FanFeed Co-Founder Cole Rubin: 'Only the Paranoid Survive' in Ticketing

FanFeed co-founder Cole Rubin runs an AI-powered ticketing platform with backing from StubHub co-founder Colin Evans — and he credits much of the company's momentum to being the least technical person in the room.

Rubin describes FanFeed as "a place to see your live-event history, view content, access tickets, see what events your friends are attending and engage more deeply with the things you love." From the seller's side, he says the platform "lets your favorite team, artist or university know as much about your fandom as you know about them." Fans get a living record of their fandom; teams and artists get first-party data to "deliver more personalized experiences and offers."

The core idea is simple: at a certain point, we've all been to more games and concerts than we can remember — and Rubin wants to turn that fog into data.

How did a 'non-techy' build a tech platform?

The original idea came from Rubin's own fandom. As a Baltimore Ravens fan, he wanted answers to questions like: What's the team's record at games I've attended? Which player have I seen score the most touchdowns? How many games have I actually been to?

He and his friends had long talked about knowing their complete history as fans. The breakthrough arrived when he partnered with co-founder Jack Phifer.

"Jack looked at the idea from a technical perspective and realized we could build proprietary technology that could surface those insights automatically," Rubin said. That changed everything. Ask consumers to manually enter years of events and most won't do it. Let them press a button and surface years of memories instantly, and the idea becomes frictionless.

Rubin's lack of engineering skill is, in his telling, a feature. "I know the product vision and where I want the business to go, but I'm not the person who should be engineering it," he said. His job: surround himself with smart people, articulate the vision clearly, and give them ownership to execute. "Problems start when you think you need to be the smartest person in every part of the business." In short, he hires for the gaps he can't fill.

What did selling tickets teach him?

Rubin paid his way through school selling tickets, and his first business built travel packages for fans following their teams on the road. He was the ideal customer. "I understood what the consumer wanted because I wanted the same thing," he said.

That consumer-first lens has survived every pivot since. In direct-to-consumer businesses he asks what he'd pay for as a customer. In B2B, the question becomes: if he were the decision-maker at the client company, what would make his life easier? Same mindset, different buyer.

How does FanFeed pick its investors?

Evans is one of several investors around the company. Rubin says the team deliberately sought domain expertise across technology, digital marketing, sports, music and college athletics.

But expertise alone isn't enough. "The most important thing is having good people with aligned incentives," Rubin said. "No company goes straight up and to the right." He wants investors he can be transparent with during headwinds, not just highlights — the same philosophy he applies to hiring: complement your strengths, fill your blind spots.

Can a startup outrun the big ticketing players?

Rubin's mantra: "Only the paranoid survive." He thinks a healthy amount of fear is useful.

His edge argument rests on speed. Large companies historically carry layers of decision-making that slow them down. AI may change that dynamic, Rubin concedes, but smaller companies can still be incredibly agile.

"An idea by itself is just an idea. Execution is what turns it into a business," he said. "Move quickly, learn quickly and don't be afraid to fail quickly." Big players may eventually enter the space, but first movers who execute relentlessly hold real power while they have it.

The single most transformational moment for FanFeed, Rubin says, wasn't a product pivot — it was finding Phifer. "Finding the right person to build alongside you can change the trajectory of the entire company. For FanFeed, that was the biggest one."