Co-founder of Eventbrite, Eventbrite
Eventbrite: Julia Hartz
In the early 2000s, Julia Hartz was helping develop TV shows for MTV and FX Networks, and seemed headed for a promising career in television. All of that changed in 2003 when she went to a wedding and found herself sitting next to a serial entrepreneur named Kevin. They started dating, and Julia eventually quit her job and joined Kevin in the Bay Area. In 2006 they married, and co-founded the online ticketing service Eventbrite out of a warehouse closet. 14 years after launch, Eventbrite is a publicly-traded company with 1,100 employees and offices around the world. PLUS in our post-script "Ho...
About Julia Hartz
Julia Hartz, co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite, has discussed the company's evolution from a ticketing service to a marketplace for live experiences, which she described as "the Etsy for live experiences." She noted that Eventbrite now focuses on helping event creators market their events and discover events through the platform, calling the shift in relationship with the consumer "the biggest shift." Hartz also reflected on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that the company went from "record high ticket sales to negative revenue in 14 days" and that "something we had spent 14 years building was basically evaporated in the span of two weeks." She described the early days of the pandemic as "very dark, but very definitive," with no "gray moment." Hartz has also spoken about leadership and company-building. She said she "stopped trying to make people happy and stopped worrying about if I was doing a good job or not." Regarding Eventbrite's IPO, she recalled that "everybody said don't do it," but added that the process "forced us to codify who we are and what we're building." She attributed 70% of the company's success to work ethic and focus, and 30% to luck. Hartz expressed a negative view of the current fundraising environment for founders, calling it "a terrible thing" and stating that she does not "envy founders today who have to go out and raise a bunch of money." She also said she believes technology will be "a tailwind for live experiences" but cannot replace "the feeling you get" from in-person gatherings.
Transcript (69 segments)
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Guy Raz36:47
Back in 2008, an investor saying, 'So, are you guys going to be like the new Ticketmaster? Why wouldn't that be a good way to pitch what you were doing?'
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Julia Hartz36:57
Well, it's funny. Everybody has an opinion about a brand that's so well known like Ticketmaster, but I would simplify it as the Ticketmaster strategy is one part of a Live Nation strategy, which is to be vertically integrated into an event. It's large arenas and stadiums that typically serve sports and music, but Eventbrite is a horizontal platform that enables a wide array of small to medium-size businesses and venues and individuals to be able to sell tickets on an open platform. And I think that we even underestimated the effect that could have in scaling something that just didn't really exist. And it's not like when people say something didn't exist, you immediately think of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk who are truly creating something that hasn't actually existed. But it doesn't always have to be rocket science. It's really about how do you make something that people want to do even easier? And that's really what we were coming from. And we were coming from a point of wanting to empower entrepreneurs to make their businesses stronger and there wasn't a solution like Eventbrite at that point.
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Guy Raz38:17
All right. So you go to Sand Hill Road over the course of 3 weeks, you meet with almost 30 VC firms and I'm assuming you were going there expecting or hoping that you get some checks, right?
J
Julia Hartz38:32
Well, we went and saw 27 firms and we received 27 nos or not right now. Huh. So, we received zero checks. No checks.
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Guy Raz38:47
Coming up after the break, the simple strategy that Julia and Kevin used to convince some of those VCs to give Eventbrite another shot and also why the founders later took the company public even though lots of people told them not to do that. Stay with us. I'm Guy Roz and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.
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Narrator39:24
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Guy Raz42:38
Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So, it's the end of 2008 and Julia and her co-founders have just made 27 pitches to VCs and none of them are interested in investing in Eventbrite. But one thing Julia learns is that there are different ways to get rejected.
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Julia Hartz42:56
When people hear our story, it's hard for them to really imagine, you know, 27 nos. The thing I learned back then is it's so important to give a fast no rather than nothing at all because certainly not 27 VCs did not call us and say, 'Hey, you know what? It's not for us for these reasons or not right now, but would love to see this, this, and this.' There was a whole host of VCs who just sort of didn't respond at all. So, I think that was a really good lesson for me to experience that type of rejection and non-rejection rejection to know which one's better.
G
Guy Raz43:37
So, but I'm curious about those rejections, right? Because to some extent, when you meet with investors, you're seeking their approval. If they give you money, it's another way of them saying, 'Yep, we like this idea, we believe in it and here you go.' But when all 27 of them say we're just not ready to do this right now, a part of you feels, and I've had this conversation with other founders, you know, part of you feels like, well, am I wrong? Did that ever cross your mind?
