Julia & Kevin Hartz On Taking Eventbrite Public

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I'm Kristen o', Brien, CMO at nfx. The NFX podcast is about seeing what others do not and getting at the true mechanisms behind people and companies who leave an indelible mark on the world. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a rating and by sharing it with any friends who you think should listen. You can also find transcripts, other episodes, essays, and videos@nfx.com and now onto the show.

Okay, so Julia and Kevin, such a joy to have you on the NFS podcast. Like we've known each other for such a long time. Kevin was the first investor in Trulia back all those years ago, and we shared an office. We were neighbors, like those crazy times back in the day when you were building Eventbrite and I was building Trulia, and there's so much we could talk about today. You're obviously an iconic couple in Silicon Valley, loved by founders and investors. And between the two of you, there's such an incredible amount of experience from taking companies public, both traditionally and now, on the backside that Kevin's been focused on. So we could talk about a bunch of stuff, but I really want to talk about financing from a founder perspective. You hear lots of advice from bankers and investors and lawyers, but really, really focusing about financing from a founder's perspective. So what this actually means and just how do you think about financing, so how founders should think about financing. So maybe, Julia, let's start with you. Like, three years ago, you took Eventbrite public. The company was 12 years old. I think it was doing something like 10 billion in GMV. And notably, you're one of very few women to lead a tech ipo. So how did you think about that? Tell me about the process. Tell me about how you were thinking about it. Why was that the right time to take Eventbrite public?

Well, thanks for having us, Pete. And the IPO felt like, you know, lifetimes away from when we first met. And we're building Trulia and Eventbrite in a really small way. And I think one of the things that gets lost in talking about companies and the growth path is the early days and how small everything starts. And so it's great to be here at this point. I think that I started Eventbrite with Kevin, obviously, and Renaud Visage, and I knew nothing about building companies, so I really got to learn from some of the best. And we knew in the back of our heads that, you know, both we wanted to build something that could be incredibly efficient. We bootstrapped the Company, actually, and spent less than a quarter of a million dollars in the first two years getting traction and product market fit. And we knew that along the way, you know, we would want to become a public company. So that was always part of the plan. And I think I really learned that from Kevin, that the best companies are often public companies, and that's because those companies have found, you know, what makes their business tick, how to meet the needs of their customers. And they couple that with the rigor and visibility of being in the public markets. And so it was always on, you know, our list of things we would do when we dot, dot, dot, and the dot, dot, dot for us was, you know, reaching a certain revenue threshold and having visibility and confidence that we could continue to drive the business. And that meant that we understood the levers that drove our business, which meant that we had really nailed all of our metrics. And I think that going into that decision, it just wasn't a hard decision for us because we had always figured that once we had crossed those thresholds or achieved those milestones, that we would be looking to start the IPO process.

So, Julia, you mentioned revenue thresholds and levers. Is there any rule of thumb that you think about, and do you have any sense of how that might have changed in terms of the last few years?

I think it's different for every company, and I don't actually think that it's a certain magic number for every company. And I actually would be interested in hearing if Kevin has a different perspective. But for us, it was when we had line of sight on 300 million in net revenue, and also when we felt that we had line of sight into, you know, what it would take to be a profitable company. And most notably above those revenue metrics were our creator numbers, retention numbers, consumer growth. Those are all really important inputs into that revenue threshold. Kevin, do you have a different perspective?

I have this qualitative perspective. Having co founded Zoom Xoom, the money remittance business that went public in 2013, and then, of course, Eventbrite in 2018. And that's simply that during those board meetings when it was raised, I felt a sense of unease, but not pushback. So there's this feeling like you need to be pushed out the nest a bit to do that. Now, that's completely unscientific. Julia says it right is that you want to have predictability, you want to control the levers of your business, and you need the capital to expand.

