Ticket-selling apps have become increasingly popular in recent years as the world moves online. Typhoons like StubHub, SeatGeek and Ticketmaster control much of the industry, but those sites usually don’t, if ever, include student tickets. A student at the University of Iowa, junior Brady Stein, co-founded a new company to enhance the industry. 

After watching and experiencing many failed ticket transactions over social media, Stein and a few friends got together and launched SeatStock. This group included fellow junior and co-founder Josh Cohen, who helped lead the project. 

“We finally launched it in August,” Stein said. “We basically decided to make a better way to buy and sell tickets … We just realized that there’s no good way to buy and sell them besides GroupMe, Facebook, Snapchat. But all of those ways didn’t have protection.”

Stein emphasized that the protection and safety of SeatStock are the website’s most valuable features. After he got scammed out of a $150 ticket to an Iowa vs. Iowa State game freshman year, he knew he wanted to change the process for everyone. 

Stein and Cohen had experience in the field, having previously sold sneakers on StockX. This was their inspiration for SeatStock and what they modeled the website after. Protecting the buyer/seller, verifying the tickets and eliminating scams were top priorities for them, and the website works. 

SeatStock has sold football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball tickets this year, with a similar system to StockX. If someone needs an item, an immediate sale can go through when listing a ticket. A seller can also put a ticket up for auction within 48 hours of a game, allowing the ticket to go to the highest bidder. 

For a group of students with limited resources, the SeatStock website is fully operational. Cohen and Stein are part of a four-man executive team. Brandon Egger graduated from the University of Iowa in 2023 and is the chief technology officer who built the website. Junior Adam Hasan rounds out the co-founders and is the chief financial officer at SeatStock. 

However, a four-person team wasn’t enough; they needed more help. The group reached out to friends at other schools to help raise awareness of the product, and the University was one of the first places they looked. Dylan Josephson, junior in Engineering, was an old friend of Stein’s and became the University’s campus launch intern.

“I’ve got a team of ambassadors that I manage and make sure we’re providing a bunch of outreach,” Josephson said. “I think this opportunity right now, of us being in college, is perfect for the audience and the market that we’re looking at.”

Boosting the brand started with a nice walk around the fraternity house. Josephson met with his brothers and showed them the website and its features to encourage them to use it for transactions. However, he needed to go bigger, and the dining halls were where Josephson thought he could land the biggest audience.

“We started doing some tabling over at (Ikenberry Dining Center),” Josephson said. “We had some flyers, which had a little discount code on them. We put out free doughnuts or energy drinks, and pretty much, it just gets people to recognize the idea.”

The company has grown immensely since launching in August. Josephson said that around 12 guys are helping out in Champaign alone. Awareness continues to be the brand’s biggest test now, but events like the corn-eating competition SeatStock held at an Iowa football tailgate in the fall continue the outreach in a big way.

“We worked with some of the biggest nonprofits in Iowa,” Stein said. “We got members from every fraternity to eat corn in a race, and the winner got a prize from us. It was a good donation to their organization for around 2.5k (dollars). We’d definitely like to do something at Illinois next year.”

Illinois is one of seven schools that SeatStock has launched at, and the website has provided tickets for games all season. It has already sold multiple tickets for the men’s basketball finale on March 7. No. 20 Purdue (19-9, 11-6) comes to Champaign for an end-of-season battle with postseason seeding on the line, and students are exchanging tickets to the big game. 

Stein says that next steps include expanding the business to more schools and continuing to enhance technology. While it is just a website now, he mentioned that they will launch an app in the future. 

As for sticking with the business, Stein and Josephson have loved the experience. Neither student can see himself leaving SeatStock as of now, and both are looking forward to the future. Once they graduate in 2026, it will become a full-time gig, allowing students to maneuver the ticket process more easily than those before them.  

@benfader7

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