Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Eventbrite Co-Founder and CEO Julia Hartz

I recently interviewed Julia Hartz on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today built and leads a business that disrupted the world of events. Julia Hartz is the co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite and has been named one of Fortune's Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. Julia, thank you for joining us.

Julia: Thanks for having me. Good to see you, Adam.

Adam: Good to see you, too. You grew up in Santa Cruz before moving to southern California to go to Pepperdine. You worked in TV right out of college. And you were involved in a number of TV shows that had a lot of success. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What were the key experiences and lessons that shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Julia: Well, in hindsight, when I look back at the first two decades of my life, I think about one, the type of family support that I had. My parents decided to get divorced when I was two but made the decision to be excellent parents and create almost this team dynamic from the point that they decided to end their marriage. And with that, they made an explicit choice to live about a mile from each other. And even to the point where my mom and my stepfather decided to move towns. My dad, there was no question he would move, too. We would all move together and relocate in this small beach town where I and my brother could easily go between the two houses. And we did. I'm an excellent packer because of that. But I also feel like that sense of camaraderie and of putting someone else before your own interests and needs sometimes, like they very much were selfless in their approach. And so, that's the first thing that I think about in terms of who I am and how I operate. The second thing is that I started working when I was 14. And it was obviously a means to gain income and have spending money. But it was also just a transformative experience for me, learning the very basic roots of customer support and interaction. I was a barista at The Ugly Mug. This was a new coffee shop in town. And this incredible entrepreneur came into town with his super fancy manual Italian espresso machine. And I remember the first day walking into orientation. And we spent eight hours learning how to pull espresso shots. And that first moment of craftsmanship and being very precise, and learning to love coffee in just a totally new way. I mean, I was 14, I really didn't drink much coffee prior to that. It was illuminating. But then it was actually the first day when I, because I was the lowest person on the totem pole, I would be the opener on Saturday mornings. So, I'd get there at 5am. And at 5:29 am, because we literally opened at 5:30, there would be this woman standing outside, waiting to come in. And you know, she looked like someone's mom, she was really nondescript. But she was incredibly critical and biting with her feedback. I could never make the drink the way she wanted it to be. And a very long lecture would ensue. And so, about four weeks in, as I'm dreading going to work, and I'm dreading this interaction, I think my mom said to me, “Honey, she's probably lonely and wants somebody to talk to”. And that flipped the script for me and I started talking to her and we became very friendly. And that was a transformative experience for me and understanding that sometimes what you see is not what's actually under the surface. And if you could step out of your own perspective and lens of what the interaction is, and go a little bit deeper on what the motivation is, that makes a difference. Which, I think, helped me form the way I approach leadership and empathy. I love that. I could probably go on but I feel like those are two very early moments that have shaped who I am.

Adam: Empathy and leadership are intertwined. It starts with being able to see things from the other person's perspective. The importance of developing real human connections, which is, really, right at the core of your business. How did the idea for your business, Eventbrite, emerge? And how did you and your partners take the idea and turn it into such a successful business?

Julia: I think we approached Eventbrite and growing Eventbrite from three different perspectives, as is usually the case with a successful co-founding team. Kevin, who is our co-founder, previous CEO, and my husband and co-parent. So, he's a lot and he came at it from passion around using technology to democratize something that was not previously accessible to people. And so, prior to Eventbrite, he had founded a company called Xoom with his co-founder, Alan Braverman, and that was focused on helping immigrants send money back to their families better, faster, cheaper than the incumbent solutions. And Xoom is now a core part of PayPal. So, when Alan and Kevin had the original idea for what became Eventbrite, they were thinking about a bunch of ways in which they could use, particularly the PayPal platform, to democratize these different industries. When Kevin and I got together and started thinking about, wow, what could you do with this idea? How could you build it into a business? We found her now. Renaud had this passion around, not only building as an engineer but around photography. He's a world-renowned photographer in his spare time. And he had, I think, a draw to this idea that you could help event producers and creators turn their passion into profit with a platform that can enable them to host events successfully. And then, I came to it from the desire to help people connect, to help them discover their passions, to challenge their beliefs, to learn in a much more effective way. But I also had an experience in my television days, when I was researching a reality show concept where I'd gone deep into the world of fandoms. And Adam, there is a fandom for everything. And this is a really interesting world. When you hear fandom, you probably think of Marvel Comics, or Comic-Con, or people dressing up. That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of these gatherings. And what I noticed about these gatherings, is even if the subject matter genre was totally obscure, and you could barely understand one-on-one on this, you could immediately understand the passion that people have. And how these strangers would get together and be in real life at these gatherings with this palpable energy. So, that's where my motivation came from. How could we help people create these gatherings and these moments and have an activity that could change people's lives? And how could we do that at scale?

