Julia Hartz: How to Build, Scale, and Exit a Billion-Dollar Startup From Scratch | Entrepreneurship | E398

26:47And, you know, and then when we did raise our first round of institutional funding, it was from Sequoia Capital, Rolot Botha was our earliest investor and board member for 14 years. And, you know, we were really sure of the people we chose to be on this journey with us on the board, investing in the company that they were value add and not value, you know, extracting in terms of their agendas or their ideas. And that's totally possible. I mean, I think that, you know, oftentimes you hear the kind of age old story of a board not being fully aligned behind the entrepreneur and they all have their own agendas.

27:27And especially if things go well, it's like, you know, everybody's got an agenda. And I just think I don't think that has to be the case. I think if you really are thoughtful about the people that you that you bring into the fold and put ask to put on your team's jersey, like you can you can really, really get far and stay true to your principles. But I think that, you know, the way that we built Eventbrite was this kind of perfect blend of who we were as founders. And I'm really proud of that because I think, you know, right around 2010, we were ready to go from a team, like a two pizza team to a, you know, full fledged company.

28:10And I remember the 2006 vintage companies had all gone through, either they hadn't made it, or they'd all gone through hyper growth challenges. And I remember thinking, wow, this seems inevitable that we're going to lose our culture. Something's going to go wrong. We're going to scale too quickly and the wheels are going to kind of come off the bus. And I remember thinking, well, I feel for this company as I feel for my own human child. We had a two-year-old at that point. And I thought there's this like unconditional love that I have. So I think what I'm going to do is die trying to make a great company alongside a successful business.

28:50And I think that commitment was really supported by Kevin and Renault. And I think it made a huge difference and helped Eventbrite become what it is today. And, you know, obviously it tickles me to hear you say it's a household name. Yeah, it is. I think it's like that didn't come easily and it didn't come from a way of we were sitting in a room going, how do we scale? It was like very human. Yeah.

29:15Hala Taha:So let's dig deep on the company culture part because you've won like so many awards of having such a great company to work at. Talk to us about leading up to COVID, what your company culture was like, what were some of the values that you were instilling? I know that you weren't the CEO, I believe, at that point or right before COVID you became CEO. So, yeah. So and you were really leading the culture and the people. So talk to us about what your strategy with that. Yeah, well, a few things. I mean, you know, we so Kevin was CEO for the first 10 years and then I was CEO for the second 10 years.

29:48I'm really proud of the fact that we're still married because that's not an easy feat. And we we loved working together the first 10 years. It was phenomenal because we, again, are really complementary in our skill set. So we just divided and conquered. He was like product and you were more people. Yeah, I was marketing and customer service. He was product. And then as we scaled, I became more, I guess, culture. And I don't know. My title was incredibly nebulous. It was president, which I was sort of confused by. But I would have been intern if I could have done that. First, when I took over, it was like about a thousand times harder than I expected.

30:31You know, he had made it look so easy. And I, to this day, I'm not over the fact that, you know, he just didn't really tip his hand on how challenging it is to be a CEO and how mental it is. Like the biggest challenge is yourself and your own head. He did it with such ease. And then the second thing was, you know, thought of our culture as sort of like building Legos. You know, you're like laying, if you lay the right foundation, you can build a lot of different things on top of it. But sometimes you like build a tower that's way too high, like falls over. And it's really about sort of the other supporting Lego structures that you can actually have a culture that's sustainable, but also can go through hard times.

31:20And so right when I took over as CEO, when I stepped in in 2016, it was like the good times were rolling. We were, you know, a private company, eyeing an IPO, about to acquire our largest competitor in music. Somebody had written an article about our company that said we were like the Disneyland of startups when you walked into our office. Like everything. I just I definitely understand the art of energy and gathering and, you know. And man, like the minute I maybe perhaps felt like I don't think I ever felt like we had it made. I think I'm always healthily paranoid. But I mean, that was like a very fleeting moment because we acquired this big competitor that was like oil and water culture wise.

32:10I was completely naive and thinking that, you know, oh, we can just come together. It'll be kumbaya. Not that was not the case. It was incredibly difficult. And then we prepared to go public. We went public. And then we were like a new public company stumbling in the public markets, you know, trying to do a lot of things. And I kind of I came into came into 2019 and then transitioning into 2020 feeling like we were spinning five plates with the right hand and like patting our stomachs with the left. And it was a lot and we needed to simplify and we needed to focus. And so 2020 was our focus year.

32:54It's just like, we know what we need to do. We know how to get there. Let's stop doing all this other really cool, bright, shiny object stuff because we've really got to get back to basics. And then March 4th of 2020 happened. And it was just, yeah. So it felt like, you know, I think what people like maybe don't know is like, we weren't in great shape going into COVID. We were like going, we had gone through a really tough year. Yeah. But we were, we were stronger and leaner and fitter, so to speak, going into 2020, which actually helped us tremendously when we had to completely reset and reimagine the company.

