How I Built This with Guy Raz - Eventbrite: Julia Hartz

Episode Date: February 17, 2020

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 "How You Built That," Tomo Delaney describes how raising two picky eaters led him to create Noshi For Kids; brightly colored fruit puree that kids can paint with. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who are looking for a way to upgrade their digital footprint. Well, whether you're just starting out or you're scaling your business, Squarespace is the easiest way to build a great website that stands out. It's an all-in-one website platform that gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your products, and get paid. Anyone can use Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools to build an online presence that truly reflects what makes your business special.

There are templates, intuitive drag-and-drop editing, and even an AI-enhanced website builder. Then, Squarespace's built-in analytics tools help you make smarter business decisions. Review website traffic, learn where to focus engagement, and track revenue all in one place. Looking to grow your business, Squarespace even offers fast, easy business financing

through Squarespace capital. Go to Squarespace.com slash built for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe, all loans subject to credit approval. This show is in partnership with Airbnb. This past summer, I took my family to Vienna, and it was incredible. We spent our days wandering the old streets, stopping for coffee and pastries, visiting museums, and just soaking up the history of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And one of the things that made the trip so special was the home we booked on Airbnb. It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city,

made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com. Hey, I am so excited to tell you about two how I built this live shows coming to San Francisco and Seattle in just a few weeks. In San Francisco, I'll be speaking with Ken Grossman, founder of Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. That's happening Friday, March 27th at the Sydney Goldstein Theater.

In that same week on Thursday, the 26th of March, I'll be in Seattle at Benaroya Hall talking to the founders of Subpop, the label behind artists like Nirvana and Death Cap for Cutie and Soundgarden. Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavett will sit down with me to recount their story. These are going to be incredible shows. So if you are a fan of Sierra Nevada or 90s music or Nirvana or just of the show, be sure to join us on this West Coast swing. for more information or to get your tickets, head to nprpresents.org, and I hope to see you there.

All of a sudden, I was packing up my window office on the 42nd floor of Fox Plaza, which is the iconic building in Century City, and literally the next day pushing sawhorses and plywood into a windowless phone closet in a warehouse with Kevin. And I remember pushing a sawhors behind him thinking, should I really have to be. have done this? From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show how Julia Hartz and her husband, Kevin, launched their ticketing platform Eventbrite from a closet in a San Francisco warehouse, and today manage events in 170 countries around the world. There's a famous quote by Warren Buffett about his investment strategy. When he looks for investment.

opportunities, he looks for, quote, economic castles protected by unbreachable moats. So, in other words, huge companies of scale that can withstand or even quash any potential competitor. And getting over that moat is meant to be hard. And sometimes the only way to penetrate the castle isn't by crossing the drawbridge, but by going in through a side door. Sort of like the way Minoge Bargava launched five-hour energy. If you heard that episode, you might remember that when Manoge got started, the energy drink market was dominated by Red Bull and Monster. There was no way a small upstart like his was going to compete with the big guys for shelf space. So instead of marketing five-hour energy as a drink, Manoge turned it into a different

kind of product, an energy shot. And before his competitors could even react, he'd created a whole new kind of product in the energy drink industry. And in kind of a similar way, when Julia and Kevin Hartz decided to get into event ticketing, the obvious competition, of course, was a massive company called Ticketmaster, a company with lots of control over large events at stadiums and arenas. But Julia and Kevin noticed that Ticketmaster wasn't all that interested in small and medium-sized events. And when they saw that opportunity, they realized it could be their way across the moat that Ticketmaster had built around the ticketing business. And while Ticketmaster is still the biggest player in the ticket space, Eventbrite is no slouch. Today, 14 years since it was