J
Julia Hartz44:07
I'm sure. Yes. I mean, I think I remember us gut-checking whether or not we all three of us had the conviction to keep going because we knew that it was going to be tricky. We weren't out of money like I mentioned. So, what we did was we left our 2009 operating plan with every VC that we met with and that was sort of seen as a little risky because nobody knew what 2009 would hold. And then our plan B was to take a more lean approach to scaling in 2009, go back and see those VCs around the same time in the fall. And we hunkered down. By the way, let us not forget that we had an infant in 2008. I kind of forget that part. There are pictures of us working on our 2009 plan, you know, and she's like in the corner on a playmat. So, I think we probably were also just too sleep deprived and busy to even have time to worry, if that makes sense. And so we just kept going. And thank God we did because 2009 ended up being one of the best years of Eventbrite's history.
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Guy Raz45:25
Why? What happened?
J
Julia Hartz45:26
I think we had a few unlocks. So one thing that happened was the recession was looming and then finally upon us and we started to see people who had lost their jobs start to use Eventbrite to teach their skills to other people in order to make a living. And also social media started to become a real thing. One of the things that happened in 2009 is we started to see Facebook become one of the top 10 drivers of traffic to our site. So we went and did some investigating. We found out that event creators were using Eventbrite to sell tickets, but they would then take all of their event details and republish them into Facebook as a Facebook event and link back to the Eventbrite page to sell the tickets. And so effectively we were the commerce engine and they were using Facebook as the promotion engine. And so we were meeting our event creators and we were solving the friction or taking the friction away and making it easier for them to promote their events on Facebook.
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Guy Raz46:33
I'm curious who, I mean that year when the economy is collapsing and unemployment starts to ratchet up. What kinds of events were people doing? Like would it be somebody who's like I'm an accountant and I'm holding an event to talk about basic accounting and they would just like sell tickets and have people meet at like a church hall or something like that?
J
Julia Hartz46:56
That's exactly right. We had a lot of financial skills courses. I mean just to go on that example, we saw a rise in entrepreneurial type events where folks were selling their independently made goods or teaching yoga certification or networking paid networking events became a big deal. So at that point we had density in the coast regions of the US and then we were starting to light up in London and Melbourne and a few other places around the world but it was not nearly as global as it is today.
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Guy Raz47:39
When you saw the combination of Facebook and this really interesting people losing their jobs and trying to figure out how to become entrepreneurial, host events and whatever. Did you guys have a revenue goal that year? I mean, you said you had a plan for 2009. Do you remember how much revenue you felt like you needed to make that year to meet your goal?
J
Julia Hartz48:02
We always had a revenue goal. So, from the first month that we started working on Eventbrite, we would have our revenue goal up on the whiteboard and every month we would meet in a quasi board meeting to report on our progress against revenue. So, what I do know, while I don't have the exact number for 2009, in my head, I know gross ticket sales was around 10 million. That's total gross ticket sales. That's gross volume. And then derive our fee from that. Roughly speaking, our fee is about $3 per ticket. But our actual revenue, our net revenue was much smaller than that. But we were about break even at the start of 2009. We continued to hire, so we needed to bridge that gap a bit, but I do recollect that we surpassed the plan that we set for ourselves in 2009. We started to pick up steam. So, we went back to not all 27, but probably about 12 of the VC firms that we felt would be good people to talk to and to continue the conversation.
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Guy Raz49:12
So, you went back to some of these VC firms armed with data, showing them that, look, since we last saw you, we've done $10 million in gross ticket sales. And I'm assuming the response was different a year later.
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Julia Hartz49:28
It was. I was surprised by how doing what you said you were going to do, meaning the 2009 plan that we'd left with them at the end of 2008, was a novel idea. Because it was met with a lot of 'wow, you know?' I mean, it really made just that fact alone. Again, doing what you said you were going to do, I think was pretty much all we needed to say. I mean, obviously, there were more questions about what we had learned in that year and the market and future plans for growth, but it was quite impactful.
G
Guy Raz50:05
Uh, what happens? Do you get a check?
J
Julia Hartz50:08
Yeah, it was a quicker process. So I think it was maybe four weeks and we were confident enough to say that we were accepting term sheets on a certain date and we received three term sheets and we raised 6.5 million from Sequoia Capital in that round.
G
Guy Raz50:30
So all right so you have this $6.5 million you can start to hire lots of people quickly I guess.
J
Julia Hartz50:39
Well, when we created the plan, we were going to grow from 30 to 100 people by the end of 2010. And that was breathtaking to me because at least to me, my reference point was 30 is a team, 100 is a company. I mean, there's no denying that 100 people is a company. And we could sit around one large table and eat from a few pizza boxes as 30. And as a hundred, we needed systems and facilities and we needed to like get our act together. And I felt like we were going to inevitably go through a really tough time scaling from 30 to 100 people. And I wasn't sure how we were going to do that and maintain this great culture.