33:37Hala Taha:What was going through your mind and what were some of the things that were happening once events stopped? And what did that mean for how you had to like think about your company, restructure your company, rethink company culture? And also, I know that you got a lot of scrutiny online for the layoffs and things. So talk to us about that. Yeah, I mean, you know, certainly I have a lot of empathy for people who live in the future, whose job it is to be futurists, especially when people are unwilling to believe them, because that's only happened to me once. And, you know, we had the benefit of having been close to the head of the infectious disease department at UCSF, Joe DiRisi, who is a phenomenal scientist and public health expert.

34:38having people around us who maybe are on the slightly more paranoid side, weren't sure exactly what was going to happen, but knew how we needed to handle it if it were the worst that we could possibly imagine. And it was the worst that we could possibly imagine. And I have to say, Kevin was there for me the whole time. He dropped everything he was working on and he has a sense of urgency and decisiveness that is second to none. So what I was thinking was this is going to be really bad and we need to move very quickly for a number of different reasons, but not least of which to be able to help our creators rebuild their businesses.

35:23Now, there was a moment of time, about two months, where our customers did not understand what we saw. And that was really hard because we had to make changes pretty immediately to help them save their businesses. And they didn't even, it's not that they didn't have the intelligence, but they just didn't have the information that we had. There was like asymmetrical information and willingness to believe.

35:52Hala Taha:Like they didn't, they thought events were going to continue or this was temporary or something like that. Everybody thought that, right? And it's not that we had like, you know, security level information. We just were listening to the worst case scenario and had wise people around us telling us there's no like downside to believing the worst case scenario, especially when you're facing something that could be so, so crushing. I mean, the whole basis of our business went away. Like 14 years in the making was actually completely gone in 14 days. Wild. We were processing more refunds than revenue.

36:33Our Tableau dashboards broke because our revenue was negative. And we hadn't accounted for that in the configuration. And again, we had to be the bearer of bad news in such a critical time when everyone was so scared and confused anyways. Like, never underestimate the human's ability to be optimistic, you know, and cling to hope. Especially entrepreneurs. Yeah, we had to kind of be like, no, this is going to be bad. You need to not pay your vendors or your venue right now. You need to think about how you're going to refund your fans. You know, changing the company was a non-negotiable. We couldn't actually keep going the way that we were.

37:17And I wanted our actions as it came to company to be really intentional and thoughtful. And I wanted us, I knew that we would have to change the size of the company during a really scary time. And so I started with a core question, which was, given what we know about this business, what would we do if we could do it all over again? And I asked my team that. And the executive team at the time was a mix of tenured people who'd been there from the beginning, who had just arrived, who had perspective from different companies. And we wrote down a one pager that basically described what we would do if we could do it all over again.

37:59And the punchline was, we get to do it all over again if we make the right decisions here. So let's go do this. And we built the company to that model. And, you know, a lot of it was getting back to the basics. A lot of it was getting back to the core principles of the company. This is in a tale as old as time. You scale, you let ambition take you into new areas, you get more complicated, you start, you know, bolting things on. We had a lot of cleanup to do. And so that's what we really focused on. But first, we had to throw away our product roadmap and just help our customers and help our creators figure out a pathway forward, which included online events, which included, you know, offering credits to their customers alongside refunds, which included how do you create community branding and togetherness in a time when everybody has to be a part?

38:52And that really took us through, you know, much of 2020. Yeah.

38:57Hala Taha:And, you know, COVID lasted a pretty long time. I remember, really, I started my business in 2020. It's really funny to think how 2020 was so detrimental to some businesses, but then Gave so much opportunity to other businesses. Like for me, I had my podcast for a couple of years and then I started my, I quit my job and started my social media podcast agency at a time where everybody wanted social and podcasts. So it was like million dollars, like right away in revenue, like before we even hit a year with my agency, like it just took off. And I was doing a ton of online events at that time, like Clubhouse was really popular and just like all these sort of like webinar type events.

39:39Hala Taha:And I'm sure Eventbrite was supporting creators doing that. But now fast forward, 2026, everyone is like clamoring for these like in-person events. And it's becoming more of a trend than ever, even though there's so much opportunity online for creator entrepreneurs and making money online. There's also a lot of opportunity right now for live events. And I'd love to learn from you, What are some of the trends that you're seeing in the live event space? And why is it something that people who have a lot of followers, creator, entrepreneurs, something that they should really think about? Well, I mean, I would start from like kind of a heady place, which is, you know, in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you have the physiological needs.

40:22So food, water, air, you have a need for security and shelter. And right above that, you have a need for connectedness. And the reason why I bring that up is not because it looks good on a strategy deck. It's really because in the span of 20 years, we have seen several technological advances and revolutions and pivot points that, you know, for all intents and purposes could have driven us farther away from being together in real life. And through all of those, whether it's social media, mobile phones, and how much content we're watching and scrolling through, virtual reality, global pandemic, now AI.