Adam: How can you do that at scale? What were the keys to growing and scaling Eventbrite? And what are your best tips for anyone listening on how to grow and scale their business?

Julie: Every business is different. So, it's hard to apply general rules, but I'll try to at least extract some of the learnings that we had. The first one is that, typically, businesses don't scale fast right off the bat. And, I think, we have, maybe, a warped sense of how much time it takes to scale something. I always like to joke that Figma is this incredible platform for designers to come together and collaborate and to create products. And you would think that it's an overnight success in the making. And it's nine years old. So many companies that we think have just blown up out of nowhere, have actually been building slowly, trying to find product-market fit, grinding, walking through the desert, and then they hit an inflection point. The first thing for entrepreneurs to remember is that it's often a very long, lonely walk, and it's hard to prepare yourself for that. It's really important to choose a partner and to not do it alone. Because, I think, every great story has dark times. And often it's in the beginning. Your idea has to evolve to a business, the business then has to evolve to a company, the company that needs to scale. I mean, there's a lot of steps. So, remember that a lot of it is putting one foot in front of the other. And the one with the most conviction wins. The second thing is that I feel that there are companies that, especially with the emergence of Web 3 and the excitement of that, there are companies that have really cool ideas that are looking for a problem. And that takes longer for a concept to take off if you're not starting with the problem. It's not impossible, but it's just not the most direct path to success and scaling. The most direct path is you find a problem that you want to solve, and you solve it better than anyone else. And then, I think, the third thing, which is pretty obvious these days, but it wasn't way back in 2006, which is, it's about the people. And it's about who you surround yourself with, and how much courage and integrity those people have.

Adam: Truly, I want to highlight a couple of points you just made. Rome wasn't built in a day. Having that one day at a time mentality, understanding that if you want to build a successful business, you're not going to build it overnight. There's no such thing as an overnight success. But having a mindset that allows you to understand that obstacles will arise. And having the ability to power through whatever comes your way, having the ability to push forward, to push past whatever obstacles are in front of you. That's what it takes to become successful. The second thing I want to highlight, which you just shared, is the importance of surrounding yourself with great people, which is critical to being successful in anything. And to that end, I want to ask you, what do you look for in the people who you surround yourself with? What do you look for in the people you hire? And what are your best tips on the topic of hiring?

