Julia Hartz
Co-Founder and former CEO, Eventbrite. On 4 shows, 7 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestor@juliahartz ↗LinkedIn ↗eventbrite.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Julia Hartz co-founded the global ticketing platform Eventbrite in 2006 and served as its CEO, leading the company through its public listing on the NYSE in 2018. She previously worked as a television production executive and is an active angel investor.
4shows
7appearances
84statements
20resolved
15supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
18said about them ↓ Everything Julia Hartz said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Hartz: Hypothesis-free customer observation is the key to effortless product experience
“That type of observation of not having a bias towards what you're trying to confirm And not always having a hypothesis that you're trying to prove, but simply observing your customers can yield such great results, and to me is the cornerstone of creating an ef…”
Hartz: Eventbrite processed over 8 million virtual tickets in April 2020
“And then I think April alone, we processed over eight million tickets to events virtually when, you know, many in-person events were not happening.”
Hartz: Online event economics work via higher capacity and lower costs
“While ticket prices Tend to be lower, a bit lower on online events, and we imagine they may have a premium for in-person events once we can gather again in person. Those online events can hold a lot more people, right, at a lower cost, and so it actually works…”
TV series development functions exactly like multi-stage venture capital investing
“And being a development executive is not unlike being a VC, I guess, of several stages. So, you know, you start with seed, where you're cultivating talent, and you're taking a lot of pitches, and then you help to cultivate the idea, and then you get to a place…”
The 2006 ticketing market lacked any consumer-friendly, affordable mid-market platforms
“Basically there was this big void in the market. You know, either you were using checks and cash collected at the door and tracking your attendees on maybe Excel spreadsheets or by hand. Or you were using really expensive kind of dinosaur software on the enter…”
Married co-founders avoided conflict by never working on the same business area
“We never work on the same part of the business at the same time, and we have complementary skills, and we have a set of rules to work through conflict quickly.”
Ticketmaster vertically integrates arenas while Eventbrite operates as a horizontal open platform
“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 that But Eventbrite is a horizontal platform that enables a wide array of …”
Eventbrite pitched 27 venture capital firms in 2008 and received zero checks
“Well, we went and saw 27 firms, and we received 27 no's or not right now. Huh. So we received zero checks. No checks.”
Eventbrite deliberately left its 2009 operating plan with all 27 rejecting VCs
“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, you know, 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 bac…”
Hartz: Eventbrite raised $6.5 million from Sequoia after securing three term sheets
“We were confident enough to say that we were accepting term sheets on a certain date, and, ah, and we received three term sheets, and we raised six and a half million from Sequoia Capital in that round.”
Hartz: Co-founders should never have disagreements or conflict in front of employees
“For any co-founder team, I think it's really important to understand that, you know, to openly debate is one thing, but to disagree or have beef with each other in front of your employees, because it's just not productive.”
Hartz: Eventbrite raised capital when not needed as downturn buffer
“We raised private capital sometimes when we didn't need it because we wanted to ensure that we would have it when, you know, the bottom fell out again.”
Preparing for an IPO forces essential clarity on company strategy and identity
“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 t…”
Julia Hartz: Leaders who cannot handle shareholder pressure shouldn't be public CEOs
“If you can't take the heat of that responsibility, then you absolutely shouldn't be a public company CEO”
Julia Hartz considers complaining about being a public company boring and unoriginal
“I don't spend any time lamenting about being a public company. I think that's so boring and unoriginal.”
Ticketing was an abysmal, unexciting industry when Eventbrite launched
“We want to create a horizontal platform in an abysmal industry. Like ticketing was just not something that people got excited about.”
Eventbrite processed $3B in gross ticket sales in 2017
“So, it's valued at a little over a billion dollars. It's Generating three billion in gross ticket sales this year. We'll sell two hundred million tickets, but two hundred million tickets will be transacted in total on the platform this year by, you know, 800,0…”
Hartz: 98% of Gen Z want real-life brand connections
“Our own research shows that pretty much every Gen Z-er, 98% says that they want to extend their relationship with a product or a story that they love in real life.”
Hartz: Live podcasting shows on Eventbrite grew over 65% this year
“Well, you know, live podcasting shows are up over 65% on the Eventbrite platform this year, and that's really driven in part by what you've built.”
Julia Hartz says speed dating organizers are entirely overhauling their event formats
“So we're seeing these creators who have been in the past matchmakers or speed dating organizers. They're actually changing their format completely.”
Julia Hartz says live event discovery is inherently harder than traditional e-commerce
“The discovery of events is hard because it's not askew. It's an ephemeral thing that happens. You don't go to it alone. So I buy shoes on Instagram post-temp, but I'm not going to go to an event alone, you know, that often post-temp. You have to coordinate wit…”
Julia Hartz says Eventbrite generated negative revenue in March 2020 due to refunds
“We, all of our Tableau dashboards broke. We were generating negative revenue, so more refunds than revenue.”
Julia Hartz notes virtual events reached 90% of Eventbrite listings during the pandemic
“What we saw is virtual events went up to like, 90% of the events on the platform.”
The other half of the tape: Julia Hartz's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 17 times in 8 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 11Kevin Hartz 4Dylan Serota 2
Statements about Julia Hartz, by other people (1)
Serota: Companies should import culture from remote offices, not export HQ culture
“Companies overvalue the culture they have today and undervalue the culture they can evolve into and create in the future. So this was a big lesson for me from Julia hearts at event, right? That culture should not be stagnant or overly preserved. It should evol…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 17
2024 3 mentions in 1 episode
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2020 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: SPACs. What Are They? Why Now? How Do They Change The Venture Landscape? Are They Better Than IPOs & Direct Listings? How Should Founders Think About Them? Kevin Hartz & Troy Steckenrider @ A*
- 20VC: Sequoia's Roelof Botha on His Biggest Lessons Working Alongside Don Valentine, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone, Leading Sequoia's US Business and What Sequoia Do To Retain Their Edge at the Top & The Crucible Moments That Define Startup Success
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2018 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Why Founders Must Use VCs as a Barometer, How to Make Distributed Teams Work Successfully & The Biggest Mistake People Make Early In Their Career with Dylan Serota, Founder @ Terminal
- 20VC: The Right Way For Founders To Think About Capital Efficiency, How To Create A Culture of Continuous Learning & The Secret To Talent Assessment and Optimisation with Mariam Naficy, Founder & CEO @ Minted
- 20VC: How Great VCs Handle Themselves In An M&A Process, Why M&A Has Become The Primary Method of Exit & How The Best M&A Teams Operationalise Their Process with James Loftus, Corporate Development Lead @ Square
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Julia's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder and former CEO, Eventbrite | 4 | 55 | 73% 11/15 | full record on How I Built This → |
 MORE OR LESSLEDGER | Co-Founder and former CEO, Eventbrite | 1 | 14 | 100% 1/1 | full record on More or Less → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and former CEO, Eventbrite | 1 | 9 | 67% 2/3 | full record on 20VC → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Co-Founder and former CEO, Eventbrite | 1 | 6 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Masters of Scale → |