41:13All of these things have been enablers of bringing us together and also have driven up the premium value of live experiences. People want to or can now find their people and find their niche online. It's incredibly accessible to find your people now. But it drives this desire to want to then meet them in the flesh. And I think there's a combination of a few things going on. One is the old adage of you don't know what you got till it's gone. Yeah. And I would say for rich countries, the taking away of liberties and being able to be together momentarily or that stress that got put into the system of being together made people realize how important it is to be in real life.

42:12And I also think, you know, I think about the story that happened on Eventbrite, which was an incredible creator. Radha Agarwal started a company called Daybreaker. Prior to COVID, they were doing early morning raves where, you know, total like epic events where it's like 5 a.m. and it's sunset or sunrise. Coffee and stuff. Yeah, like coffee, kombucha, but just like total parties. and they were doing like a thousand people in multiple cities. COVID hits and they set up a studio kind of like this, you know, in New York, which is like total nightmare. And they start live streaming these Sunday morning dance parties.

42:57And within a few months, this had grown to a global party of over a hundred thousand people a week. Wow. Of all ages, you know, people who just wanted to feel that connection and that magic and were like stuck at home with their kids. And it became this ritual and they became a totally different company out of COVID. So to your point, they built a multimedia platform and their business became massive. And I think that that that idea of, you know, accessibility and bringing these otherwise pretty exclusive events, you had to live in like a cool city and kind of be in the know to the masses. open an opportunity and open people's eyes to what could what could happen in the future.

43:41Yeah. And now I think, you know, we have this almost like renaissance coming out of this pandemic. We've seen this before. So big, big, massive pandemic. And then this renaissance period of creativity and connection that I think is going to breed a whole new generation of live experiences that kind of cross the transom of, you know, I'm a passive participant to I'm in the middle of this storyline. Yeah. And that's, I think, what people are looking for. And we see it time and time again, continue to reinvent itself and grow in strength.

44:16Hala Taha:Yeah. So for somebody who's really interested, like you mentioned, there's this huge opportunity in creating experiences and actually not just like talking to people at an event, actually bringing them in. So they're like actually participating. what are some of the coolest events that you've seen or opportunities for entrepreneurs when it comes to throwing these these new types of experiences? Well, I think the authority on this, in my opinion, is a woman named Priya Parker. She wrote The Art of Gathering. And she is, you know, I think one of the foremost experts on on social dynamics and how to create a memorable connection.

44:54And she's done this through, you know, conflict resolution, but she actually like applies it to sort of any, any genre. And so I highly recommend checking out her work. I got to interview her. She sounds interesting. She's incredible. And she talks about generous authority of hosting and just the job of a host and how important that is. And I think so often we get to about 10 or 20 percent of what that that role actually is. And I think the coolest events that I have found on the platform and otherwise have been experiences where the host, the creator, is thinking from beginning to end about the experience of the guest or the fan or the participant and drawing them in in a way that is going to take them through the arc of story or them through the arc of learning or them through the magic of connection.

45:49And they have that idea in their head through the eyes of their customer from beginning, especially to end. And I love, I love Priya so much because she like kind of harps on this thing that I'm not great at, which is a great ending. Like I know how to begin a talk, a speech, an event, a party, a dinner. I know exactly how I want to give that opening toast or connection. And I'm terrible. How do you tie it in a boat? Like, how do you create that magical end that everybody, because that's the last thing that people remember. They remember, yeah. That's what they remember. So, I mean, there have been these, I mean, the best part about Eventbrite is that because we didn't predetermine what kind of event should use Eventbrite.

46:33Every single day, we were seeing incredible concepts and formats that we'd never even thought of. And in that way, we were able, we are able to be sort of micro trend forecasters of what's coming up. And I think, you know, recently, I think BookTok has like given way to just these incredibly immersive events around genres like romanticy, you know, and like how you create these like fully immersive experiences around one book series that just sort of grows and lives on and on and on. And it's not your typical book talk. You know, it's not going to I love a good book talk. So, you know, and a local bookshop, but it's like more so actually bringing people into the full 360 view of an author's mind around a story that they created and how the fans of that can become a part in the story.

47:33And it's just like that. I mean, not to be cheesy, but that is a tale as old as time. That is something that people really want.

47:41Hala Taha:Something that you just touched on was that Eventbrite's product was able to sort of evolve with COVID and going back to events. And just like now it's like, so many things have changed over the last 20 years. Like it's night and day. But you also have said that company culture has to be able to evolve. And you can't like have the same company culture as day one as year 20. So I'd love to learn from you, how you think about company culture, what kind of values you had in the beginning and like how it had to change over time. When I think about the Eventbrite product and why it worked and why it became ubiquitous with live experiences, I think a lot of it was that we built it to melt into the background.

48:24We wanted our creators and their events and the people who gathered around that passion to be front and center. So all of our marketing, all of our storytelling was really around that. We started to become and evolve naturally from just a platform and like a utility into a marketplace when we realized that we could start to help creators find bigger audiences. And when we realized that people were coming to Eventbrite to find things to do because they realized that we had really niche content that they couldn't find on other platforms. So that evolution of a marketplace was really going on in parallel to the evolution of the Eventbrite culture.