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Guy Raz51:27
Did you I mean, this is more of a like I'm trying to get into your head a little bit. I sort of try to think of myself in that situation like what would I how would I feel and how would I make decisions right and when you were 30 you had this huge responsibility and did you ever have any anxiety over I don't know being a leader?
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Julia Hartz51:53
I mean all the time. You know, I think most human beings have moments of not feeling old enough or prepared enough or experienced enough to be in a place of authority. I think if you're a parent, you feel that way. I think if you're a leader, you feel that way. And I didn't let it get in my way. I think building something from scratch allows you to expand and grow with the progress. That's why when I look at other companies that have had this sort of hockey stick growth or that rocket ship, that would be difficult.
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Guy Raz52:34
I'm wondering, did you and Kevin ever have tension or fights or arguments? I mean, I would imagine that given that he'd run businesses and probably had a way of doing things and I mean that there might have been times where you weren't doing it the way he thought it should be done and was there tension? I would think that would be normal.
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Julia Hartz52:51
There's definitely been tension. I think less than you would imagine. We were very intentional when we started the company and we set a few rules as I mentioned and one of them was if we ever were frustrated or at an impasse, we would stop what we were doing, turn the lights off, and I'm not kidding, lay down on the ground and hold hands and talk about it. That was so ridiculous that it would break the tension and if we could even stop laughing, we would talk through what was really going on. But that was a great mode for us in the very early days when we were scaling the company to 100 and 200 and 300 and he was CEO and I was president. I think we were just really good at not having disagreements in front of people and dealing with that on our own time and we're very strong communicators with each other. And so for any co-founder team, I think it's really important to understand that to openly debate is one thing but to disagree or have beef with each other in front of your employees is just not productive. That's the guiding principle that we've used now for quite some time.
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Guy Raz54:16
Julia, once you guys had a lot of capital to work with, did you start to really take off at that point? Was it growth year after year after year of growth? Because I know in 2012 you hit your 50 millionth ticket sold and then you did a billion dollars in total gross ticket sales that year. The next year was $2 billion. It sounds like that was it. You guys were just on this growth trajectory.
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Julia Hartz54:48
We were off to the races for sure. I mean, again, one of the unique things about Eventbrite is that we haven't had to pivot. We are doing exactly what we intended to do. Lots of things change, new technologies change, but the actual concept is exactly spot-on to what we had intended to build for the event creator community. One of the things that was remarkable for me to observe was the validation of having a Sequoia Capital come in seemingly kind of how easy it was to raise after that with their seal of approval. And I think that we took advantage of that. We raised private capital sometimes when we didn't need it because we wanted to ensure that we would have it when the bottom fell out again.
G
Guy Raz55:38
I mean if we were doing the movie version of Eventbrite at this point, it would be like the next year's 2 billion then 4 billion in ticket sales and then 10 billion ticket sales. 2015 Kevin decides to take a leave as CEO and it was temporary initially. I guess he had a medical condition and then he basically says 'I want to step down' and you become CEO in 2016. At that point, I have to imagine it probably felt like the right natural seamless move for you. Or was any part of you hesitant?
J
Julia Hartz56:18
Um, you know, I wasn't hesitant to step up because it was the right thing for the company. Mind you, we also were dealing with life, right? So there's this duality of doing what's right for the company and also we needed to put Kevin's health first and foremost. And I needed to wear both hats, which was wife and co-founder. And that was a really difficult time. He's great now. I think he's a testament of why it's so important to put your health first. I think that for us, life is very short. While we've been lucky enough to not lose any loved ones too early, to some extent it's a bit of a blur, but it wasn't a joyful time, let's put it that way. So I wasn't stepping into this role with a smile on my face, per se. Maybe it was a brave smile, but behind the scenes, I was terrified.
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Guy Raz57:23
Yeah. So, you step up, you become the CEO. By 2018, your revenues were about $290 million. That year, September that year, Eventbrite goes public. You go public. Was this sort of like, you hear when founders start a company, they say, 'All right, the investors want an exit. It's either got to be a sale or you go public.' Was that the point you reach where your investors needed a return, and so this was a way to do it?
J
Julia Hartz57:56
You know, it was always part of our plan to go public, meaning we wanted Eventbrite to be a public company. And so, this wasn't an agenda that was brought on to us by our investors, but rather our own agenda.