founded, Eventbrite is a publicly traded company with a market cap of nearly $2 billion. But for Julia Hartz, not much from her early life suggested she'd become an entrepreneur. In fact, growing up in Santa Cruz, California, she was really into broadcast journalism and applied to college thinking she'd eventually get into television news. First, I applied and was admitted to Pepperdine in the early admissions timeframe. But I couldn't afford to go to Pepperdine. But I also wasn't in the bracket that would get full financial aid. And my mom said, you know, if you really have your... your heart said on Pepperdine, you should write them a letter and tell them that. And I remember

thinking, like, Mom, come on, they're not going to, that's not going to work. And thank God I took her advice because I wrote a letter and with no other warning, a full financial aid package showed up. Wow. I couldn't believe it. And so basically what that meant was I took on a ton of debt, student loan debt, and I had three jobs. And my parents obviously contributed everything they could. So it was a group effort. And I sat through my first semester of classes that were, you know, your basic college courses. And then the second semester I'd made a big change.

I didn't realize it at the time, which was to actually concentrate on television production as my focus. All right. So you are at Pepperdine and you get into interested in television. I guess why you were in college, you got an internship on Friends, like the biggest show, one of the biggest shows ever, right? Like, what was that like? So it was pretty surreal because it was at the height of, you know, the friend's popularity as a show. It was as exciting as you can imagine. And there was Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox and, you know, all these huge celebrities within arm's reach.

And my job on the set of friends was to answer this. set phone, which was this big wireless phone that I would carry around and connect whoever was on the line to the person they wanted to speak with. 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. Right. So I guess in your senior year, you end up at MTV. That's right. That would prove to be an important internship, like an important turning point for you.

Was a different kind of job or internship? Yeah, I mean, I think that between friends and MTV and landing at MTV in my senior year, I discovered two things for myself. One was I was not passionate about production and everything that goes into actually filming. The second thing was I just wasn't passionate about celebrity. And so when I landed at MTV in the series development department, it was as if I finally found the perfect place because development really marries business and creative. And being anchored in a network and especially in a cable network was really exciting and dynamic. And I'll never forget I was there when we got this demo tape. from these guys who were doing just really stupid stuff.

And it turned out to be jackass. And that was an incredible experience to watch something go from demo all the way through to series. And I have a lot of really great memories from that experience. Wow. So you were present at the creation of jackass. I was a witness. I mean, I don't, yeah, I certainly. didn't have any contribution that was significant, but I witnessed something that was groundbreaking.

It was different. It was weird. People didn't know how to feel. I remember the weekly phone calls that we would do between the network, the Standards and Practices Department, OSHA, the lawyers, and then the guys. and they would in the course of a week come up with maybe two full pages of ideas for stunts. And just the description and the brainstorming around how one would pull these stunts off was so entertaining. It was irreverence at its very best. So you end up going to work for MTV after you graduate, which is a pretty great job, right? And did you end up working on that show or with that show? So I did. I graduated on a Friday and was employed by Monday. I've been working since I was 14 with no break. And that was a really fortunate thing that I was able to just pick up where I'd left off and join the team as an assistant. And so I was in the development department and we, Jackass was one of our shows amongst several others that we worked on to put on air. 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 where down the line it may become a series. And our job was to take it from concept or person

to series and then manage the series as it was on air. I guess you stayed there for a couple years and then got sort of recruited by FX networks to work there, which is pretty cool. I mean, it sounds like the trajectory of your career was you were going to end up working in Hollywood, working on TV development projects, and eventually become an executive maybe. Did that seem like that was your kind of your path?

Yes. And, you know, for me, definitely on, I think, a very strong trajectory. I joined FX as a manager of current series and worked on nip-tuck. rescue me and the shield, which were all incredible pieces of content. So formative years for me, and certainly, you know, something I'll never forget. But in total, my whole career in Hollywood was five years. Set against the backdrop of my, now the balance of my life, it was a brief stint. However, in those five years, I really loved the work. I guess like 2003, you're invited to a wedding for a coworker, and you're seated next to this guy named Kevin who would become your

husband. Is that more or less what happened? Well, so these two particular people who were getting married had been really big brother and big sister figures in my life. And so I was tapped to deliver an excerpt from Corinthians at the altar. And I did not grow up in a church. I do not know the Bible. So I'm a little bit all around anxious about this particular wedding. And I got to the church and I realized that I didn't bring a copy of the excerpt. I wasn't sure if it was at the altar. And so I thought like, okay, I have to sit at the end of a pew. So I went to the end of a pew and I asked this guy to move over so that I could sit at the end. And I was sitting there pretty stressed out. And this guy started striking up a conversation with me.