Julie: What I'm really looking for in people who we hire is first, great judgment. I think that's something that is learned but over a longer period of time. And one would think you could be born with it and raised with great judgment. But I do think it's something that one hones over time. And it's important because at the scale that Eventbrite that we are hiring, I'm typically looking for leaders, and I'm typically looking for people who can run fast in an autonomous manner. And so, the judgment piece is critical. But even if you go back to the very beginning, I reflect on our first hires, there's so much autonomy that happens when you're a startup and everybody's wearing multiple hats. I was customer service marketing and finance, Kevin was product development, Renaud was engineering, and we all three were QA. You're wearing just a lot of hats. And then our first hire bootstrapped the company and it was just the three of us for two years. So, our first hire didn't come in until we already had product-market fit. And we were ready to scale. But that person was an engineer. And when I think about it, they had so much scope. So, great judgment is a really important attribute for someone coming into a tiny, tiny startup, or someone coming into a scaled company. The second thing is critical thinking. So many times we try to rush to the conclusion, or we get paralyzed in data analysis. And I really think that some of the most successful people that I've worked with have been able to either deal well with any ambiguity or parse through an immense amount of data by using critical thinking skills and by taking calculated risks. And so, that's really important for somebody to be able to move quickly. And then the third thing that I look for is really around character. Nothing can substitute or be a good stand-in for courage and integrity. And, I think, that we get blinded by the light of dynamic personalities or influence and the rough times, or given the choice to take the path of doing the right thing or doing this slightly less right thing. I very much time and time again, look for folks who are always going to choose to do the right thing, even when it's hard. And even when it's not popular. That's where the courage comes in.

Adam: I love that. And I love something that you shared right off the bat, which is that you look for people who are leaders or people who have the capacity to become leaders. And one of the things that I believe in so strongly is that when you look at the key characteristics of great leaders, right at the very top is integrity, character, having a set of principles that you believe in strongly, so strongly that you're not going to compromise them no matter what. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader? And what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Julie: I've learned this recently, actually, that you don't need to always have the right answers. You need to be willing to seek out the truths and learn. If you can learn quickly, you can scale up to any challenge. If you are curious and humble, and you can balance the sort of paradox of leadership, which there are many, then you have a greater chance to succeed and to frankly, not get burned out by leading. Often as a society, we hold up on pedestals. Maybe leaders too, aren't as apt to ask questions and learn and be curious. And that gives us a false notion that we as leaders, it's just basically whoever can pound their chest the loudest, or whoever consumes the most confidence and competence. That absolutely has a big role to play and how you show up as a leader. The best leaders are the ones who are always willing to ask hard questions, questions that make them not look like they know everything, and are willing to change their minds when presented with new data that helps them understand where their previous point-of-view might have been wrong. And they have the humility to be able to handle that.

Adam: Great leaders ask great questions. Great leaders are flexible and adaptable. And great leaders are great listeners. The best leaders don't walk into a room intent on speaking, they walk into a room intent on listening. So I'm with you 110%.

Julie: The other thing that I would say about being a leader today is that I look for leaders who have developed a system or are in process. We can always be a work in progress on how to take care of themselves if that makes sense. And it's such an important thing. Today, we're talking more and more about mental health, which is great. There's so much more to do to teach people how to be leaders, high performers, and not burn themselves out. So, the athletic ability of leaders is something that I'm hoping for by opening this dialogue through the pandemic. And a lot of people are looking at this and seeking the truth. I'm hoping that it becomes a part of how we grow leaders, how we help them become better overall, and how they care for themselves. Because they think, sometimes in the past, we've looked at someone who just burns themselves out as being heroic. And the best leaders are the ones that are set up to have a long career and impact more and more people and compound that influence over time.

Adam: Mental health, physical health -integral to success as a leader, foundational to your ability to be your best self.