I mean, just from my perspective at Truly, we took it public in 2012. And I think we're on a $50 million revenue run rate. So very, very small relative to, I think, how things evolve. There's an expansive checklist, but the short checklist, as you say, is like, what are the levers to 5x business? And you could sort of dial that in, you know, the kind of inputs to the outputs, the scale, the predictability around that. Because I think you may be able to grow, but if you kind of the seasonality or the cyclicality or whatever, be able to sort of predict that and then the team. That's why I imagine adding some folks to the team, is that sort of consistent and on the team, like, what were the additions that you felt perhaps were necessary to get to that scale, to get to that milestone?

Yeah, I think that, you know, we benefited from having a team that had largely been operating together for more than five years. And I think familiarity and cohesion as a team was really important in building up to the IPO and going through that process. In the following years, we had a new CFO and a new CTO join the company, and that was sort of a perfect inflection point when we needed to scale to the next level and think about something almost entirely different than what we were thinking about re ipo. And I think, you know, much like there are seasons with different storylines, there's also reasons why people come together and are the right executive team. But I think there are key positions that you have to have to go through the IPO process and have a successful public offering, not least of which is a cfo.

And you touched on a little bit there about the team post ipo, maybe talking more broadly about, like, as a public company. And I know you've been, you know, both of you been really passionate about culture and the Breitlings. And you hear a lot of founders who are kind of negative about going public because they think it will change the way that they run the company or the culture. Like, are there things that you did or you focused on or your advice for other founders in that transition to going public that you would instigate or perhaps things you do differently?

Yeah, a lot. So I had a lot of time to think about this because we wouldn't, you know, it was over 10 years from founding when we went public, so I had a lot of time to talk to other founders who had taken their companies public and were in that CEO position. And you're right. I don't think I found anyone who told me it was a good idea. It sort of motivated me in A way to be a contrarian. So. So I set out with some sub goals. Obviously the goal of an IPO is to raise money in the public markets and you know, there's all sorts of inputs and probably some really unnecessary long processes in that, which I'm sure we'll get to when we talk about SPACs and there's a lot of cooks at the kitchen. But I knew going into it that I wanted, if I was going to put nine months of effort and distraction into this fundraising, I was going to get out 10x the value. A couple things went through my mind. One is that when we raised money in the private market with Eventbrite, Kevin always really pushed us to do it as, you know, quickly with high quality outcomes as possible so that we could get back to work on building the product and serving our customers. And the second thing is that by the time we went public, I had had two babies. So I knew that in nine months I could make a human. This was going to be nine months to get to a place of, you know, that needed to be pretty extraordinary. And so I focused on really three things. One was indoctrinating everyone who worked on the ipo, who was an outside advisor into our culture. So literally our kickoff party, when you bring together, you know, the banks and the lawyers and everybody, we actually hosted that at our house and we had a customer come to talk about the impact Eventbrites had on their life and our kids were there serving drinks. It was a head first indoctrination into our culture and a nod to take off the jersey that you came in with and put on the Eventbrite jersey. We're going to be working together and I want you to be a part of who we are and what we do. And I want to explain it to you, I want to show it to you, you know, so that was one. And that really helped us get through some, you know, stressful times when you're making decisions and there's lots of interest in the room. The second thing was I wanted to use the process to codify our strategy and really after 10 years of building, you know, sometimes you just figure people understand who you are and, you know, it's all lodged in everybody's heads. Actually writing that down in our S1 gave us the opportunity to really do some finer work on our long term strategy and that was really helpful. And so we took the S1 process quite seriously and used it to actually leverage our own work on long term strategy. And then the third thing we did was we put Our customers front and center. So going into the roadshow, the first thing I would do was ask the sort of youngest person in the room to tell me the last eventbrite events they'd been to which sort of created this connective tissue between everybody and relatability. And the second thing I would do is tell a story about a creator. You know, where did they get the idea for their event? How have they grown their event? And it was a risk, you know, coming into the room as a a female CEO, you know, kind of a rarity and B, taking this time to sort of connect everyone in the room. But doing that allowed us to not only explain who we were and why we weren't at the next generation Ticketmaster and also reorient our company around our customer, you know, and really put them front and center. So I think those are the ways in which we. We really strengthened who we were beyond raising capital for expansion and growth. And so I have to say I enjoy being a public company. I don't think you have to change your culture to be a public company. I know you don't have to. There are times in which I time out the conversation to ask is this something we must do to be a better company and create value for our customers. We or is this something we feel like we have to do because of scrutiny from the public markets and that generally gets to the heart of an issue and we can make a better decision then we must do these things.

