Feb 17, 2020 · 1h 4m · how-i-built-this
Eventbrite: Julia Hartz
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of NPR's How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Eventbrite co-founder and CEO Julia Hartz about leaving her Hollywood television career to bootstrap a self-service online ticketing platform alongside her husband, Kevin Hartz. The conversation explores how the company democratized live events, overcame 27 venture capital rejections during the 2008 financial crisis, and scaled into a publicly traded global enterprise.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 31.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 2.1 Guest teaching 1.3 Guest disagreement 0.3 Guy pushing back 0.4
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 54:20 Refusing to lament public company status
Julia rejects the common founder trope of complaining about public markets, bluntly calling executive lamentation 'boring and unoriginal.'
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 52:55 Directly challenging stock price declineGuy presses Julia with exact stock trajectory data, asking how she handles disappointed retail shareholders when the stock drops from $34 to under $20.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:14 Clarifying horizontal platform vs TicketmasterWhen Guy asks why Eventbrite didn't just pitch itself as the new Ticketmaster, Julia systematically explains the difference between vertical stadium integration and horizontal open self-serve platforms.
Guy holds their own ▶ 52:47 Citing debut versus current share price dataGuy demonstrates financial command by quoting Eventbrite's debut price, peak first-day valuation, and current discounted trading range to anchor his line of questioning.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| How I Built This Live Shows Announcement | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host monologue introducing live tour dates, setting up the framing of market moats and Ticketmaster, and introducing Julia Hartz. | |
| College at Pepperdine and Friends Internship | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Julia shares her early college years at Pepperdine, financial aid hurdles, and landing an internship on the set of Friends in an amicable storytelling format. | |
| MTV Series Development and Witnessing Jackass | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia discusses transitioning to MTV development and witnessing the birth of Jackass, drawing an analogy between TV development and venture capital seed investing. | |
| Television Development at FX Networks | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy charts Julia's rising executive trajectory at FX Networks, and Julia tells the story of meeting Kevin at a wedding reading. | |
| Navigating Long-Distance and Glimpsing Tech Disruption | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Julia describes navigating long-distance with Kevin, sensing tech disruption on traditional cable media, and turning down an offer at Current TV to build a company with Kevin. | |
| Ideation and Moving into the Warehouse Closet | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Julia recounts giving up her 42nd-floor Century City executive office to push sawhorses into a windowless warehouse closet in San Francisco. | |
| Bootstrapping in the Potrero Hill Startup Warehouse | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia outlines the humble warehouse setup in Potrero Hill with 12 startups and identifies the massive void in SMB event ticketing. | |
| Recruiting CTO Renaud Visage and Launching Eventbrite | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia details bringing in CTO Renaud Visage and using tech bloggers hosting meetups as the initial MVP tester group to formulate the create, promote, and manage model. | |
| Pricing Model and Early Geographic Expansion | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia explains their fee structure of charging only for paid tickets, early geographic expansion via speed dating in NY, and an unexpected massive free salsa congress in Mexico City. | |
| Pitching 27 Venture Capital Firms on Sand Hill Road | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Guy asks why pitching Eventbrite as the new Ticketmaster would not be effective; Julia schools him on why vertical integration for arenas is completely different from a horizontal self-serve platform. | |
| Mid-Show Break and Sponsor Notice | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Mid-roll transitions into a discussion on processing 27 venture capital rejections, the value of a fast no, and leaving their 2009 operating plan behind. | |
| 2009 Growth Factors: Recession Economy and Facebook Traffic | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia breaks down how the 2008 recession created a wave of entrepreneurial skill-sharing events and how Facebook events acted as an organic promotional funnel. | |
| Securing Series A Funding from Sequoia Capital | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Julia describes returning to Sand Hill Road after hitting their revenue goals, securing term sheets, and closing a Series A led by Sequoia Capital. | |
| Scaling Company Headcount and Navigating Leadership Anxiety | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy asks Julia about leadership anxiety and imposter syndrome when scaling the company headcount from 30 to 100. | |
| Strategies for Husband-and-Wife Co-founder Harmony | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Julia shares practical and humorous conflict resolution methods she and Kevin used, including lying on the floor and avoiding public co-founder friction. | |
| Julia Hartz Transitions to Eventbrite CEO | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Julia discusses taking over as CEO amid Kevin's health concerns and explains their deliberate decision to go public to crystallize company strategy despite universal warnings against it. | |
| Confronting Market Realities and Public Shareholder Pressure | 5 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Guy presses Julia on Eventbrite's falling share price from $34 to under $20 and public market pressure; Julia acknowledges the weight of retail investors losing money but firmly refuses to lament being a public CEO. | |
| Evaluating Success: Work Ethic Versus Luck | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Julia weighs work ethic (70%) against luck (30%), followed by the 'How You Built That' segment featuring Tomo Delaney and Noshi food paint. |
Statements from this episode (33)
Raz: Eventbrite is a public company with nearly $2B market cap
“Today, 14 years since it was founded, Eventbrite is a publicly traded company With a market cap of nearly two billion dollars.”
