The Daily Dose

Back in September we brought you news on Jumpstarter, a hosting platform that promises to reduce the amount of time it takes developers to create new software. Back then, the Swedish startup was in private beta, but as of today this is officially a public product.

In an nutshell, Jumpstarter sells itself as a “next-generation hosting platform”. It’s all about speed, scalability and ease-of-use. Indeed, Jumpstarter sets up a ready-to-use cloud server for you in a micro-second, which means websites and applications can be good to go in no time. It covers popular frameworks such as WordPress and Drupal.

Additionally, Jumpstarter also lets you quickly clone projects, covering databases, files and source code. Throw into the mix coding collaboration tools and an elastic cloud server that automatically allocates more girth during traffic spikes, and what we have here is a pretty robust toolkit. The core raison d’être of Jumpstarter is to remove the hassle and help coders do what they do best – code.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into making our advanced technology easy accessible through a simple GUI,” explains co-founder Daniel Marklund. “Our overall goal is to combine simplicity, speed and power – all to make life easier for developers.”

The switch was flicked into public beta last week, with more than 2,000 developers signing up in the first five days.

➤ Jumpstarter

Ticketing startup Eventbrite today added a major new feature to its platform with the addition of reserved seating options for ticket sellers.

Previously, Eventbrite only dealt in general admission tickets, but now you’ll be able to sell specific seats for your events. A Web tool allows hosts to drag-and-drop the layout of their venue in order to create seating maps. Once you specify where the focal point in the room is, Eventbrite can automatically calculate where the best seats are.

Eventbrite has kept its pricing the same for reserved seating. It takes a 2.5 percent cut plus 99 cents per ticket, not counting credit card fees. Free events will remain completely free of fees.

With the new feature, Eventbrite takes a substantial step toward challenging existing ticket sellers like Ticketmaster. While Eventbrite has gained adoption among smaller, independent events, its prior lack of reserved seating support held it back from use at larger venues and more formal events.

That’s not to say that Eventbrite’s growth has been stunted. Last year, the company topped $1 billion in gross ticket sales. Free tickets represented an additional 70 percent of its business.

Moving to reserved seating posed a technical challenge for Eventbrite, as each individual seat had to be managed as a separate inventory item. Issues like overselling, seat optimization, and keeping groups together had to be sorted out. Eventbrite says it overhauled its technology on the back-end in order to offer a quick and intuitive interface for seating and improve performance overall.

Ticket sales have traditionally led to terrible experiences for consumers, so it’s great to see a company like Eventbrite pushing for innovation. I’m relieved whenever I see that an event planner has chosen to use Eventbrite, and today’s new reserved seating features should allow it to support a whole new class of events.

See also: Inside the Event Graph: Here’s how Eventbrite helps you find new things to do