Yeah, that's so great because you so many companies that go public end up just focus on serving Wall street and you making that really hard shift that you're not hard shift but making that really clear distinction. No we're serving our customers first and foremost and make that front of mind for everyone is stops people getting into kind of like the negative territory of kind of focus on the wrong things just to or short termism which can often be the challenge. And you said you enjoyed it. From my perspective I feel similarly. And the demands on your time, you know, did that change at all or has that changed at all or do you think it's been sort of doing. Doing somewhat similar stuff.

I think I've become more sophisticated in time management over the last few years so and more discerning. And so I it's hard to tell how much of that has been because I do an earnings call once a quarter. I talk to investors throughout the quarter. But we're getting pretty good at, you know repeating the process of earnings call to and also to bring in some of those Elements from the ipo. Like I talk to every customer that we've highlight in our shareholder letter and I'll actually be doing that later today before our earnings call. So that when I'm telling their story to highlight some business aspect to investors, I can speak fluently and authentically. But I think, I don't find that it's an impediment to, you know, operating. I think that it's made us a stronger operating team with more rigor. And it's a nice rhythm. I don't know, I love time management rhythm. I could geek out on that all day long. So this sort of suits my comfort zone.

Yeah, I'm sure you did the same. But in the sort of preceding 18 months to take in Trulia public, we kind of built that rhythm into the company and then it was. And I think you see this just at scale. Private companies, they have a great operating rhythm and so it's sort of okay, people can see the share price, but nothing else really changes other than that. And Kevin, we touched on earlier just around this, you know, a reluctance in certain companies to go public. Just why do you think that is? And just you also mentioned perhaps potentially being pushed out of the nest by some investors or not. What do you think is going on the minds of founders? And then I'd love to touch on like Stripe for an example, which is a very high profile company. Like seems to be sort of, you know, spending a crazy long time being private. Like what do you think is going through their heads right now?

Well, there's always exceptions to the rule. I think the conventional wisdom which is changing is to stay private at all costs. But you give the examp example of Stripe and that is an outlier of a company of massive size and growth in profits that is still private. The expression is that light is the best antiseptic is what comes to mind in that a company out in the public eye will have much more responsiveness in the business and in the performance. Whereas what we've seen over the years happen often is just round after round of private capital where governance often can take a hit. Poor governance, as we saw in WeWork, we see less accountability to the numbers, to the right growth measures. And so it can actually have this kind of opposite effect. Staying private gives this sense of kind of control. But I think it's a misnomer and we're seeing the market now swing back that pendulum swing back to what we saw in the 90s in that slowdown, staying private for a very short amount of time relative to today.

Kieran, why do you think that is? I mean, obviously, you know, the timeframe, it sort of was extremely short. Back in 2000, the.com bubble, you know, companies would go public, you know, more as a concept ipo. And then you've kind of saw this extension, you know, Facebook, you know, was an example of that and Stripe today. And now you've got this sort of compression again where you've seen companies accessing the public markets very, very quickly. What's driving that? What do you think that is?

Capitalism is like a pendulum. It never stays right in the center. It always swings one direction or the other from boom to bust to IPO early to IPO very late. And we're just swinging back from the staying private at all costs back that other direction because those thoughts from the period of the 90s are coming back. Having the currency for acquisition, having this kind of marketing event, having this responsiveness to the street, kind of open sourcing your business model that you can gain insights. So there are all these great reasons for going public that were kind of put to the wayside of the previous conventional wisdom of staying private in the control and ownership that that brought.

Some people think of an IPO as an exit. How should founders think about a sort of public listing? Is that really an exit for them?