And that was that. And then I went up to the altar. And thankfully, my reading was there. And I got through it. And I came back. And I was so relieved. And this guy turned to me and goes, you're amazing. I'm so proud of you.

I remember finally sort of focusing on him and being like, okay, what is going on? You know, like, he's just so friendly and not creepy friendly, like earnestly, just so friendly but didn't even know his name. And so he introduced himself as Kevin. And I remember standing on the steps at the church after the ceremony. And, you know, we were throwing rice at the bride and groom and they were running down the stairs. And I saw him across the way. And I thought, oh, I'll never see him again. And we were standing on the lawn at the reception.

and he brought me over a drink. And then I realized like, oh, no, I'm not actually going to get rid of this guy tonight. Like, this is, you know, this is like just a fleeting thing. And that was it. I mean, that literally was it. Kevin and I have been together ever since. And at the time, I mean, he was like a startup guy, right? He was working on this, I think he's pronounced Zoom X-O-O-M.

It was like an international like money transfer service, right? Right. But you were working at FX networks in L.A. and he's in the Bay Area. So you begin this relationship. And he must have been like working insane hours on the startup going around like, you know, looking for investors. And was he, you know, was he doing all that stuff all the time? He was. It actually worked for us to be long distance because during the week he would work 24 hours a day on Zoom from his loft. They worked literally from this closet that was off the bathroom. in his loft in Soma. And I would do, you know, my television thing, and that also included going to nighttime events. And so we just worked really hard during the week. And then on the weekends, we would get together and spend this really quality time together.

And he would come down and he would go through his 85-page slide deck for funding. And he would attend, you know, movie awards with me. And it was just interesting. Yeah. It's a two-year kind of study in these very different worlds. Did you, I mean, eventually, I think, two years into your relationship, you guys decided to get married, which meant that one of you would have to move. And I guess you decided it was going to be you, that you were going to move back to Northern California and kind of leave your job at FX behind? We had a moment where we imagined I would still work in Hollywood.

He would still be working on Zoom, but doing it somewhat remotely. But ultimately, what ended up happening is I knew I was in the wrong industry. There was something nagging at me when I would learn more about the tech industry from Kevin, or I would see these early ideas come to life. And the thing that was nagging at me was something was moving faster than cable television. And I love velocity. I just felt disruption coming. It just was very clear that something was going to disrupt traditional media. And so I thought that I needed to just find a career here in San Francisco that married my experience in television, you know, with maybe the future of media.

Yeah. That was the plan. And so I guess at the time there was some people remember this. There was this television channel called Current, which was sort of it was partially owned or run by Al Gore and he had some investors involved. And they tried to recruit you, right? Or you found them and considered working for them? That's right. Joel Hyatt and Al Gore had a great vision.

And in fact, I met with them. I mean, it was really exciting. And I was offered a middle management position on the founding team. And then I got the offer. And, you know, the numbers that I remember, roughly speaking, are I was making $80,000 at FX, and they offered me $50,000 an annual salary to join. And I brought the offer to Kevin to get his opinion. And he just, I think, saw an opening. I'm not sure how calculated he was in this, but he just said, you know, you could go work on someone else's startup and make less than your worth for sure.