G
Guy Raz58:12
But I'm just curious about going public because that is a different kind of stress. I mean, all of a sudden, it's not just a private company and you're answering to the board and investors. Now it's a publicly traded company with thousands and thousands of shareholders. I've asked CEOs and entrepreneurs who've taken companies public all the time, why would you want that stress? And also you're answering to a whole new constituency now.
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Julia Hartz58:41
Yeah, I have thought about that a lot. To back up for a minute, I don't think I ever once heard in the nine months that we were preparing to go public that going public was a good idea. Everyone said don't go public. But the process of going public was really helpful for us. It forced us to codify who we are and what we're building and why people are buying what we're building and what our strategy is for the future. And it's not as if we weren't doing those things, but I think along the way as you're scaling and building and evolving, that can get a little bit fuzzy around the edges. And I loved the crispness that was the output of the work that we did on the IPO and the impact that had on the company. And so when we did go public, a lot of what's happened to us in the last year is basically what everybody was talking about, but it hasn't caused any regret.
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Guy Raz59:43
I want to add some context because you mentioned what happened over the past year and we're having this conversation at the end of 2019. And I think the day that your stock debuted was $23. I think it ended that day at like almost $34. It was a great first day. And today the stock price is down to a little under $20 a share. And that's the question I have, right? There's a whole visibility that is stressful, right? You've got shareholders saying, 'Hey, why is the stock down? What's going on? I bought it for $35 and now it's at $19.' And what do you say?
J
Julia Hartz1:00:24
Believe me, one of the most painful situations in my life has yet to be resolved, which is this wonderful man who works at the hotel next to our office. He's such a kind man and he bought into our IPO, bought stock. And so I get to see him every day and I'm visually reminded of the loss that he incurred. And that for me is a great motivator. But I look at it as it's my responsibility to grow the value of Eventbrite and if you can't take the heat of that responsibility then you absolutely shouldn't be a public company CEO. And I think I'm always learning something new and certainly this year has been a year of learning lots and lots of new things, but I'm not hating the game. It's really something that we chose eyes wide open and so I don't spend any time lamenting about being a public company. I think that's so boring and unoriginal.
G
Guy Raz1:01:26
How many people work for Eventbrite now around the world?
J
Julia Hartz1:01:30
Roughly 1,100.
G
Guy Raz1:01:31
Wow. So that's a serious number of people that you're the CEO, you're the boss. It seems to me that you are probably better structured to withstand economic headwinds which everyone says is going to happen because you've already been there because you're not making a product that people buy. It's something that people will need whether the economy is good or bad.
J
Julia Hartz1:02:01
Well, I think we benefit from the innate human behavior of gathering and the fact that we've been doing it for thousands of years for sure and the global nature of live experiences. I would say that where I worry is we have seen really bad times but we were very small back then. And my responsibility to a million event creators and writers and thousands of shareholders is an order of magnitude larger than the responsibility we had in 2008 and 2009 when it was just us and a few folks. So it's different and certainly I don't think Eventbrite is completely impervious to another big economic meltdown, but I feel pretty confident that we'll be able to weather the storm, whatever the storm, whatever shape it may be or category.
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Guy Raz1:03:00
Yeah, you know, you left your job in 2005 and here you are, a public company, 1,100 employees, valued at $1.8 billion. How much of this do you think is because you just really are smart and worked really hard and how much of it do you attribute to just being lucky?
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Julia Hartz1:03:21
I would say that 70% of this was work ethic and staying focused and I would say 30% is about luck and whether that's luck of meeting the love of my life and co-founder and co-parent back on that fateful day in May of 2003 at a wedding or the luck of finding really wonderful people to build this company. I think there's a lot of fortune that comes to people and it's about what they do with it. And the other way around too, when you hit hard times or you feel unlucky, you have to put it all into perspective. And there's always something to feel lucky for.
G
Guy Raz1:04:09
That's Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite. Eventbrite has 14 offices around the world and the platform powers millions of events each year, which is kind of impressive. But for Julia's kids, the thing that makes their mom truly impressive is what she did in college working on the set of Friends.
J
Julia Hartz1:04:29
My daughter, my 11 and a half year old, who's watching Friends like it's a show that she just discovered to watch. My husband said, 'Did you know mommy worked on the set of Friends?' And yeah, so now that is one of those moments where I feel kind of cool with her.
G
Guy Raz1:04:46
Now I'm like, wow.
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Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, our story starts with Tommo Delaney, who for 20 years had a dream job in the fashion industry. He traveled the world, hung out on beaches with glamorous models, went to lots of cool parties. But around 2010, Tommo was ready to walk away. He said, 'I really reached a point where I thought there's more to life than standing in a studio listening to 12 people discuss which pair of shoes should be put with that dress.'
