Aaron Caradonna, alongside with his brother Ryan, has always had a deep-rooted passion for live events.

According to Aaron, they understand what it means to be a true fan and are disappointed with how event tickets have doubled over the past 5 years reaching a 30% average markup on fees alone, according to a 2023 report from hustle.com.

This led the brothers to their own alternative EQ Tickets, which Aaron describes as a “socially connected live event marketplace.”

“In short, what that means for people is we want to disrupt the ticketing industry, we want to take our expertise and knowledge and background and change it up a little bit,” Caradonna explained. “We’re sick of going to StubHub or your other most hated ticket company and seeing a $50 price and then at checkout, it’s $92.”

EQ Tickets seeks to bring accessibility back to Huntsville as they expand their relationships with local venues to offer the same tickets for up to 30% lower prices than competitors due to a significantly lower markup on ticket prices.

“We knew how to cut the same inventory deal as our competitors so we had the exact same inventory or 99% of the same inventory. The thing that we can do is adjust the markup. Since that’s not our only business line, our markup is extraordinarily low,” according to Caradonna.

Both Aaron and Ryan have prior experience to go along with their idea.

After getting his law degree from Pepperdine Alabama Law School, Aaron practiced law for 10 years at the Huntsville-based Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP where he was able to work with athletes and musicians.

As for Ryan, he currently works as an investment banker, but his background is with ticketing where he worked on tours for Taylor Swift and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

This experience has led to investors like Fred Warren, an early backer of Apple, to invest $2 million into the startup.

“Something that I wanted to emphasize is I’m from Huntsville, but this is VC backed,” he explained. “We went out and raised a few million dollars from the same guys that gave Steve Jobs and Apple their Series A funding check. I wanted to forge my own path because I didn’t really see a lot of this being done in the community. So I’m excited to hopefully put this in front of a local audience and let people see that this national site that has inventory all around is being led by someone that’s in Huntsville, Alabama.”

The website just recently came out of “stealth mode” and has eclipsed six figures in total sales which Aaron described as a “huge benchmark for us.”

To learn more about EQ Tickets, visit the company’s website at EQ.tickets.