Or you could build something with me and make no money, but at least it's our own. And, you know, we could even invest our own money in bootstrapping something. I just really don't know why or how that sounded more compelling. But I do think the genesis of why Kevin was so convincing there is because his optimism was contagious. And I thought, why not? So does that mean that he was going to leave his startup or kind of just stop working there? Yeah, what happened there was 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. That wasn't his kind of end game. And so he was already transatlantic. out of Zoom, and he was starting to look at what he wanted to do next, what he wanted to build next. So he was primed to be in ideation phase. And now that I know him a lot better than even when I did in 2005, I know what that means. So had he already come up with an idea that would be involved with ticket sales? No, it really wasn't well defined when I moved up.

There were several ideas that he had actually prototyped and to some extent had built early versions of. 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 experiences are so. vital to human beings thriving. And that became, that was the first idea that we had to work on together. And, you know, just so happened to stick. But I really didn't give it much thought. And all of a sudden I was packing up my window office on the 42nd floor of Fox Plaza, which is the, you know, iconic building in Century City, saying goodbye to this career that was on this uphill trajectory, and driving north and literally the next day pushing sawhorses and plywood into a

windowless phone closet in a warehouse in Petrero Hill where we had gotten some free office space with Kevin. And I remember pushing a sawhors behind him thinking, I hope he's not crazy. Like, there's a reason why he's so excited and I really trust that there's this reason. But there was a little bit of me that was thinking like, should I really have done this? That was terrifying. Yeah. I mean, for Kevin, this was, I think this was his third startup, right? Because he had another company that he sold before launching Zoom.

And then he was also an early investor in PayPal when we all know how that turned out. So really, I mean, you're in a pretty great place because initially, I'm assuming you didn't have to raise any money. And now you guys could just sort of try to focus on trying to create a company. That's right. I mean, it was incredibly fortunate. So it's important to know that we spent less than a quarter of a million dollars in the first two years of Eventbrite being up and running and operating. That to us was an incredible luxury to be able to invest that type of money into our own company. But we were also really fortunate because we didn't have to moonlight to grow Eventbrite. And furthermore, we were in this space, like I mentioned, a warehouse in Pretaro Hill. We knew the landlord, and he let us be there for free for a certain period of time, as long as we let other startup teams know about the space.

And so what ended up happening is that we started in the foam closet, and then we graduated to a conference room. And for about a year, we were in this conference room. It was like a fishbowl, and that was event bright. And, you know, I was pregnant during the time, so I kind of visualized this like crazy. Just it wasn't luxurious. It was very humble. And meanwhile, these other startup teams started to know that there was this space. And at the height, we had 12 companies in a 10,000 square foot space.

And we were all at very early stages of building these companies. It wasn't an incubator, it wasn't an accelerator, it was a community. And that's a huge part of our story. When the idea for what Eventbrite would start to kind of take shape in 2006, like when you described it to people and they're like, hey, what are you working on? What would you say? We would say a ticketing platform. And I would say that 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 business plan or strategy. But we imagine that we could build a self-service platform that would allow anybody to sell tickets to any type of event at a really low cost that was accessible and be able to serve the most diverse community of event creators. Explain something to me, right? In 2006, what was a ticketing world? Like, was it just Ticketmaster? Was that what was out there?

Yeah, so 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 enterprise side. There was no consumer-friendly platform in between that could both give you the tools to be able to create and promote and manage your event ticketing as well as, you know, be accessible and something that you could afford using as a small organization. And so essentially what we were focused on was the SMB market of live events. And we just had absolutely zero idea how big it was. Was it just you and Kevin? Because I guess you launched this in January of 2006, or you really start working on it in 2006.

It was just the two of you, you and your soon-to-be husband? Well, in the fall of 2005 or near the end of that year, we found our co-founding CTO because neither of Kevin or I are engineers. And we knew we needed at least a third to help us start this company. And we found Renovizage through, you know, he was somebody that Kevin had been somewhat familiar with. And he was just coming out of his last company. And so just it all worked out that the timing work that we could all assemble ourselves pretty much by the holidays of 2005. And then in 2006, that's really when we officially launching at the beginning of 2006. And I would call Renault, like, the bravest man, you know, in business to start a company with a couple that's about to get married.