Well, there is a company as a case study that went public in the 1980s at a 500 million valuation. There's a company in the 90s that went public at a $500 million valuation and that was Microsoft and Amazon respectively, both that have surpassed that magical trillion dollar market cap number. So in exit is a misnomer. I think it was a term that venture capitalists used that as soon as a company went public it was their fiduciary responsibility to distribute shares. And thus the term exit came about. But today the reality is that it's just the beginning of a much longer journey. We are build enduring businesses that last for generations and there's really no difference between private and public. Julia and I, for example, haven't sold a single share of Eventbrite. So we can't say we've exited in any manner since the ipo. We've just completely locked ourselves up.

It's quite unique to do that. So kudos to you guys. I guess if you think about like building enduring businesses and private companies, they have, you know, a myriad of choices open to them or more choices, let's say open to them than you had like three years ago. Maybe switch gears a little bit and let's talk about SPACs and the Route to going public. And Kevin, you've been deep in the SPAC world for a while now. I guess tell us kind of what was the catalyst to get involved and just what do you focus on as a SPAC sponsor now?

Great question. What we saw out in the market was that our job is to look for new phenomenon, new companies that are emerging that are going to really have an impact on the world. And bitcoin cryptocurrency kind of emerged and was this, this kind of strain and hated by many phenomenon which now has a trillion dollar market cap and spacs are similarly. They were this strange kind of instrument that would is not as reputable background that were coming into the mainstream over the last year and if you looked at them were very effective, are a very effective means to get a company into the public light. And so kind of the job or my kind of mission and quest here is to help this form into a real industry of helping private companies get into the public markets. So it's kind of like venture capital in the 80s and 90s was this backwater niche industry and we see what it has done today and it's really transformed the innovation economy and we see the same with SPACs and it's going through its boom and bust phases right now. But we all know from our experience in tech that that's just how the world works.

So let's just take a hypothetical. So let's say I'm running a 100 million revenue startup, 150 people and I'm getting seven SPAC offers a week. If you were advising the CEO, which I know you advise many early stage CEOs like what would you advise them to do and what would be non obvious.

Yeah, the question is do they want to be a public company? And that's the first question because it's not just a SPAC option, it's a SPAC option, a traditional IPO or a direct listing. So there's really kind of a suite of options. So that that's really the first question is do they want to in the public markets? And the second question is, you know, which direction suits that company the best? You know I've obviously biased towards the SPAC route but at Eventbrite went through the traditional IPO route and while it had its challenges was a good experience for us. So that's the starting point. The other side is that for a company that, you know, I'm assuming with 100 million in revenue and a software business has probably got a steady growth curve and so assuming that it has that steady growth curve, that it has that right management team in place, all those things that Julia talked about, what it takes to be public should be applicable here. And so then is it door A, B or C, spac, traditional IPO or direct listing?

And just to the question, like, how do you know you want to be a public company CEO? Like, you know, I guess that's. I don't. You know, there are some people that probably wake up in the morning and say they want to run a public company, but generally those people are not startup founders who are more obsessed with product than kind of the status of running a public company. Like, I guess, how do you think you will know whether that's something you want to do? Not say you as an individual, but it makes sense for the company to be that?

Well, it brings performance to the next level. You have accountability to public investors that are very bright and have really great buy side analysts that can give you insights on your business and also challenge you in a productive way. So it's really a chance to kind of up your game, to learn to see the world in a different light. And it is that next step for a business.

And Juliet, like, any thoughts on that? I know when we were both starting out businesses in the same building, like, probably wasn't the thing in your mind at the time.