49:06And I'll never forget when I took on the sort of self-anointed role of like coming to the table of every major business decision, putting Breitlings, which is our cute little name, first, like their needs first, that I realized like great cultures are often just a manifestation of the people at the company at any given time. And because of that, cultures change. you know, they change through time because people come and go. I mean, being a founder and being a CEO, you have to be okay with people leaving you all the time. Sometimes they come back and that was my favorite was a Breitling boomerang.

49:52But I thought like, you know, it's not about preserving a culture. We're not like a bug stuck in ember. You know, it's about creating something that's more like an amoeba that like can travel through time and space but sustain itself and grow stronger over time. And one of the things that I thought was interesting is just that we measure certain parts of a culture to get some sort of finite metric about how we're doing. You know, most companies have something like CultureAmp that sends out surveys to their employees and you get these scores and you scrutinize the scores and, you know, you could cut the data a million different ways.

50:36frankly, I always thought that was like a waste of time because, A, I don't think we were asking the right questions. And B, I think those, you know, it's sort of like a snapshot. I was never afraid of getting bad scores on that because if something was hard was going on at the company, I would have expected the scores to be lower, you know? And I was also really like mindful of the fact that you can't ever have the happiest culture. That's not possible. What I was striving to do was create the most sustainable culture in that our principles would sustain themselves. We could trust each other and that, you know, through hard times and good times, there would be connection.

51:21And I think the most common thing that was said about Eventbrite in the employee experience was that people care for one another. And that really matters, I think a lot.

51:31Hala Taha:Yeah. And I have been forever in pursuit of creating a successful business where people really cared for one another and where you had where you just you had like three things, best place to work, best manager and best friend. Those were really important to me. Yeah, that's so cute.

51:56Hala Taha:Yep, gang, I didn't really understand the importance of life insurance until I saw what it did for my family when my dad passed. My dad had life insurance, and when he died, my mom was taken care of financially. And in an already difficult moment, that stability made a huge difference for us. It's something that I've never forgotten. That experience changed how I think about all of it. Life insurance isn't really about you. It's about the people that you leave behind. That's why I want to share Fabric by Gerber Life. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today, made for busy entrepreneurs and parents like you all.

52:33Hala Taha:You could do it right from your couch, and you could be covered in under 10 minutes, often with no health exam required. And it's designed so you can choose coverage that actually fits your family and your budget. Because being responsible isn't just about what you build in your lifetime. It's about what you leave protected. Join the thousands of entrepreneurs and parents who trust fabric to help protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com slash profiting. That's meetfabric.com slash profiting. And use my link so they know that I sent you. That's M-E-E-T fabric, F-A-B-R-I-C dot com slash profiting.

53:09Hala Taha:Meetfabric.com slash profiting. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions.

53:22Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, have you ever had a message you meant to reply to and then just didn't? It happens to the best of us. And in business, that adds up fast because when somebody is ready to talk, speed can secure the deal. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O, the smarter way to run your business communications. I've seen this firsthand with my clients. Suddenly, a lot of our clients don't want slack or cool automations. They just want to text and get a fast response. They want to go back to basics. And if we don't make that easy for them, we become the bottleneck. So we decided to switch to Quo.

53:58Hala Taha:Now we use one shared business number. Every call and text goes to the whole team. Everybody sees the thread and anyone can respond. And nothing gets lost. No bottlenecks. No, I'll get back to this later. Just fast, clean communication. How clients actually want it. It's a simple shift that removes one of the easiest ways to quietly lose revenue. Money is on the line, Yap Fam. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash profiting. That's Q-U-O dot com slash profiting. Quo.com slash profiting.

54:34Hala Taha:Yap Fam, spring is here, and I want you to be real. Have you already fallen off your healthy eating habits? I didn't, and it's all thanks to Huel. That's H-U-E-L. It was actually my entrepreneur friends that put me out to Huel. For them, the benefits were clear, fast, inexpensive, and healthy. These are hardcore entrepreneurs that don't wanna be bothered to think about what they eat for every meal. But they're also super fit, and they care about their health. Their formula was one complete meal a day handled by Huel, their Black Edition ready to drink, which is 27 vitamins and minerals and 35 grams of protein, only five bucks, and it tastes great.

55:08Hala Taha:No mental energy needed with Huel, but it gives us all the energy we need to run our incredible businesses. And funny enough, I had my monthly entrepreneurship group over yesterday and I let everybody try all the different Huel products that I have. And a lot of people thought that Huel only had their powder and they're ready to drink, but Huel has all these other different products like their Complete Nutrition Bar, they've got their Energy Plus, which is a caffeinated drink, and my favorite, which is their Daily Greens Ready to Drink. It's a light, sparkling, ready to drink with 42 vitamins and minerals and superfoods, and it tastes delicious.