So like in 2006, right, in January of 2006, it was essentially the three of you. And what was Eventbrite for just a regular person? Like, how would you interact with it? Would you at all? You would when you bought tickets. So the brilliant part of the model is, of course, that we had, you know, our primary customer are what we call event creators. They would be promoting the event page. And then you'd have ticket buyers come to that event page and buy tickets.

And so there was a platform and basic functionality where you could create an event listing. in, you know, two minutes. We used to test it on Kevin's father as our first user group. And you could promote your event and then you could track your attendees and your ticket sales. And that was the premise of the first Eventbrite product experience. And who was using Eventbrite in the early days? Well, really, I think we focused on building what I would call the MVP of our product. with tech bloggers who were hosting meetups and wanted to start charging for these events.

And I can't imagine a better user group, sort of tech bloggers and critics, to test your product out on. So basically what I did was I took their needs and wants and their feature requests and distilled those into themes. And there was a theme around, you know, being able to publish an event page in minutes and this friction-free, easy-to-use value proposition. There was the promotional aspect of being able to get the word out about your event online without, you know, a lot of marketing budget. And then there was the being able to get to know your attendees. When you're, you know, collecting cash at the door, you're not obviously understanding who this is, what their email address. you're not getting the benefit of customer relationship. And so being able to manage your event as you or manage your ticket sales was the third. And so it was really around this create,

promote, manage. And I think that's what made Eventbrite start to grow organically through both word of mouth and then, you know, paid marketing. And we did that for two full years. It was just the three of us. And so, I mean, what was your business model at that time? I mean, was it going to be we'll take a fee or a cut because, I mean, that's how Ticketmaster, more or less, or credit card companies work, right? 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. We only charged you when you sold a paid ticket because we figured that would be a great way for people to try out the service. and we would undercut any other competitors who were charging subscription fees for free events or, you know, charging a fee per ticket on free events. In the early days where you really still focused on the San Francisco market, like, trying to get – because it sounds like there were sort of small events happening, like a tech blogger would have a meetup.

Was that where you really were kind of focused on the local market initially? We really started with that focus. However, we were very intentional to roll out Eventbrite in a way that could be used by anyone anywhere in the world. And what we did was we set up this map where we could see where all the ticket sales were happening in real time visualized. And I'll never forget the day when we discovered that someone was selling tickets to a speed dating event in New York. And that was really exciting because it meant that we were crossing geographical bounds. So we were breaking out of the Bay Area as well as format and category bounds. So a completely non-tech-related event. And it really started to organically spread. And it was pretty incredible to watch it happen. Again, not overnight by any means.

It was over several years. And, I mean, it was certainly in the early days, like small money, right? Like, people were selling tickets for like five bucks or ten bucks, stuff like that, right? They were. I mean, it's interesting that the median ticket price on Eventbrite is around $40. 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 $5 ticket events.

And there were a few, you know, $100 events. There were lots of free events. 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. And it really opened our eyes to how flexible the platform was. And we were following our users. They were leading the way.

And so, all right, so you, I mean, was the idea initially to just kind of, see if you guys could fund it yourselves? Or from the beginning, did you know that eventually you would have to go out and look for funding? We had to take a very incremental approach to everything. I think Kevin and I and Renault decided, hey, let's see how far we get in a month, and then let's see how far we get in a quarter, and then let's see how far we get in a year. And then 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 institutional money once we knew that we had a business that could become a company. And that was 2008, which was really bad timing.