Hartz: Answering the Friends set phone was the most terrifying job of her life
“And it was still today the most terrifying job I've ever had of my life, because if you have the set phone number for friends, you're probably not someone who's super patient about who you're looking for.”
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…”
Hartz: Xoom operated out of a bathroom closet in SoMa loft
“They worked literally from this closet that was off the bathroom in his loft in Soma”
Hartz: Kevin Hartz left Xoom because he did not want to run a mature financial firm
“Zoom was about five years old at the time, and they finally reached a point where it was clear that they were on their way to becoming a grown-up financial services company, and Kevin was not interested in being the CEO of a financial services company.”
Hartz: Eventbrite focused on human experiences rather than ticketing industry mechanics
“One of the things was about this very simple transactional platform to sell tickets to any kind of event, and it was really the conversation about why we would go and approach ticketing Was much, much less about the industry and more about the notion that expe…”
Eventbrite spent less than $250,000 to operate during its first two years
“We spent less than a quarter of a million dollars in the first two years of Eventbrite being up and running and operating.”
Hartz: Eventbrite Never Had to Pivot From Its Original 2006 Strategy
“One of the most remarkable things that has happened in this journey is that we imagined Eventbrite would be what it is today, and that's not because we're clairvoyant. There's a lot of luck that goes into not having to pivot or to completely change your busine…”
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…”
Tech bloggers and tough critics make the ideal MVP test group
“And I can't imagine a better user group, sort of tech bloggers and critics to test your product out on.”
Hartz: Eventbrite operated with just three founders for two full years
“And we did that for two full years. It was just the three of us.”
Eventbrite monetized via 2.5% plus $0.99 per ticket, leaving free events free
“So we decided to charge a per paid ticket fee of two and a half percent plus 99 cents, and we decided to not charge for free tickets.”
Eventbrite's median ticket price has consistently remained around $40 historically
“I mean, it's interesting that the median ticket price on Eventbrite is around 40 dollars, so it's actually higher than you would think. You know, it's always been within that range, and so there were a lot of five dollar ticket events, and there were a few, yo…”
Hartz: Early Eventbrite Handled a 100,000-Person Salsa Congress in Mexico City
“I'll never forget there was a 100,000 person free salsa congress in Mexico City that happened on Eventbrite when we had no business Ticketing. A 100,000 person event.”
Julia Hartz: Eventbrite Ran on Under $1M Angel Round Until 2008
“We raised a round of friends and family money, basically an angel round, less than a million dollars. And that took us until 2008, and we had maybe two employees, two or three employees who had joined us. And then we decided to go raise our first round of inst…”
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.”
Hartz: Investors should give founders a fast 'no' rather than ghosting
“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, and this…”
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: Facebook became a top 10 traffic driver for Eventbrite in 2009
“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.”
Eventbrite achieved roughly $10 million in gross ticket sales in 2009
“What I do know, while I don't have the exact number for 2009 in my head, I know gross ticket sales was around ten million.”
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.”
Julia Hartz: Building from scratch enables founders to grow into leadership
“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 just that rocket ship, that would be difficult.”
Hartz: Eventbrite co-founders resolved early impasses by holding hands on the floor
“We set a few rules, as I mentioned, and one of them was if we ever were frustrated or had 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.”
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.”
Julia Hartz: Taking Eventbrite public was founders' original agenda, not investor pressure
“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, you know, our own agenda.”
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.”
Hartz: Eventbrite will weather a major economic downturn
“Certainly I don't think Eventbrite is completely impervious to another, you know, big economic meltdown, but I feel pretty confident that, that we'll be able to weather the storm.”
Hartz: Eventbrite's Success Is 70% Work Ethic and 30% Luck
“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, you know, 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 …”