And at that point, what Tommo wanted to do more than anything else was to just be a dad, to stay at home with his kids in New York. So he did. And he loved everything about his new life except meal times because both of his kids were super picky eaters. Tommo said, 'I spend my time looking at the kids food options in Whole Foods, wondering whether there's anything on those shelves that they would eat.'
Tommo would sometimes talk about his meal time struggles with an older friend named Peggy. And one morning, Peggy had an idea for him.
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Tommo Delaney1:08:22
She said, 'I was watching Shark Tank last night, and two women successfully pitched an idea for neon colored edible cookie dough, and it was full of artificial colors and flavors.' And she said, 'So, I started to think about what would be a healthier version of this. Kids respond to color. How do we get them to respond to food by color, but food that's healthy?'
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Guy Raz1:08:41
Within a day, Tommo and Peggy came up with an idea to take fruit and pulverize it into brightly colored purees, kind of like the consistency of syrup, but without all the sugar.
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Tommo Delaney1:08:53
You know, we immediately thought the yellow is going to be peach, the red's going to be strawberry, and the blue is going to be blueberry.
G
Guy Raz1:08:58
Their idea was to put the pureed fruit into these squeezable tubes, and then kids could paint with it onto their food. It is on one level a paint set, even though ultimately it is just a condiment aimed specifically at children.
But remember, Tommo's only professional experience up to that point was in the fashion industry.
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Tommo Delaney1:09:17
We had no idea how to get into the food industry, and we didn't know that we needed a co-packer. I didn't know we needed a food scientist. I was making this stuff in my kitchen, literally buying pounds of organic fruit from the local health food store and pureeing it in a Cuisinart.
G
Guy Raz1:09:30
And Tommo's first big challenge was getting the puree to the right consistency so it would work as paint, not too thick and not too runny. So eventually through a connection, he found a food scientist to help him come up with a formula.
T
Tommo Delaney1:09:44
And he was sending me samples in unrefrigerated boxes. I distinctly remember a very hot day I got a box from FedEx from him. I opened it and it was full of these little Tupperware pots and he'd mixed the fruit puree 50/50 with coconut oil and it was slopping around like salad dressing. I thought, 'This is a disaster. My god, what is going on here?'
G
Guy Raz1:10:06
But within a few months, Tommo found another food scientist who used some natural additives to get the consistency they needed. And then with some donations from friends and family, Tommo found a factory in Canada to put the puree into tubes. He called it Nashi food paint. And finally, he was ready to test it.
T
Tommo Delaney1:10:26
What we did was just rely on friends. We relied on Dot's friends from school and their parents to say, 'Would you video your kids drawing with this stuff and tasting this stuff?'
G
Guy Raz1:10:37
And that first group of kids liked the naturally sweet taste of the fruit. And as you might expect, they really liked drawing on their food.
T
Tommo Delaney1:10:44
Lots of smiley faces, lots of eyes, lots of smiles, sun made of peaches.
G
Guy Raz1:10:48
So at this point, a contact in the food industry had given him a list of 31 buyers at a national grocery chain. So Tommo picked up the phone and made that very nerve-wracking first call.
T
Tommo Delaney1:10:59
And I said, 'Hi, it's Tommo from Noshi and I'm calling about food paint. I was wondering whether you'd got the sample.' And she said, 'There was a pause on the line. And she said, 'Yeah, I did.'' It kind of went downhill from there. She said, 'I don't really understand the idea behind it. I don't really understand the execution. I'm not sure about the packaging.' And she just went on and on and my heart was sinking lower and lower.
G
Guy Raz1:11:23
Anyway, Tommo eventually got into some stores, but about 3 years went by where he did not get a lot of traction with Nashi. But then just last year, he was at a food expo and met a guy from Walmart. And from that meeting, he eventually got the food paint into 176 Walmarts across the country. It did $55,000 in sales last year, and by next year, Tommo is hoping to turn a profit. Tommo said, 'Sometimes it's felt like I've been fighting my way up a very steep hill in the middle of a rainstorm in the pitch darkness and there's trees blowing down the hill towards me and driving rain, but I'm still climbing the hill.'
That's Tommo Delaney, the founder of Nashi for Kids. To hear more about it or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, how I built this.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org.
And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibtnpr.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's @howibuiltthisorg. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Remine Arabie. Thanks also to Candace Lim, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, Jeff Rogers, and Sequoia Carillo. Our intern is Rainey Tol. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This.