Cole Rubin on Building FanFeed and Outpacing Ticketing Giants

The platform functions as a digital scrapbook for event-goers, tracking statistics like team records at attended games or total player touchdowns witnessed. Rubin realized that for the concept to succeed, it had to be frictionless; manual entry was a non-starter. The breakthrough arrived when he partnered with co-founder Jack Phifer, who provided the technical architecture required to automate the surfacing of these memories at scale.

Rubin credits his success to a consumer-first philosophy honed during his early days selling travel packages for sports fans. By prioritizing the user experience, he has translated that mindset into a B2B strategy, focusing on what decision-makers at client companies actually need to simplify their workflows. This approach extends to his recruitment strategy, where he prioritizes surrounding himself with experts who fill his personal blind spots rather than attempting to micromanage technical execution.

Addressing the threat of established industry players, Rubin leans on the mantra that only the paranoid survive. He views a startup’s agility as its primary weapon against the bureaucratic layers of larger competitors. While he admits that execution is the ultimate differentiator, he maintains that securing the right co-founder was the singular pivot point that transformed his initial vision into a viable, growing business.