No, I think I've approached this journey by putting one foot in front of the other. But you know, I think being a private company CEO and being a public company CEO, there wasn't much difference. In my experience, becoming CEO was the hardest transition. I used to joke with Kevin that, you know, we have a unique situation, which is that we started the company together. I really got to learn underneath him, you know, as like the sort of co founder and operating partner for 10 years before I became CEO. But when I became CEO, I remember coming home maybe at like the end of the first week and saying, okay, this is not fair. You made it look so easy. I was in Candyland and you were in Tron. And now I've been like dropped into this, you know, next level. And I think it was mostly the feeling of responsibility and accountability and the mental part of being the CEO, right? And that just felt like a total, huge, huge, huge change. And so I don't think that it's a foregone conclusion that a founder would become a CEO for the long term. I think that there are different leaders that are the right leaders for the company's phase and there are some really wonderful founders who have morphed into CEOs and have stayed CEOs of their companies for decades, you know, and have been really, really the best CEOs of those companies. And I admire them, I look up to them, I hope to be one. But I think that, you know, you don't just wake up one day and go, well, I've been the founder CEO of this company, you know, for a year and now I'm ready to be a public company CEO. Like, I just, I think it's like, like more about, to Kevin's point, it's more about if you are going to make that leap, you need to be ready to learn and evolve and grow on an extraordinarily accelerated pace. And I think that's what I love about this job is that it is so challenging that I don't have much opportunity to be bored. And I'm constantly learning something new. And I think when that isn't the case, you know, I might get bored and look around. But I've just, I've had so much opportunity to learn from some great leaders. I think that on the SPAC front, it really matters who you decide to do business with and who you decide to bring on as an investor, as a board member, even as advisors. And I think one of the things that I really became very clear to me during the COVID crisis when, you know, we were on the brink of some really, really dark times at Eventbrite, that the people who helped us navigate that very tricky situation were the people that we had chosen to be with us on this journey years and years prior. And so I'm biased, but I think, you know, Kevin, being involved in the spac, you know, sort of era is this opportunity for a founder CEO to actually have someone who understands what it's like to be in their corner. And I think that's pretty cool in terms of the opportunity that 2020, 2021 SPACs afford versus whatever was happening prior to this new era.

So I actually want to double click that later on on your kind of the founder transition stuff if we have time. But first I just want to. But Kevin, you sort of laid out those three options like traditional ipo, direct listing or spac. And the question from a founder perspective, like, okay, assuming I want to be, I think it's appropriate for the company to be a public company. What are the pros and cons of each of those paths? Depending on the type of the business, which path might be the best path for the founder?

Well, the SPAC advantage is as a public company is that you can forecast out, you drop in a detailed presentation to the world upon announcement, and you give projections. And so in a world where traditionally a company going public strangely can't give forward projections, here is a great way to help guide the street and give a better model of the business. So that's one great advantage. The second, I'll just say, is really speed to consummating the transaction. And it's just something that we spent many quarters working on. A traditional IPO at Eventbrite Bright as well as zoom prior and being able to streamline that, but yet still cover all those areas is a big benefit for companies. And then there is certainty of price. And that is something that, you know, we had the IPO pop at Eventbrite where we opened much higher than where we priced at. So we left money on the table. And in the case of a spac, you are actually setting your own price. You're setting a price that is not kind of thrown at you in the last 24 hours of a process, but something that you kind of carefully and cautiously modeled out and put together. So those are just a few of the SPAC advantages.

There's been this sort of crazy explosion of SPACs in the last year, it seems, just, I guess, where do you see, where does this go? Maybe, let's roll it out two years. Is this a kind of like evergreen option for founders, or is this sort of economic arbitrage that. That might get swallowed up by some of the traditional Wall street players?

Well, it's April 29, 2021, by the way. The day I proposed to Julia many years back or a few years back.

Well done, well played.

But April 29th, we're in, you know, the bust side of things right now. So the market has cooled tremendously. There's been some regulatory action on behalf of the sec. There's more scrutiny on behalf of the financials. That's being done on behalf of the SEC and the market. And the SPAC investors and pipe investors have just grown wary. There's been a lot of the majority of these SPACs are just not sustainable or they're not finding sustainable companies. And so this get rich quick scheme quickly evaporates for a large percentage of those that have, like, come into this market. We're in a phase now where there's just a couple SPACs at most going public each week, and the herds have thinned tremendously. That's not to say that it doesn't come back, but we'll undergo these kind of boom and bust periods until we find the right stasis and that the right companies are going public. If they're kind of C and D players, that's not sustainable. And that will be weeded out by the system of capitalism in a very short amount of time when these companies start missing their earnings.

