J. Michael Cline, the co-founder of Fandango and a number of different startups over his multi-decade profession, died after falling from a Manhattan lodge, New York’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Info tells TechCrunch.
The New York Police Division responded to 911 calls from the Kimberly Lodge, a 30-story lodge on fiftieth road in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday morning. Upon arrival, “officers discovered an unconscious and unresponsive male with accidents indicative of a fall from an elevated place,” the Deputy Commissioner mentioned in an announcement emailed to TechCrunch. Cline fell from the twentieth story of the lodge, based on The New York Instances. Emergency medical companies responded and pronounced the person useless shortly after arrival, and an investigation stays ongoing. Police later recognized the person as James Michael Cline, 64-year-old resident of Palm Seaside, Florida.
Cline co-founded Fandango, the favored on-line ticketing firm that revolutionized how Individuals bought film tickets, alongside his chief working officer Artwork Levitt in 1999, based on his LinkedIn web page.
After a decade-long battle with MovieTickets.com in the course of the 2000s, Fandango emerged because the winner of the web film ticketing house. Cline pioneered a digital empire by promoting film tickets on-line, charging processing charges and promoting on-line adverts to show a revenue. Fandango eliminated the necessity for folks to attend in lengthy strains at field places of work, and paved the best way for the $37 billion on-line ticketing trade.
He left the corporate in 2011, roughly 4 years after the corporate was acquired by Comcast. Some early buyers within the on-line ticketing service had been Common Atlantic and TCV.
Cline was additionally managing companion of Accretive, a enterprise capital agency he based in 1999. He constructed startups all through his profession, together with R1 RCM, Accumen, Accolade, Everspring, Dresr and Insureon. Beginning in 2018, Cline served as the manager chairman on the enterprise agency Juxtapose, which invests in expertise companies. Throughout his time there, Cline loved investing in healthcare firms, based on his workers web page. A few of Juxtapose’s portfolio firms embody Have a tendency, Nectar and Nice Jones.
Accretive, Juxtapose and Fandango didn’t instantly reply to TechCrunch’s request for remark.