Most people say, 'I can't imagine starting a company with my spouse or we would kill each other.' We were the opposite. We couldn't imagine not working together. So, we started Eventbrite with Renaud Visage, our co-founding CTO. First of all, we didn't have any employees. So, it was just Kevin and I in a little place where you'd have phone calls, and we had dog beds in our office. Those dog beds were where we would take naps because we were bootstrapping the company, so we didn't have a lot of money for much else. And it was a really magical time. I think the vibe of what we were building as a founding team was really rooted in curiosity. We would talk for hours with customers. We were always really acutely observational – others would call it stalking. And so, we would watch and learn and then build more features that would help them do what they were doing. And we just kept growing that way to the point where today, Eventbrite is the second largest trafficked events website in the world. But back then, during COVID, it was really challenging.
In a very short period of time, we went to negative revenue, which I'd never seen before in a public company. So, dramatic action needed to be taken to get us through this. And there was a moment in time when it was all just survival. But I learned so much during that time and one of the first lessons I learned was
Kevin and Julia, welcome to New Economies. It's so awesome to see you both and this is the first husband and wife duo episode we've ever done on the show. So, thanks so much for being here today.
Thank you. Excited to be here.
So, I'm sure we both meet a lot of founders, but I don't meet that many founders who have built companies, have taken companies public, have got married, have stayed in a relationship, have created a family. How have you managed to create a blossoming relationship which has endured for so long?
Well, I think we attribute it to when we were working together, we didn't know how things were going to turn out. And so, we came up with a simple rubric of dividing and conquering, finding each of our strengths and focusing our time and attention on that. It turned out to be perfectly complementary. It's not like that with all couples, but it worked very swimmingly with us.
How did you both meet? What was that first encounter?
We sat next to each other at a wedding. It was my boss, my first boss from MTV. I was her assistant. She married Kevin's classmate from university. And we randomly sat next to each other during the ceremony.
I think I might have switched the placards around because we had started speaking during the ceremony itself. So, when I saw she was at our table, I might have moved it so Julia was next to me.
It was a good move. And it's lasted 20, 25 years. You met in 2003?
So, you both meet and you probably get talking about where life is going to take you next. And you have the idea to start a company in the events space. What was that idea and how did you come up with it?
Well, Julia and I approached it from different angles but arrived at the same conclusion. Maybe you can describe how you saw it initially.
I had been working in television development, not in tech, but I had the fortune of living vicariously through Kevin as he built his second company, Xoom. It was a money transfer business enabled by PayPal, which was revolutionary in democratizing an industry. Through that, I learned about building a company. When we got engaged, I moved to San Francisco and we started talking about what we could do together as an adjunct to Xoom. That became Eventbrite. We were excited about making something possible that wasn't before. Back then, you couldn't sell tickets to an event unless it was Madison Square Garden with a costly contract. Kevin had a distinct vision, and I was trying to keep up.
I would say Julia always saw this – bringing people together around live experiences as an area of commerce with a true social element. You combine that with my perspective on payment areas like Zoom and remittances. Ticketing was an area that hadn't been pursued by large players. A ticket is a virtual good that expires after a short period, like shipping fish. It could be worth $5,000 one day and nothing the next. There were many interesting attributes, and we aspired to cover all categories and sizes of events.
What are the other categories or ideas you were tinkering with outside of events?
Before Stripe, we were the first developers on the Zoom product and the PayPal API. We played with payment enabling groups and paywall enabling sites. Those did okay, but Eventbrite really took off.
It's 2006 and you decide to start building Eventbrite. What did the first 12 months look like?
We didn't have any employees. It was the three co-founders with Renaud Visage. Kevin and I were in a windowless phone closet with desks made of sawhorses and plywood. We had cup noodles and dog beds for naps because we were bootstrapping. It was a natural incubator with other startups. We were curious about event creators and built a product that was better, faster, cheaper. We wanted it to be as easy as Gmail. We tested with Kevin's father, worked the door at events, and talked to customers. That was the foundation of the first iteration of Eventbrite.
Did you find product market fit pretty quickly?
We started modestly. The earliest adopters were tech-related events. We had to unlock each next level with new features.
Were music and sports the main categories that exploded early on?
We didn't focus on one category or geography. We built a product on the PayPal API that was available in many countries. That diffusion created opportunity. We started with tech meetups and let it grow. We were observant and built features based on customer behavior. That's how Eventbrite became the trend forecaster for live experiences.
I remember using the product as a teenager. It was easy and self-serve. What's the hardest part of building a self-serve product?
We spent a lot of time taking friction out of the system for ease of use. The flip side is fraud. Learning from PayPal and Zoom, we built fraud mechanisms to stop bad guys without curtailing good users. That's non-trivial.
In 2016, you reached 10 years. Kevin was CEO for the first decade, then Julia took over. What was that conversation like?
It felt natural. It was time to hand the baton. Moving to chairman was a little sad because I wouldn't be in the day-to-day with Julia, but it was the right move.
The crystal moment was personal for us. Our relationship was founded on working together. It was difficult to not operate the company side by side. But it marked a new chapter. The crucible came four years later with COVID. We are incredibly complementary, and we feel lucky.
How was your first year as CEO?
After the first week, I was mad at Kevin because he made it look easy. He has different processing. I felt the huge responsibility. It took until COVID to do things my way with confidence.
Did the culture change when you became CEO?
We had built the culture together, so it didn't change much. Kevin adds that it became less autistic. I was more careful, which was appropriate for scaling and acquisitions. Having a co-founding team is a huge virtue. It was hard not to be together every day.
