Julia Hartz, Co-Founder and CEO of Eventbrite

Company Metrics & Scale

• Eventbrite powered 4 million events globally last year.
• The platform sold over 300 million tickets in the same period.
• 98% of event creators on the platform self-sign up without sales intervention.

Founding & Leadership Context

• Julia Hartz co-founded Eventbrite in 2006 with husband Kevin Hartz; they met in 2003 at a wedding.
• Julia's prior career spanned 5.5 years in media, including work on MTV's Jackass and leadership at FX Networks.
• Kevin Hartz previously co-founded Zoom (XOOM), an international remittance company, and was an early seed investor in PayPal.
• Kevin's background focused on payment processing and scalable platforms; Julia's on media and consumption trends.
• Co-founder Renaud Visage joined early, serving as the engineering lead alongside Julia (marketing/customer service/finance) and Kevin (product).

Early Strategy & Bootstrapping

• The company was bootstrapped by the three co-founders for two years.
• Early adopters were primarily tech bloggers who hosted meetups; this group provided high-impact feedback due to their critical nature.
• The first non-Silicon Valley customer was an East Coast speed dating host, proving the model crossed geographical and category boundaries.
• SneakerCon (founded 2009) was an early power user, now hosting 30 events annually with over 100,000 attendees globally.
• The core value proposition involves a self-service platform converging technology and media to enable "experiential" live events.

Fundraising & Capital Formation

• In 2008, the company faced 27 rejections during their first institutional raise attempt due to the global financial crisis.
• They left business plans with investors with a commitment to return the following year, which investors respected upon seeing growth in 2009.
• Sequoia Capital was selected from three term sheets received in late 2009 after a successful initial growth year.
• Follow-on funding rounds became larger and easier to secure compared to the initial 2008 round.

IPO & Public Market Transition

• The IPO process forced the codification of the company's narrative, utilizing event creator stories as the primary marketing framework.
• The roadshow involved extensive travel, with the CEO noting frequent landing delays.
• Hartz views the IPO as a mechanism to define mission and values clearly rather than a source of stress.
• The company has recently faced "fortitude" challenges typical of newly public entities, described as a "roller coaster" with recovery from operational setbacks.
• Hartz tracks customer interaction time meticulously, currently dedicating upwards of 30% of her weekly schedule to speaking with customers.

Corporate Culture & Operations

• Hartz advises against emulating specific CEOs or companies, noting that deifying founders ignores the broader context of their success.
• Culture building was a deliberate focus starting around the third year of operations, prioritizing core values over rapid scaling.
• For the past six years, the company has actively hired talent outside of San Francisco to build a fully distributed, globally inclusive workforce.
• The distributed model aims to tap into diverse talent pockets and optimize investment across global markets.
• Hiring methodology starts abstractly by defining the customer problem, determining necessary skills, and then matching attributes, rather than targeting specific names early.

Investor Relations & Public Performance

• Hartz dedicates 15% to 20% of her time to investor activities, maintaining constant communication with top five long-term investors.
• She views the "penalty box" (periods of missing earnings expectations) as offering "air cover" to build the business for the long term.
• Value investors reportedly appreciate transparency during these periods rather than penalizing them excessively.
• The company operates as a highly efficient business with cash on the balance sheet and no external constraints other than internal execution.