Yeah, it feels like that, that there's a lot of unsophisticated players perhaps entering the market opportunistically and there's a flight to quality and sort of people that can be value added from a company perspective. You know, Eric Wu, the CEO of Opendoor, was an early high profile spac. And then Verge Atlantic, early highest profile spac. These are sort of highly capital intensive, highly unpredictable businesses, cyclical, seasonal, plus a lot risk involved with them. So they may not be good candidates for a traditional IPO where predictability is really rewarded. Would you agree with that, that perhaps these unpredictable businesses might be good offerings? And I guess, are there any other sort of types of companies that are good offerings for SPACs?

Well, there is a whole class of hard tech SPACs that have, as Mike Moritz said in the late 90s, no revenue nor the prospects of revenue. And these companies are in the lidar space, the electric automobile space and Virgin Galactic and space travel. And they're very highly speculative. It's unfortunate because a lot of retail investors, meaning the Robinhood crowd, are buying these and the risks are tremendous. So the majority of those companies will likely go to zero because they have not proven anything. But you don't want to throw them all out. There always is that company that comes up with a revolutionary new mechanism, chip or otherwise, that just needs to get into the market and needs the capital. In the case of Eric and Opendoor, he did have an operating history. They have large losses, but they have an operating history. They're selling a number of homes each week. What they really needed was a great amount of capital in a short period of time. And they timed their SPAC extremely well. They were able to raise a large pipe along with that. And so that's a poster child for a great execution on it. And the company is, even after the SPAC correction is worth, I believe north of $10 billion.

And from a founder perspective, what are the economic implications? You know, let's take our sort of hypothetical company. Like are there, you know, there's a lot being said around the sort of, you know, traditional IPOs are really just making Wall street and its investors richer and really hurting founders and VCs, I guess does the. And that's, you know, often applied to direct Listings like, how does it work from a SPAC perspective? What are the economic benefits of a founder pursuing the spacious spac?

Great question. So the fees, interestingly, on a traditional IPO are lower than the fees on a spac. However, you don't have that price certainty you have in a traditional ipo. You have these bumps that we've especially seen in the last year, and this is what Bill Gurley blogs about and covers, is that there's a tremendous amount of money left on the table and dilution that founders take that a company should not. And, and that's where this price certainty of being able to set the value of your company prior to going out into the public markets becomes a really important advantage that you've set the price and it hasn't arbitrarily been a bank in the influence of investors or otherwise.

Got it. And from a VC perspective, there's a number of VCs that are launching SPACs and pursuing that SPAC. I guess what's the sense of in the venture capital community itself, what's their perspective on SPACs and is that something that VCs you see generally encouraging their companies to pursue?

I think there's a dichotomy of two types. There's those that are experimenting see it as a great option for their companies and a path for their companies, and then the other sees it as encroaching. So naturally you can't continue to invest into a company in the private markets if the company becomes public. So you could say there's been this kind of grand conspiracy to keep keep companies private because it allows growth investors to continue to pump money into it. But there's so much capital in the public markets and the exuberance of the public markets are such that a lot of these companies really should be in the public markets.

And do you see this a permanent shift in that you've seen this extension from seed stage investors becoming growth stage investors? Do you think they're now going to become public stage investors and SPAC sponsors.

As SPACs become more widespread? I would anticipate that it's an instrument. There are some questions that need to be solved, like how do you work with the promote? So the promote is the profit that's distributed to the partners of a spac. Does that flow into a fund? So there's some mechanics that need to be solved because they're a venture fund and a SPAC are two different vehicles. But I would foresee a world where investors would have SPACs to ensure that they, the venture investors, would have SPACs to ensure THAT they can participate, participate and continue to invest into their companies for the long term. It's simply an investment vehicle. Our SPAC is $200 million and we're out there funding mechanism for a company to not just be public, but also gain this $200 million to invest and grow their business.