55:41Hala Taha:And if you wanna try Huel's products, you can now try their Discovery Bundle. Their Discovery Bundle is heavily discounted, so you can try all the different products and see what works for you. And if you like it, order more of it. It's a great way to try all the different products and to make this deal even sweeter for you and to make sure that you use Huel as your secret weapon as an entrepreneur, I've got a limited time offer. Join me today with this limited time offer and get$50 in savings with the Discovery Bundle from Huel today with my exclusive offer of 15 % off online with my code YAP15 at Huel.com slash YAP15.

56:16Hala Taha:That's H-U-E-L.com slash Y-A-P 15, Huel.com slash YAP15. New customers only. Thank you to Huel for partnering and supporting our show. So I want to focus more about your like entrepreneurship journey personally. Yeah. Something that you said early, very early on in the conversation is that like entrepreneurship is like, It's kind of in your head. What did you mean by that? Well, I think being a CEO is a mind game, first and foremost, because a lot of people feel ownership for a company, no matter what their title is. And I realize that now, now more than ever, having the CEO title is this construct.

57:02And actually, it's an interesting construct because I'm starting to wonder if it will be the title that we use in the future. But being the single point leader of any organization just creates this sort of headiness. And I definitely think there are people who are trying to flan the org and get away from being. But ultimately, there's always going to be that leader. And I never took for granted the idea that because I was on the founding team, I would be a good CEO. I think that's actually a huge misnomer. And I think it's why some companies fail. Because the people who were there at the beginning who were, you know, brave enough to start the company aren't, are definitely not often the right people to run the company.

57:54And while it's incredibly valuable to have a founder running the company, you have to be leveling up every single day. I mean, literally every, sometimes multiple times a day to be the person that's most deserving of that title.

58:11Hala Taha:What kind of skills were you like, OK, like Kevin was doing this, this and that. I've got to figure like, was it like the financials or like what kind of skills were you thinking? like, I've got to nail this down in order to be the best CEO that's going to take this company public. I wasted so much time asking myself, what would Kevin do? I mean, he was right there. But I worried that I was not doing it anywhere as good as he was. And I really wish I could have all that time back because I just did it different, you know, and that's not better or worse. I think in some instances it was worse and in some instances it was better.

58:48certainly you know table stakes are strategy financials ability to communicate a compelling vision i mean that was that was like you know well i think what everybody needs to have i think some of the things that i learned later after covid made me leading through covid made me stop asking myself what somebody else would do and start really getting behind what i knew we needed to do. I had a lot more conviction after that crisis. And COVID wasn't the first crisis. I mean, we had a just kind of this like rolling wave of crises after COVID. I think some of the skills that are underrated and underpracticed is listening and seeking to understand.

59:40Often as a leader, you want to, you are kind of asked implicitly and explicitly to know everything.

59:48Hala Taha:Yeah. And to always have the right answer. And that is completely a garbage idea. Like if one person had all the right answers, this would be a really boring life. You know, the whole point of working on something together is to get the best ideas, to distill an amalgamation of the best ideas, to get diverse thinkers and people around a table problem solving toward a better outcome. And so I felt at first that I had to have all the right answers. And when I became more confident, I was able to ask to A, say, I don't have all the answers and I want to learn from different perspectives. And it wasn't that I wanted to be told what to do, but I actually wanted to take everybody's perspective, synthesize it and make the call, right?

1:00:43And that's incredibly rewarding. But I think often what happens is we either just make believe that we have the right answer and we make a call or we have recency bias and we do what the last best idea was given to us, right? We listen to the last person and go, okay, I'm going to do that. Or, you know, we just seek to listen for bias of confirmation that we're right. And so I think beginning to a place where you could say every day, the right answer might not live in my head. It might live somewhere else. I'm going to go find it by practicing appreciative inquiry. I think that's like the next level.

1:01:25And that is an evolved part of being an evolved leader. And then another part of it is, you know, being able to be corrected and change your mind and be okay with that and let people in on that without it becoming this sort of, you know, destabilizing moment. Yeah. And I think the things that I wish I would have done better, I wish I would have taken more risks. I definitely think coming through COVID was such a harrowing journey and, you know, definitely took us holding hands and making a couple really hard moves and leaps that after that I became a little bit more protective of the company. And I feel like I could have taken more risks.

1:02:13And another thing I could have done is been a bit tougher. And I don't know if other people would agree with me on that, but I feel like I have always been really in tune with what people are going through and what they're feeling. And that empathy can be ruinous sometimes because I can get really kind of, I can revert to the mean of what I think a group of people are capable of. and that's often undershooting the goal.

1:02:42Hala Taha:So like you were putting the people first, not the company first. Yeah, yeah. I do that sometimes too because it's like you just care so much about the people but ultimately the company should be the first priority. But there's probably some benefit in doing that as well because there's loyalty involved. Well, I think I learned this incredible lesson in the last hour of leading Eventbrite, so to speak, which was the last two years or so, I had been really sure of where we needed to be. And I had been almost like this white knuckle grip on the reins. And when we announced that we were selling the company, I really had this moment.