Julie: I like to think about it as if you were an athlete at the top of your game. You would be thinking about this day in and day out, which is, how can you get the best performance out on the field or out on the court or out on the track? Oftentimes, I think we shouldn't put ourselves at the end of the line because we have so many other people to take care of and worry about and motivate and we don't want to show weakness. One of the best things that a leader can do today is accept the innate vulnerability of being mortal. That's become a more salient point for all of us through COVID. And using that to then re-examine our, at the end of the day, supporting the systems that help us be at the top of our game. And I'll give an example that's more personal because it sounds, at least to me, pretty vague, which is that I realized about five years ago that I am horrible at night. I used to do the thing that most working parents do, which is I drop the kids off, go to the office, work a full day, come home, have dinner with the kids, participate in bedtime things, get back online. And I realized that I was doing that for years. So, this realization came slowly. But I finally realized that the documents I was reviewing, I was putting stark your comments, and at night, the decisions I was making were hasty, or because I was tired, I wasn't retaining information very well. At night, I was just done. And giving that up and making an explicit change to not get back online at nine o'clock at night, it was game-changing for me because it forced me to think about the day differently. It forced me to redesign the time that I spent in the office during normal working hours much more productively, because I didn't have this, sort of, hold out for everything else that I needed to do at night. So, it forced me to work smarter. And then secondly, it obviously increased the productivity and output that I could produce. It created higher quality output. It was doing most of that work in the morning, when I was far better at asking better questions, to tie it back to the last point. And then also, it impacted the team. Because I had been obtuse to the fact that I was also making other people work at night because I was online. If I was in Documents, asking questions, or in Slack, it was just drawing everybody else back online. And that was like, at least five years ago that I made that change. I haven't looked back. Occasionally, if I'm preparing for something, or we have times where we need to be heads down, and certainly through the COVID crisis, we were working a lot of hours, I broke that rule. But generally I try to keep that role. And it's worked well for me because it is a discipline that is needed for me personally to produce the best work.

Adam: Small changes can have a game-changing impact on yourself on others. And it really starts with having an open mind, having an eagerness to become better, to look inward, to be willing to try different things. In your case, that was a game-changer.

Julie: That's right. I wish I could tell you that with that found time I've read 100 books. That would not be true because I'm still tired. But I do read more in general, because I have that openness. And I obviously spend more time with my kids, which is an investment that pays off in dividends.

Adam: I love it. Julia, you are a highly successful female entrepreneur in the world of technology, a world that is overwhelmingly male, particularly at the top. What advice do you have for women who aspire to excel in male-dominated industries? And what advice do you have for men in those industries on how to be better allies?

Julia: I think we had a moment of acceleration, and maybe the last decade, stepped back from that pace during COVID. Because so many people had to rearrange their lives to help their families through this moment. So, my hope is that we can get back on the path we were on prior to COVID in terms of more and more women stepping into leadership roles, succeeding as entrepreneurs, not stepping off their career path. But the number one thing I would say to any woman who is a leader, especially in technology, but this goes across all industries, is hire women. That may sound kind of obvious, or that may sound to people like I'm saying don't hire men, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, be mindful of hiring the women who want to be in your position someday because you don't always feel ready to be a role model. It's, sort of, like being a parent. You wake up one day and you're a parent, you're like, wait, I don't feel old enough to be a parent, how is this possible? I had that same experience with realizing that I was a role model. And what I see today is something that holds women leaders back, is even though they are role models, they're not actually thinking about getting more women to the table, getting more women into the room. They're thinking about how they can be successful. And it is a bit about reaching back and making sure you're bringing people along. But it also is about realizing that you yourself, you’re a talent magnet for women who want to be you. And that's an incredible advantage that women leaders have. And so, that would be my one piece of advice. I probably have 12 more. But this is something I've been thinking about lately, as I've been looking at how we grow Eventbrite and looking inward at how we scale. Now, Eventbrite is close to a 50-50 balance from the board all the way through the company. And I'm incredibly proud of that. We have more work to do in different pockets of diversity, and gender, ethnic, racial, you name it, we are always going to be a work in progress. But having that balanced perspective, from a gender standpoint, has truly shaped who we are. There's still always more to work on. So, it's just about where you are on the journey and not getting too overwhelmed by it. On the ally side, number one thing I would say to men who are supporting women is that it's the micro-actions that can make the biggest difference. A lot of people think of allies or mentorship as something that's really heavy and time-consuming and a lot of pressure. And what I found in my own journey is that it's been the tiniest actions that have made the biggest difference. So, it's the phone call that he picked up. It's the comment that he made that motivated me. It's the question he asked that made me think differently about something. It's that introduction that was made that opened a door for Eventbrite. It's really small actions that compound quickly to make a huge difference in a person's life. And so, try not to get so overwhelmed by the idea of being an ally and more so, and this applies to everybody, no matter who you are, try to just think about how you can do small acts of validation.