And what do you remember about, I guess you guys, I've read you approach like almost 30 different VC firms. Do you remember those meetings? I do. I mean, I remember us getting to the point where it made sense for, you know, the business. We had proven out that this could, this idea could be a business. It wasn't because we were out of money or dried up the balance sheet. It was more about we knew that this was now showing signs of being something that we could scale. Yeah. And so we went to Sand Hill Road and pitched 27 firms. And what do you remember about the questions you were asked by investors? I mean, when you went to VC firms, were they like, this is amazing, this is awesome? Or were they sort of poking holes in your business model at that time? Well, I think that there was an equal amount of confidence or comfort in Kevin's track record because, again, you know, he had. founded a company prior to Eventbrite Zoom. And we had that as an advantage.

On the other side, there were questions ranging from how is this going to work for you two to operate the company as a married couple? Because investors don't like married couples running companies, right? I don't know if that's true today. And I would say that for every positive story like Eventbrite, it becomes less of an issue. Yeah. So what we did to address that is we would come into the room and we would just address that question head on without anybody asking us. What would you say?

We would say, obviously, two of us are married. Here's how we work together. 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. And we didn't really go into those roles because there was. sort of personal, but I think our conviction helped investors at least not sit there and wonder, do I really want to back a married couple?

Right. The one question that we got about the business was consistently was how big is the total addressable market? Because if you have the reference point of, oh, you're just trying to build a ticket master, no, or you're just trying to build a next Evite, no. So then what are you trying to do? And so we needed to quickly illustrate what we were trying to do, who we were building for and why they would buy what we built and how big that market was. And I would say there was a very high level of skepticism about how big the mid-market of events were back in 2008.

I mean, I can understand 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? 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-sized 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 some. something that, you know, just didn't really exist. And it's not like it's, I think when people say something didn't exist, you immediately

think of, you know, 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. We were coming from a point of wanting to empower entrepreneurs to make their businesses stronger. And there wasn't a solution like event.

at that point. All right. So you go to Sand Hill Road over the course of three 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. And how many of these firms wrote you checks? Well, we went and saw 27 firms and we received 27 nos or not right now. Huh. So we receive zero checks. No checks. 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 Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the end of 2008, and Julia and our 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. When people hear our story, it's hard for them to really imagine, you know, 27 noes.

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. for us for these reasons or not right now but would love to see this, this and this. There was a whole host of ECs 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. So but I'm curious about those rejections, right? Because to some extent, right, when you meet with investors, you're sort of seeking their

approval. Like 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? Like, did that ever cross your mind? I'm sure, yes. I mean, I think I remember us gut checking whether or not we all, all three of us, had the conviction to keep going. Because we knew that it was, you know, 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, 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 back and see those VCs around the same time in the fall. And we hunkered down. Yeah. By the way, let us not forget that we had an infant, you know, in 2008.

So I kind of forget that part. I mean, there are pictures of us working on our 2009 plan, you know, and she's like in the corner on a play mat. 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. Why? What happened? And then 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 Event Bright 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. I'm curious who, I mean, that year when, you know, the economy is collapsing and unemployment starts to ratchet up, what kinds of events were people? people doing, like, it would 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, you know, sell tickets and have people meet at like a church hall or something like that? That's exactly right. We had a lot of financial skills courses, I mean, just to go on that example. We saw some rise in entrepreneurial type events where folks were, you know, selling their independently made goods or teaching, say, yoga certification or networking became, you know, paid networking events became a big deal.

So at that point, we were, I think, had density in the coast regions of the U.S., 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. When you saw the combination of Facebook and this really interesting people losing their jobs and trying to figure out how to become entrepreneurial, you know, 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? We always had a revenue goal. So from the first month that we started working on Eventbrite, we would have our revenue. revenue goal up on the White Board, 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 fees about $3 per ticket. So our actual revenue or net revenue as 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, you know, would be good people to talk to and to continue the conversation. So you went back to some of these VC firms armed with data,

you know, 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. It was. I was surprised by how doing what you said, 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 learned in that year and the market and future plans for growth.

But it was quite impactful. What happens? Do you get a check? 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.