1:03:28I didn't know what I was doing because I had never done that before. So I was totally in new territory. and I got this sense that everybody was just like immediately disconnected and detached. I remember like going on to a Zoom and it was like dead face everywhere. And I'm like, oh, you know, how are we going to operate over the next few months as we move to, you know, we need to go as a public company, you have to go through regulatory and compliance and approval. And so I thought like, oh gosh, I got really, really, really low for like a night.

1:04:03Hala Taha:So like your team was upset because they're like, what does this mean for my job? They weren't upset. I mean, my team is our consummate professionals and they had, you know, known that we were going to be going private and I and they were really amazing. But I could just tell they were sort of they needed a beat a little bit longer than I needed. And I was ready to get back to work and kind of like plow through this period of uncertainty. and I remember just feeling really down and dejected like, oh no, this is gonna be a terrible few months. Like, what have I done? And so I came back to them the next day and I was like, you know, I think this is how we should operate over the next few months.

1:04:47Do the right thing for the customer, always. Do the right thing for each other, always. Take care of one another and have fun. and kind of like YOLO, like we're not gonna be together for that much longer because we knew the structure of the deal and what would happen post-close. Oh my God, like from that point forward, I released the white knuckle grip. And as it were, I think somebody said, you know, it's like having a good hair day before you go to get a haircut. Every day something was going better than it was before up into the right. And it wasn't, it wasn't, At first I thought like, oh, it's just people feeling kind of bittersweet about this and adjusting to it.

1:05:29No, it definitively giving people those like pretty loose, you know, the handcuffs were up. Guardrails and being like, just go do your best. It was like actually better for the company. And that was my my last lesson. That's a pretty big one.

1:05:45Hala Taha:So 20 years of lessons. Yeah. You ended up exiting the company. um I'd love to understand what it feels like because for me like I've been running my company for like six seven years and it's so ingrained in like who I am it's so attached to my identity you founded your company as well what does it feel like to exit a company like did you have any grief um or is it more like or do you feel like relief like what do you feel it's hard to tell. I mean, I can only equate it to being postpartum in terms of any other like life experience that feels familiar where there's like a world of possibility in this new shiny thing of the future that you, you know, that you're excited about, but you also don't know what, which end is up and you're like totally confused about how time moves.

1:06:47I feel like, you know, for 20 years, I've had this singular focus. I really am not the type of person to have many different types of pursuits. I was like the monorail, you know, in our family. It was like Eventbrite and my family and my friends. Yeah. So yeah, I definitely think that there's grief. I pre-grieved, which was like probably my way of, of, you know, handling this. And I'm sure, I'm sure I need to go through this kind of hard moment of not immediately jumping into the next thing. And that was, you know, that was something that I knew in my gut and had been told about, I don't know, a million times from people once the news was public, like don't jump into something right away and just taking the time to reflect.

1:07:37And then, you know, I think I really just want to help people. And I know that I want to personally go back and learn from square one. Like that's so important to me. And so, you know, I don't know exactly what that is, but I'm being very, very intentional about how I build the next 20 years, which is kind of cool. Sort of like these, you know, these eras.

1:08:10Hala Taha:Yeah. It's like a new chapter that you get to figure it out. And with so much more freedom, I never felt like I didn't have freedom as the thing. Like I always felt like how lucky am I to work on the thing that I feel most passionate about that I was able to help build that I was there when it was born and I was there when it flew the coop and how lucky am I never ever felt burdened or obstructed or held back from being the leader of Eventbrite I felt like what an honor and a privilege so you know like that that to me yes I went through what who am I going to be without it this is my whole identity am I going am I going to be irrelevant Am I going to, you know, fall into a deep, dark depression?

1:08:57I would say it's been about a month and I feel like there's a lot of opportunity. A lot has come my way, which I feel really, really grateful for. But I know that I need to take my time and go slow. And I have this like, I don't know, I have this passion around this idea of like in television, you reset to one, right? When you're shooting a scene, you go back to the beginning, you do it again. I was like obsession with that concept. I don't know what format it'll take, but I do know that as I start to spend time with other people, you know, incredible content creators like yourself, and, you know, I'm lucky enough to be advising Sammy Cohen and people like her where I just feel like I now have the time to learn more and to support.

1:09:45but I also just have this insatiable appetite of learning. And rather than go off and be the sort of wise sage that knows everything, I want to do the opposite.

1:09:59Hala Taha:You want to go back to starting something from scratch. I want to reset to one. I don't know what that means, but we'll see. That's so exciting. Yeah. Another question that I have for you that I'm very curious about because something that I want to, I don't have kids yet. And so like, I really want to have kids soon. and I've been going through this like internal struggle of like, could I really be a CEO? Like I'm running a pod. I feel like I have three jobs. I have two companies, a podcast. Could I really tack on a kid onto this? And my partner is also an entrepreneur and like he's not slowing down.