And I heard you on another podcast say that the hardest element of running a SPAC is finding a durable business you want to hold for the long term. It's like, what do you look for? Why is that so hard? And you've obviously had a very successful career investing in early stage startups, Trulia included. Is it a similar lens you look through at the SPAC stage or in the fundamentals or something different?

Well, it's finding Trulia at that growth stage. No, but it is all the same criteria that a venture investor that a seed investor would want to find is that great teams, really clear competitive differentiation and massive, massive market. And finding that with the fact that SPACs haven't been widely accepted. They're coming into the mainstream, everyone's heard about them, but they're still not, I would venture to guess, stripe, when they do go public, will not go public via spac. So it's still an up and coming phenomenon that makes it hard, by the way. It's just another factor that makes it hard to find an enduring business. And one has to be careful not to fall prey to really lowering your guard and going with a company that's not going to fall into that durable category.

And of course with the sort of two year window to make that investment, there may be some SPACs that wrongly pursue that path which will be problematic for the entire market.

That's right. Pete refers to the two year, the generally 24 month period that a SPAC has to find a partner.

So switching gears a little bit, Julie, I want to touch on something you mentioned earlier. Around the transition from kind of like executive to CEO or that founder transition. And you both probably get called by a lot of people. I know you have a massive network, like how to think about that? Trans curious, like if you get, you know, let's just assume this hypothetical founder we're talking about is going through this process, you know, 150 people like, and perhaps that individual is questioning their ability or interest in kind of becoming a CEO of a large organization. What advice or questions or tips would you give that person?

I think I would sum it up in sort of the five lessons that I've learned from Kevin. You know, again, he is my Most important mentor. And we've been linked by incredible people like Roelof Botha from Sequoia Capital, who has been, you know, our guide throughout this entire journey and so many other people that we've interacted with. But I would say that Kevin's kind of taught me five things along the way that I think were important to me to remember when I became CEO. And, you know, all the mental games that your brain plays on you as you're trying to like, step up into that big role. And so this is me summarizing a lot of lessons. So the first is to hire people that are smarter than yourself. That's pretty straightforward. But I think also humans tend to maybe fall prey to their own ego and want to be the smartest person in the room. So flipping that is really critical to get to where you want to go faster. Second is to not major in the minors, which is something that Kevin has to remind me all the time. When I am bothered by something, he always brings me back to the bigger picture of thinking about the macro problems that I should be worrying about versus the minor issues. Third is to ask lots of questions. And I think one thing that I've tried to actively practice is just that, being inquisitive in everything that I do because I think that assuming you know everything or wanting to appear as if you know everything will really stunt your growth and not allow other people to participate. Fourth thing is know your number. So I benefit from living with my co founder and chairman and the former CEO of our company who at any given moment will really innocently ask me about a metric in the business. And if I don't know it, I get very frustrated. And I would say the fifth is to divide and conquer. You know, when we work together, we never worked on the same problem at the same time. And that same goes for other co founders or operating partners or, you know, mine out team of executives to not, you know, try to not swarm things, to really gain insight from each other, but really fly clear ownership and divide and conquer to get to where you're going 10 times faster. I think for me, those have been some of the most important lessons as I've transitioned into this leadership role. But I think that, you know, it's, I guess it's like anything, you know, it's not set in stone that you would be the best CEO of your company. And I think, not taking that for granted, having confidence in your ability to grow, but having humility to know that you don't know everything that you haven't lived through those experiences. And sometimes, sometimes it's not just about reading books, it's about living through an experience. I feel like I am at least 5x stronger CEO now that I've lived through my first death defying moment. You know, in Covid, in terms of our business, thankfully, you know, we're safe and well, but the business really was challenged during that time. And so, you know, there's also time and experience that has to happen for you to be sort of in the right headspace to, to be the leader of your company. At the end of the day, it's a great privilege to be leading this company that I helped start. And so I try not to forget that. Especially on the days when I'm sort of grumpy about something or, you know, it's been a long day, I come back to center of just gratitude. Like, this is pretty cool, this journey.