So, all right, so you have this $6.5 million, you can start to hire lots of people quickly, I guess. Well, and yeah, 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 company. I mean, there's no denying that 100 people is company. And, you know, we could sit around sort of one large table and eat, you know, from a few pizza boxes as 30. And as 100, we needed systems and facilities. And, you know, 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, you know, maintain this great culture. 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 you were 30. You had this huge responsibility. And did you ever have any anxiety over, I don't know, being a leader? 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 kinds of, companies that have had this sort of hockey stick growth or just that rocket ship, that would be difficult. You know, 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, 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 mean, I would think that would be normal. There's definitely been tension. I think less than you would imagine. So 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 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. Wow. Now, this is when we didn't have any office mates. Okay, yeah. So obviously we're not doing that today. I mean, we do that at home, obviously. A cool technique. I want to try that.

Yeah, it was like so ridiculous that it would break the tension. And if we could even, you know, stop laughing, we would talk through what was really going on. But, you know, that was a great mode for us in the very early days. When we were scaling the company, you know, to 100 and 200 and 300 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, 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.

That's the guiding principle that we've used, I think, now for quite some time. Julia, once you guys had a lot of capital to work with, was that, I mean, did you, do you, you guys? Did you start to really take off at that point? Was it growth year after year after year of growth? Because I know 2012, you hit your 50 million tickets sold and then you do a billion dollars in total gross ticket sales that year. The next year was $2 billion. I mean, it sounds, I don't mean for this to sound seamless and easy, but it sounds like that was it. I mean, you guys were just on this growth trajectory.

We were off to the races, for sure. I mean, again, one of the, I think, unique things about Eventbrite is that we haven't had to pivot. We are doing exactly what we intended to do. And lots of things change, you know, technology's changed, 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 just the validation of having a Sequoia Capital come in, seemingly kind of how easy it was. was to raise after that with their seal of approval. And I think that, you know, 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, you know, the bottom fell out again.

I mean, if we were doing the movie version of Eventbride, at this point, you know, it would be like the next year's $2 billion, then $4 billion in ticket sales, and then $10 billion ticket sales. 2015, Kevin, he decides to take a leave as CEO. And it was temporary initially. I guess he had a medical condition. And then he basically says, you know what? I actually 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 were you, I don't know, was any part of you hesitant? 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 also needed to put Kevin's health first and foremost. And, you know, I needed to wear both hats, which was wife and co-founder. And that was a really, really difficult time. He's okay now, of course.

healthy, right, doing well? He's great. Yeah, I think he's a testament of why it's so important to put your health first. Yeah. I think that, you know, for us, it's, you know, life is very, very short. And while we've been lucky enough, knock on wood, to not lose, you know, any loved ones too early, we just, to some extent, it's a little 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, you know, behind the scenes, I was terrified. Yeah. So you step up, you become the CEO. By 2018, your revenues were about $290 million. That year, September that year, event break goes public. You go, you take the company public. Was this sort of like, you know, you hear when founders start a company, they say, all right, well, the investors want an exit. It's either going to be a sale or you go public. Was that the point you reach where, you know, your investors needed to return? And so this was a way to do it. 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, you know, our own agenda. But I'm just, I'm curious about going public because that is a different kind of structure. And 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 you are a publicly traded company with thousands and thousands of shareholders. I've asked CEOs and entrepreneurs who taking companies public all the time. Like, why would you want that stress? And also, you're answering to a whole new constituency now. Yeah, I mean, I have thought about that a lot.

And I guess to back up for a minute, I don't think ever once heard in the nine months we were preparing to go public that going public was a good idea. Everybody said don't do it. 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 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. 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. Yes. And I think the day that your stock debuted is $23. I think it ended that day at like $30, almost $34. It was a great first day. And today the stock price is like down to a little under $20 a share.

And that's the question I have, right? There's a whole visibility. That is, right? I mean, that's stressful, right? People are all, and you've got shareholders saying, hey, why is the stock down? You know, what's going on? Why? I bought it for $35 and now it's a $19.