1:10:33Hala Taha:He's actually a little younger than me. Yeah. So how did you balance it all? You're one of the only really successful female entrepreneurs. Like there's not that many, like there are, But there's more now, thankfully. There are more now, but I would say like nine out of 10 successful entrepreneurs on the show or even, you know, more than that are men. Yeah. I mean, when we took Eventbrite Public in 2018, I was the 21st woman to found and lead the company into an IPO as CEO. Wow. Ever. That was like really sad to me. Yeah. It was like really bittersweet to hear. I was like less stoked about that and more pretty bummed out.

1:11:15And I was the second youngest ever. And I was not that young. So, you know, I do reflect a lot about on how I have made it happen. And I think it's a confluence of factors that's incredibly personal. But the thing that I see happening more often now than I experienced, because I was pretty young when I had my first, I was 28. So pretty young by that, by like modern times, is that I didn't really overthink it. And I think now, like with science being where it is, thankfully, we have options to like put off having kids for longer and later. And I think that's great. But it also kind of makes you overthink it.

1:12:05And what I like to tell people, and I've had this conversation with so many, so many women and men at Eventbrite. One of my favorite parts of building a company is being able to be in people's lives. We have, you know, I think over two dozen babies that were born to people who met at Eventbrite. So I take that metric very seriously. But I always would say, you got yourself here somehow. There were things that you were born with. There were things that you learned. There were challenges that you overcame. There were things, opportunities that you took. You are going to get to that next level, which, you know, in your in your case is building a business and building a family with the exact same tactics.

1:12:52And like it doesn't. It does. It's certainly life defining for sure. But it also I use for me personally, I thought of it as, hey, kid, you're getting on my train and like you get on the train and we're going. I'm not stopping the train to then divert a different way. And I was so passionate about that and am so passionate about that with women in the workplace of let's go through all the ways in which you personally have gotten here. Because those are the things that, you know, you know, maybe take it for granted and let's apply it to the future. And like, that's how you're going to do it.

1:13:30Hala Taha:Yeah. And we became very specific and precise about our support of people building their families while working at Eventbrite to ensure that women had the highest degree of success possible in coming back and building their careers. And that to me was really important work that we did. You know, we didn't. Yes, we won awards and whatnot, but I mean, we really didn't do it for that. We did it because it was the right thing to do. And because Kevin and I had gone through the process of having a child and having a family and building a company, we had that empathy. And so I think that's going to be a really important part of the next era for you is really having confidence in your ability to figure it out because it's different for everybody.

1:14:22And it's not easy, but it's certainly not impossible. Yeah. And I think that the final thing I'll say, because I have older kids now, I have older kids and younger kids. I have two cohorts of ages. And I can say without a doubt, it definitely takes a different level of engagement and parenting in different chapters of the child's life. And so you can, it's not just one mode. Yeah. You know, and I think that's like maybe something that people don't talk about. that, you know, there are times when you can really lean in and to one side or the other for, and I would say I used to always get told this and I never believed it until I experienced it.

1:15:08Bigger kids, bigger problems. And so, you know, it's like as they get older, it does, it definitely takes a lot more cognitively to guide a young adult through the world than, you know, a small child.

1:15:21Hala Taha:Incredible advice. Thank you so much. That's incredible advice. If you had to start all over, would you still go into business with your partner? Oh, a thousand times. I mean, we really the last 10 years have been the most challenging for us because we haven't been working side by side. So while we both have, you know, this shared passion and unconditional love for Eventbrite, we weren't sitting, we sat side by side for the first 10 years. Yeah, it's so much to talk about. Yeah, I mean, it just, it's amazing. So I would say do it if you can. I mean, it's such a rewarding experience to be able to build something together and to have that shared experience and context and passion.

1:16:04And, you know, I would say, like, if I had to place a bet, we likely are going to do something together again because we really enjoyed that. Bonding, right? Yeah, and a way of being side by side in something that's not just the kids or not just, you know, our personal lives, but something that you're building that's incredibly valuable.

1:16:25Hala Taha:You exited Eventbrite and AI is taking over. It's going to be bigger than electricity, than the internet. It's like the biggest technology shift that we've ever seen. What's your advice to the new leaders of Eventbrite as they, you know, approach this AI era? Well, part of why we chose Bending Spoons, who acquired Eventbrite, is because they have a track record of applying, you know, cutting edge technology to consumer businesses to drive a better result for the customer. I think that they are misunderstood in the U.S. I think they're going to be an enormously successful company. And I feel really strongly about the stewardship of their of them to Eventbrite because of how they think, how they've run the company and and ultimately the kind of people they are.

1:17:22Because at the end of the day, you know, when it comes down to it, are they making the right decisions for people? They're constantly thinking about how to better the experience of the customer and how to put the customer in a better spot all the time. So that was really like important to me as I was thinking through this, the set of options that we have. uh also a company like eventbrite is basically in a very very crowded space of companies that

1:17:53Hala Taha:either have to completely disrupt themselves or they will be gone and i wanted eventbrite to be around longer than us and i think that in order to drive longevity you have to be really sure about about again this blank slate exercise because this is a reimagination moment for most companies. Almost all web 2.0 companies are absolutely facing this existential opportunity. And so I think one of the things just that I think is really important that may seem kind of silly is just I think the people who are leading companies need to be playing with AI every single day. It as almost like as hobbyists.