Adam: That's such an important perspective. And something that I believe in so strongly is the power of mentorship. And it's important to find a traditional mentor, but it's just as important, if not more important, to find what I call mini-mentors. And those are the kinds of people who you just described within the context of allyship. Someone who, through one interaction, can change your way of thinking, can help you in some capacity, can change the trajectory of your career. So, whether it's within the context of allyship, or more broadly, find these people and be one of them yourself. Earlier in the conversation, we touched upon a bedrock of your business, live events. What is the future of live gatherings and live events?

Julia: Well, I think that we've all gone through a global crisis that we have never seen before. And I feel like we are moving through this time as best we can. However, with an extended period of social isolation, we're starting to see the wave of mental health impacts come over the top of this pandemic. And it is too much to even grasp how devastating this moment in time is becoming frankly, for those who have experienced social isolation in a way that's been really detrimental to their mental health. I know I'm starting in a dark place, I'm gonna go somewhere like humans need to connect. This is something that is in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is right above food, air, water, shelter, and it is connectedness. We need to connect with one another. And gathering in real life together through events and experiences is one of the best ways that you can connect with other humans. I was trying to help people understand the difference of what we experience in our day in and day out lives versus how we create indelible memories. So, think about something that you read or listened to, or watched online in the last week, that created an impact on you, that created that change in the way you think or read, it is a memory that you can easily recall right now. Now think about your first concert. And if you're like me, you can remember who it was that you saw who you're with, maybe even the temperature in the venue, what it smelled like, what it felt like, how you felt. And it's that indelible memory that gets created in moments like that, and it doesn't have to be a massive concert, it doesn't have to be a huge conference, it can be a small, intimate workshop or retreat or class or celebration. That's the importance of why we gather. And then reclaiming gathering and coming back together at this moment is giving people a lot of perspective in terms of what they missed. You don't know what you've got till it's gone. And this certainly is playing out in live experiences right now. And the ways in which we are appreciating how we spend our time is different now. We're redesigning our lives and creating a new way to think about how we spend our time and we're appreciating that moment. So, you layer that on top of the human need, the desire. And then we're also facing all these uncertain moments. Will we or will we not be facing a recession? What is going on with the global, macroeconomic situation? There's just a lot of questions out there. So, I think people are also seeking camaraderie and connection because of that. So, what does that boil down to? Well, we're seeing in-person events skyrocket around the world. People just want to be out and they want to be out together. But they want to be out in more intentional ways. And they want to be hedonistic, so probably no surprise is that music and food and drink events are up. And wellness events are taking a knee right now; they're not growing as quickly as their other sister categories. Business conferences and networking and workshops are up as people are either reconnecting professionally or preparing to maybe look for a new job. And by and large, we see that consumers are going out more frequently. And they're going to seek out different communities than they had before. So, people are trying on new communities, and interacting in different ways and going to a wider breadth of gatherings than before. So, I'm excited about where that leads us. I think that we have now the opportunity to understand that no matter what happens, we've gone through a period of time where we were on lockdown and not really allowed to gather. We found each other online, we know that we will always seek out community and connect. But we also understand how important in-person gathering is now more than ever.

Adam: Julia, what can anyone do to become more successful, personally and professionally?

Julia: Read. My mom would be happy I said that. She's a book editor. Seek to read to gain new perspective, not just to be versed on the latest trend in business and leadership, seek to learn and never, ever stop asking questions. And remember that she who lasts the longest wins. So, it is the long game. And this is not a win at all personal cost. This is a, think about how you want your legacy to be over the long-term. And yes, life is short, so we should all YOLO but at the same time, it's thinking about longevity. It is really important for longevity in your career and what you love to do.

Adam: Julia, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Julia: Thank you, Adam.

Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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