When Live Nation and Groupon teamed up to launch a discount ticket site called GrouponLive, they may not have anticipated that a new Houston-based company called Ticketometer would take the idea of crowd-sourcing concert tickets a step further.

While GrouponLive offers discounts to concerts and sporting events where demand is soft, Ticketometer takes the innovative approach of selling tickets to yet-unbooked events.

Bands can use the site to "book" a date and a city for a concert that will only occur if a minimum number of tickets are sold. If enough fans buy tickets, a venue gets booked for the show. If the concert doesn't work out, they get their money back.

We spoke to founder Jaron Lukasiewicz, an i-banker, Rice grad and adopted Houstonian, about how the idea came about.

Lukasiewicz says that after three years in banking, he was weighing his options and considering getting his MBA when he had an epiphany. "I was talking to my friend who was [going to get her MBA] at Stanford and I was like, I need an idea. Twenty minutes later I was like, 'Groupon for concerts," half-joking, but it was actually a pretty interesting idea."

Lukasiewicz assembled a team that includes his brother, some banking buddies and a few other guys spread between Las Vegas (where the Lukasiewiczs are from), Austin and Houston.

"Within the first week we worked a lot of the kinks out — the biggest one being, how do we not screw over venues? How do we convince venues to give artists these free options to play? If they back out, the venue gets screwed. That's when we came up with the idea that the artists sell tickets and then book the venue."

Lukasiewicz says the Ticketometer system benefits every party involved in putting on the concert. "It gives artists all this leverage that they've never had with venues," he says. "They can approach with 200 tickets sold; our idea completely changes that conversation."

The system also gives artists the opportunity to gauge interest in advance and try out cities they might not have played before.

Venues, in turn, are guaranteed a minimum turnout, and fans can conceivably influence where their favorite bands tour and when they play.

"People buy tickets just as if they were buying tickets for any other concert, the only difference is the venue is TBD," Lukasiewicz says.

It's a system that could particularly benefit small up-and-coming bands and small venues.

"It's cool because the fans make it happen," Lukasiewicz says. "There are other sites out there where fans vote for a band to come to their city, problem is, there's no economic mechanism behind it. It doesn't mean they're going to buy a ticket, and it especially doesn't mean they're going to buy a ticket August 26th."

The company will take a service fee for each ticket sold, but it won't take a cut of overall proceeds. That means the artist keeps 100 percent of the proceeds from their ticket sales, and setting up a potential concert date is free.

"It's risk-free," Lukasiewicz says. "You set up a show and if it doesn't happen, the money gets returned to the fans. If you play the show, you make all the proceeds you sell the tickets for."

Perhaps most intriguing — at least to me — are the site's possibilities beyond selling out small shows. Exclusive boutique concerts are another possibility, since the artists can control the number of tickets sold and the price point. Think Cut Copy and Ghostland Observatory playing to a crowd capped at 100 at Fitzgerald's, all managed via the Ticketometer site.

The site is in beta, but fully functional. Follow the new venture on Twitter at @Ticketometer or stay up-to-date via the company Facebook page.