1:18:38And I just think that that is something that gets missed because people are either too busy doing their day job or they're reading about it as passive participants, but they're not like setting up their open claw. They're not, you know, using it in all these different ways, even if it's just in their personal life. I think just getting to be more fluent faster is really important. And the final thing I'll say is that I do think that there's a rate of change that outpaces humans' ability. And I think we have to be prepared to go back to the basics, you know, of human emotion, of human desire, of that Maslow's hierarchy of needs to come together and work together through this massive dislocation, change, and big uncertainty.

1:19:23Hala Taha:You were just saying that you want Eventbrite to live on beyond you and your husband. Why? Why is that so important to you? Because I think the legacy of what Eventbrite brings to the world is really important. Eventbrite's the largest platform of live experiences in the world. We are the second largest trafficked events site in the world. We are a place where niche is mass, where people can find their identity, they can find their people, they can connect, and they can create indelible memories. So I know that may sound heady, but if not Eventbrite, then who? And Eventbrite, I know, is a place where everyone is included.

1:20:08and there's a way for, you know, the new stewards of Eventbrite to create something that is a magnitude of, you know, order of magnitude larger than what we created. I'm so excited to see that because the world needs in-person live experiences now more than ever. Yeah.

1:20:27Hala Taha:Okay, last question. Before I go on to like the couple of questions I end my show with, what is like your top one, three pieces of advice for entrepreneurs tuning in right now who want to build a company as big as Eventbrite is. I can't stress enough the importance of capital efficiency. I think that like the, it gives you freedom. It gives you options. It gives you power. you know, it is, it's really important. And I actually was just listening to one of my business heroes, Anna Botin, who's the head of Santander, the largest bank in Europe. And I mean, she wakes up every day thinking about that.

1:21:16And they're an incredibly valuable company with over 180 million customers. And, you know, she's obsessed with how to drive efficiency and and make more money. And I think, you know, it's sometimes alluring to raise the big round and alluring to get the nice office and alluring to say that you've raised, you know, but it's, that is all smoke and mirrors if you don't have a very, very strong way to return on your invested capital.

1:21:52Hala Taha:One of the last questions that I ask all my guests is something actionable that we can do today. So what is one actionable thing that our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? I would say to take the exercise of a blank slate. If you're working on something or you're about to launch something, take a blank sheet of paper, physical paper out and draw the diagram of what would be a better version of that and constantly be thinking about how you can iterate even your best idea. because right now, every six hours, things are changing. So, I mean, you know, it's quite literally your idea yesterday can be made better today.

1:22:34And I think just being willing to constantly iterate even your best ideas and ask yourself, what would I do if I could do it all over again will yield a better, probably bigger risk-taking approach. And I wish I would have done that even more often.

1:22:52Hala Taha:Mm-hmm. Julia, this was such an awesome interview. I feel like I learned so much and I feel so inspired. Thank you. My last question to you is, what is your secret to profiting in life? Wow. I think it is being, this sounds so cliche, but I really think it's about like genuine gratitude, not forced gratitude, but genuine gratitude and grounding in the thing that you know you are incredibly grateful for. And I think that's just different for everybody. And I think oftentimes people get confused or overly convoluted about what they should be grateful for. I think just having that simple knowledge, that knowingness of what you're grateful for and reminding yourself of that constantly is a really great way to see opportunity, to seek connection, to build resilience and to find joy.

1:23:52Hala Taha:And where can our listeners learn more about you and everything that you do? Well, I'm on Instagram, Julia Hartz, at Julia Hartz. And then I'm also on LinkedIn. I see, you've got a pretty big following on LinkedIn. Thank you, I really appreciate it. Well, thank you so much, Julia. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Well, there you have it, Yap Fam. Julia Hartz is the real deal. What stayed with me from this conversation is how much of Julia's success came down to the decisions that looked small in the moment. Bootstrapping longer than it felt comfortable, choosing investors based on values, not valuation, building a product designed to disappear into the background so creators could shine.

1:24:30Hala Taha:None of these feel like headline moves, but every single one of these moves became load-bearing for everything that came after. Julia's blank sheet exercise is something I want you to try this week. Right at the top of a page, what would I do if I could start over? Then answer honestly about your business, career, or next move. Then act on one change immediately. And on capital efficiency. Julia was direct. Freedom, options, and power all flow from how disciplined you are with your resources. So take an honest look this week at your time and where your money is going in your business. cut what's not earning its place and double down on what's actually moving things forward.

1:25:09Hala Taha:Yap Bam, I hope this episode pushes you to build with more heart, lead with more conviction and stop waiting for perfect conditions. The entrepreneurs who win are the ones that keep learning, keep adopting and keep going. If you listened, learned and profited from this episode, share it with somebody in your world who needs to hear it. Leave us a five star review on Apple Podcasts, watch the full conversation on YouTube or Spotify video and connect with me on Instagram at Yap with Hala and LinkedIn by searching Hala Taha. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.