Kevin, anything to add on that founder CEO perspective?

Well, I think founders, you know, we certainly look for qualities, Pete, you and I, when we're seed investing and we're looking for qualities of that person, that founder, that they're going to do great things. And, you know, I won't expand on that part, but I also think founders or CEOs are made during these trials that there is this obsessive fervor that they have. If I think back to the beginnings of Eventbrite or Zoom, that these businesses started out as, not even businesses, as kind of a hobby. And then as you know, say, in Eventbrite, Julia and Renaud and I became more and more entwined in what became our mission for us. We found ourselves in these leadership positions. And so you're really made by these experiences that happen by, as Julia mentioned, all the crazy things that come at you just really the entrepreneur digs in deeper and finds a way to survive and thrive.

And you talk about this sort of growth under fire and especially under rapidly changing conditions. We recently had Adam Grant on the podcast. I know, Julie. You read his book Think Again, which is just a terrific mental model for reassessing existing beliefs and constantly learning and taking new data. You know, that's obviously a tool for founders to kind of reassess the world and reassess the world around them and reassess beliefs. Is there anything, Julia, that you're rethinking right now? You know, here we are in spring 2021. What new data are you taking in to help you get ready for the next few years?

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind is just the data around how humans gathered during this global pandemic, this one in a hundred year occurrence. And we, you know, knowing and observing the community connection and the fervor around online gathering, that happened almost immediately when, you know, freedom of physical gathering was assembly was put on indefinite pause for the greater good of public health. But still, you know, it's just like stripped away from us. And it was this universal experience. And I saw our event producers and creators pivot their events and experiences to a virtual format. And really because they were meeting a demand that was almost immediate back in the spring of 2020. And so I think that has absolutely shaped the way I think about gathering in the future. I think that it's shaped the way that we think about communities and how communities can come together. Mostly our customers are local event producers that create the experiences that fill your calendar from, you know, the Tuesday book reading to the Sunday yoga workshop. And so I think, you know, when they transitioned, they were met with a global audience on the eventbrite platform. And they've created now this global community for what used to be a local event. And that opens up a whole host of opportunities for us to empower them to continue hosting these online events and to also bring people back together in person. That's one thing that he wasn't expecting was that creators would want to do both after Covid, and they very much see that as an opportunity. I think that we are entering a period of time where consumers are, are redesigning how they spend their time. It's almost like you don't know what you've got till it's gone, right? And so you, it's something that's taken away from you, which is the ability to be with other people and to be in these, in these live experiences and to be together. And I don't think that people are just going to go back out to do what they used to do sort of mindlessly. I think we're really going to be thoughtful about and intentional about the way in which we spend our time and take advantage of the fact that we can be out together learning and growing and celebrating and, you know, the future of life. Live events will be one that, you know, can be enjoyed both virtually as well as locally in person. So, you know, I think that's just, it's redefining for us as a business. And prior to Covid, we actually had started to think about our business differently. The gross vector at the supply side of our marketplace had traditionally been, you know, vertical geography and size of event. And prior to Covid, we actually started looking at a horizontal segment of how frequently someone used eventbrite to create an event and what kind of characteristics those those frequent creators had and what they meant to the business. And so we started to hone in on that strategy and it was almost like fortuitous, the right place at the right time to really look at the business differently because we were able to develop that through Covid and get and accelerate a lot of the change that we'd wanted to make toward a more self service business focused on frequent creators and really centered around the person who's creating that content versus just the content or type of event itself, if that makes sense.

Yeah, totally. And Kevin, is there anything that you're rethinking right now?

I am interested in learning from all different angles and I think seeing the world as a full time investor would maybe fall into that category and trying to do some trailblazing on the SPAC side. So I would really just simply put it in that direction of being on the other side of the table from the founders and CEOs. At times it's tough because I really miss it. But it's a good new perspective to see.

Well with that I think it is an exciting new perspective. So we've got a lot to be thankful for. Julia and Kevin and thank you so much for joining us today on the NFX podcast. Hope to see you guys in person very soon.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks guys.

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