And, you know, what do you say? 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. And he's such a kind man, and he bought into our IPO, you know, bought stock. And so I see him every day and I'm visually, visually reminded of the loss that he incurred. And that for me is, you know, 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 and lots of new things. But I'm not hating the game, right? It's that I, it's really like 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. When you are, how many people work for a event right now around the world? Roughly 1,100.

Wow. So, I mean, that's a, I mean, 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. 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, yes, have seen really bad times, but we were very small back then.

And, you know, my responsibility to a million event creators and 1,100 Ritalings and thousands of shareholders is an order of magnitude larger than the responsibility we had in 2008 and 2009, what was just asked in a few folks. So it's different. And certainly I don't think Eventbride is completely impervious to another big economic meltdown. But I feel pretty confident that that will be able to weather the storm, whatever the storm, whatever shape it may be or category. You know, it's anyone's guess at this point. Although everybody seems to know that it's coming. Yeah. You know, you left your job in 2005, and here you are.

You know, 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? 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 of finding really wonderful people to build this company. I think there's a lot of a fortune and that comes to people and it's about what they do with it. And I think the other way around, too, when you hit hard times or you feel unlucky, you know, you have to put it all into perspective. And there's always something to feel lucky for.

That's Julia Hart, 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. My daughter, my 11.5-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. Now I'm like, wow.

And please do stick around because in just a moment, we're going to hear from you about the things you're building. Hey, thanks for sticking around because it's time now for how you build. that. And today, our story starts with Tomo 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, you know, the whole thing. But around 2010, Tomo was ready to walk away. 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 Tomo 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, Davy and Dot, were super picky eaters. I spent my time looking at the kids' food options

in Whole Foods, wondering whether there's anything on those shelves that they would eat. Tomo would sometimes talk about his meal time struggles with an older friend named Peggy. And one morning, Peggy had an idea for him. 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. You know, kids respond to color. So how do we get them to respond to food by color, but food that's healthy? Within a day, Tamo 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. We immediately thought the yellow is going to be peach, the red's going to be strawberry, and the blue's going to be blueberry. Their idea was to put the pureed fruit into these squeezable tubes and then kids could paint with it onto their food.

You know, 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. We had no idea how to get into the food industry and we didn't know that we needed a copacker. 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 cuisine art. And Tomo'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. He was sending me samples in unrefrigerated boxes, and I distinctly remember there was one very, very hot day. I got a box from FedEx from him, and 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.

It looked like salad dressing that had settled. And I just thought, this is a disaster. My God, what is going on here? But within a few months, Tomo found another food scientist who used some natural additives to get the consistency they needed. And then, with some donations from friends and family, Tamo 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.

What we did was just rely on friends. We relied on literally Dots' friends from school and their parents to say, would you video your kids drawing with this stuff and tasting this stuff? And that first group of kids liked the naturally sweet taste of the fruit, and, as you might expect, they really like drawing on their food. Lots of smiley faces, lots of eyes, lots of smiles. Sun made of peaches. So at this point, a contact in the food industry had given him a list of 31 buyers at a national

grocery chain. So Tomo picked up the phone and made that very nerve-wracking first call. And I said, hi, it's Tomo from Noshi. And I'm calling about food paint. I was wondering whether you've got the sample. And she said, there's a pause on the line. And she said, yeah, I did. Yeah, 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 on, and my heart was thinking lower and lower. Anyway, Tamo eventually got into some stores, but about three 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, Tomo is hoping to turn a profit. Sometimes it's felt like I've been sort of 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 Tomo 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 HIPT at NPR.org. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman with music composed by Rumtine Arablewe. Thanks also to Candice Lim, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, Jeff Rogers, and Sequoia Carrillo. Our intern is Rainy Toll. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

This is NPR. If you're looking for your next binge watch or you want the latest on all the big movies and albums, NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour has you covered. Every weekday, we are your guide to all things entertainment. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.