Eventbrite has survived nearly every kind of challenge a startup can face: launching into a financial crisis, raising venture capital after 27 rejections, going public, watching its core business disappear during COVID, and eventually leaving the public markets after nearly two decades of building.<\/p>\n
In this episode of Build Mode, host Isabelle Johannesen sits down with Julia Hartz, co-founder and former CEO of Eventbrite, to unpack the decisions that helped the company weather those highs and lows. When Eventbrite went public in 2018, Julia became just the 21st woman founder-CEO to lead her company through an IPO and the second-youngest woman to do so (milestones she remembers as both an achievement and a stark reminder of how few women had reached that point).<\/p>\n
But getting to the IPO, and navigating what came afterward, was anything but straightforward. Julia explains what it was like to take over as CEO from her husband and co-founder Kevin Hartz, why she initially questioned whether she was ready for the job, and how leading through the pandemic forced her to find her own leadership style. She also looks back on Eventbrite\u2019s unusual fundraising journey, from bootstrapping the company for its first two-and-a-half years to the success during the 2008 financial crisis that ultimately landed them Sequoia as a lead investor. <\/p>\n
Julia reflects on the realities of running a public company, balancing investor expectations against the needs of customers, the mistakes that took years to repair, and the painful decision to take Eventbrite private following its acquisition by Bending Spoons. Through it all, she shares what nearly 20 years of building Eventbrite taught her about resilience, leadership, reinvention, and making hard decisions when there is no obvious playbook.<\/p>\n
Chapters:
\n00:00 \u2013 Julia Hartz on Leading Eventbrite Through the Hardest Moments
\n01:27 \u2013 From MTV and Jackass to Founding Eventbrite
\n03:27 \u2013 How Julia and Kevin Hartz Started Eventbrite
\n08:49 \u2013 Why Live Events Survived Every Technology Shift
\n11:03 \u2013 Taking Over as CEO From Her Husband
\n13:38 \u2013 Leading Eventbrite Through the COVID Crisis
\n17:19 \u2013 Eventbrite\u2019s Fundraising Journey
\n17:57 \u2013 27 VC Rejections During the 2008 Financial Crisis
\n22:16 \u2013 How to Re-Pitch an Investor After They Say No
\n24:42 \u2013 Building a Company With Your Spouse
\n26:58 \u2013 Taking Eventbrite Public
\n27:11 \u2013 Making History as a Woman Founder-CEO
\n31:17 \u2013 What No One Tells You About Running a Public Company
\n32:40 \u2013 From a $1.67B IPO to Going Private
\n36:08 \u2013 Why Eventbrite Left the Public Markets
\n38:48 \u2013 Customers vs. Shareholders: Who Should a CEO Listen To?
\n41:11 \u2013 How Founders Should Think About Competition
\n45:07 \u2013 Julia Hartz\u2019s Biggest Marketplace and Leadership Mistakes
\n49:30 \u2013 The Leadership Lesson Julia Learned in Her Final Months as CEO
\n53:13 \u2013 What Comes After 20 Years of Building Eventbrite<\/p>\n
Hosted by Isabelle Johannesen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.<\/p>\n
Subscribe to Build Mode: Eventbrite has survived nearly every kind of challenge a startup can face: launching into a financial crisis, raising venture capital<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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