I’m convinced Merritt Baer can do anything. His proven ability to analyze his field and to realize what it is missing (and what he can add to it) is astonishing. A mere eight years since graduation, Merritt — a double-major in drama and economics — has now worked as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at a management firm, won a Tony Award for his producing skills on Broadway and most recently launched TodayTix, an app allowing people to purchase professional theater tickets at a discounted price.

From an early age, Merritt was drawn to both the arts and business. Growing up with dreams of one day becoming an actor, Merritt was exposed to business deals through his family’s company in Florida. “I grew up with these seemingly divergent pieces of my life.” Eventually these pieces — theater arts and business — would come together, forming the basis of Merritt’s career.

As he entered Stanford, Merritt states boldly, “I was going to be a double major in econ and drama from day one. It was only really later in my life — my senior year and thereafter — that the two really came together.”

During his undergraduate studies, Merritt discovered a strong passion for both directing and producing. Merritt admits to having “one too many uninspiring directors in a row,” which drove his desire as a “somewhat smart actor” to direct Ram’s Head Theatrical’s spring musicals “Company” and “The Wild Party.”

Shortly thereafter, Merritt realized a lot of what he enjoyed most in directing — “assembling a creative team, working with the director and trying to build their vision” — were the tasks of a producer. He worked with a professor on a course at Stanford entitled “Economics of the Arts,” which discussed strategies for theaters to stay afloat financially including tactical ticket pricing. This course began Merritt’s understanding of how he could combine his passions.

But how did Merritt go from Stanford graduate to one of the youngest Broadway producers in history? It all links back to an old connection. After working in investment banking for a couple of years, Merritt was recruited to work for Viagogo, a startup in London. While visiting New York to see shows, Merritt had lunch with a mentor from a pre-college theater program he attended at Northwestern University. His mentor happened to be working with the Public Theatre on transferring their Shakespeare in the Park production of “The Merchant of Venice,” starring Al Pacino, to Broadway. As his mentor explained the process of raising funds, Merritt remembers thinking he could do exactly what his mentor was describing.

“By the end of the lunch, I had essentially talked myself into co-producing the Broadway transfer of ‘The Merchant of Venice,‘” he said. “I’d raise 10 percent of the capital — which was an exciting yet terrifying thing, since I had never raised a penny in my life before.”

As he began to raise funds, Merritt was up against producers who had 20 years of experience and multiple Tony Awards under their belts. “Quite frankly, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. But you learn one day at a time. You learn one investment after the next.”

“The Merchant of Venice,” with Merritt’s hard work behind it, earned a Tony Award nomination. Since then, Merritt’s production of “The Death of a Salesman” with Philip Seymour Hoffman won a Tony Award and his work with “The Bodyguard: The Musical” received an Olivier Award nomination.

Ultimately, Merritt left his job at Viagogo with an offer to run a new company in New York, but plans fell through and he was soon left without work. “This was two or three months after winning a Tony Award, when I was successful — had a great job, won a Tony Award — [but] two months later, I was back in New York and totally jobless.”

His solution: analyzing the theater industry, realizing it was lacking mobile options for ticket buyers, and creating TodayTix, an online ticketing platform for rush tickets at bargain prices.

When TodayTix first began, Merritt and business partner Brian Fenty hired people to physically make ticket orders at theaters in the business’s name to hand-deliver to customers 30 minutes prior to showtime.

“We met with a lot of skepticism; a lot of theatergoers thought they [heard about] ticketing ideas everyday and very few of them ever [made] it.” Now, two years since starting up, TodayTix sells 3 to 4 percent of all Broadway tickets.

The future of TodayTix looks bright. Currently, it boasts 250,000 users in New York, London, Washington D.C., the Bay Area and Los Angeles, with plans to expand. TodayTix caters to the theater scene of each specific region, selling tickets not only to musicals and plays but also to operas, dance performances and comedy shows.

Merritt’s vision for the company is simple: “TodayTix unites global theater audiences.” Whether you want to see a tour of “Kinky Boots” in Texas, a “Cirque de Soleil” show in Vegas or “Wicked” in New York, TodayTix can make it happen.

“I was an actor who was suddenly sick of acting, fell in love with directing and producing, produced two shows. A job opportunity went back up against the wall, I analyzed the marketplace and said, this is what the industry really needs. And that’s how I got there,” he said.

 

 

Contact Bella Wilcox at belwic ‘at’ stanford.edu.