Eventbrite (with Julia & Kevin Hartz)

We're joined by two very special guests, Eventbrite CEO Julia
Hartz and her cofounder, spouse and Eventbrite Chairman Kevin
Hartz, to tell their story of building Eventbrite together (along
with their lives and family) from the PayPal diaspora to
bootstrapped business, unicorn status, IPO and now starting all
over again in the wake of COVID with both a tragedy and a huge
new opportunity in front of them as public company. 





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New! We're codifying our own Playbook notes and takeaways from
each episode, and posting them here in the show notes and on our
website. You can read them below or at:
www.acquired.fm/episodes/eventbrite


Playbook


Seeing the next technology wave before others do is rare. It
provides a roadmap for what to build and invest in if you're
willing to bet on that knowledge. 

Kevin worked at Silicon Graphics in the mid 90's. This
led him to realize that internet services like PayPal,
YouTube, and many others would be possible long before others
(similar to Don Valentine realizing computers would penetrate
every industry from his time at Fairchild).



PayPal and its subsequent "mafia" was successful in part
because of rapid experimentation. They observed what got used by
customers and then doubled down. 

PayPal's "core" use case on eBay started as an
experiment. International money transfer (Xoom) and event
ticketing (Eventbrite) also initially started as experiments
on the PayPal API before the eBay acquisition — and went on
to become large companies.

Julia, Kevin, and their cofounder Renaud had a prototype
of Eventbrite running and serving customers even before
starting the company — which gave them the confidence to do
what seemed crazy on paper, but was actually "de-risked":
start a company as an engaged couple, have a remote technical
cofounder, bootstrap for 2 years after being turned down by
VCs, etc.

When a company is experiencing explosive growth, they
often need to leave other huge opportunities on the table.
PayPal knew international remittances could be huge, but
didn't build it internally because of the need to focus on
eBay merchants.



The TAM for bringing an offline behavior offline is often WAY
bigger than anything you can calculate beforehand. The range and
size of what were previously niche or impossible use cases will
often expand dramatically with easy-to-use online tools. This is
especially true in long-tail use cases that can only be
aggregated by self-serve internet-based software. 

One early encouraging sign for Eventbrite was its use to
host speed dating events in New York. Before Eventbrite, it
was nearly impossible to organize, promote, and charge for
something like that. Now, organizers could suddenly become
entrepreneurs and make real money hosting events like this.
Most VCs ignored or were confused by this data (~"Call us
when you attack Ticketmaster."), but they missed that it
unlocked a massive new market which previously operated only
through word-of-mouth and cash transactions (if at all).

All three major dislocations of the 21st century — the
tech bubble bursting in 2001, the financial crisis in 2008,
and now COVID in 2020 — have only accelerated offline
behaviors to online. COVID is unlocking a new wave of online
event entrepreneurs for Eventbrite in the same way the
financial crisis unlocked a wave of in-person event
entrepreneurs in 2008-10.



Starting with just one niche can be incredibly powerful;
often your customers will then lead you to more. 

Before the speed-dating in New York (which was fully
inbound), Eventbrite was used to organize tech meetups in the
then-smaller tech community in SF. It was even used for the
first TechCrunch Disrupt!



Too much capital (and too little accountability) can hurt a
company much more than help it. Capital covers up problems,
distracts focus from customers, and leads to poor resource
allocation. 

Kevin: "The periods where we had raised the most money
privately were the hardest and most difficult for me, because
we were really fighting this gravity of overspending and
creating inefficiency. And it took us away from our roots as
a capital-efficient, highly-effective perpetual motion
machine [that we'd had as a bootstrapped company]."



Being a public company not only instills more capital
allocation discipline, but can ALSO afford a degree of financial
flexibility that just isn't possible as a private company. 

Within weeks of COVID hitting, Eventbrite dramatically
shrunk the size and scope of the company AND raised $375m in
new capital from new and longterm shareholders. Both actions
would have been difficult to impossible as a private company
with a static valuation (and associated anti-dilution,
ratchet terms, etc) that no longer reflected the reality of
the current situation.