to his friends and they all spread out on bikes.

With no time for accounting, Austen just kept a huge wad of cash in his pocket.  5 mins after the game started, he was down to selling tickets at $5 a piece. Shortly after that he took a few good tickets and watched the second half of the game.

Not bad for one night

By the end of the night, he had made $1,500.  This gave him what he needed to send half to the original ticket owner and still have enough to pay to fix his car.

It didn’t solve all of his problems, but it did keep him going so he could continue to work on his startup.