Wael built StubHub into a $10 billion marketplace by focusing on trust-based partnerships and expanding from 4 to 48 countries. He scaled a 1,500-person team by prioritizing supply in the two-sided marketplace, modeling transparency as a leader, and treating failure as a learning tool.
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So it sounds like while you were there, partnerships and building these relationships was actually vital to the success of StubHub. So when you went out and tried to find partners, how did you scout these partnerships? And did you have a—
Well, yeah, I mean, they're pretty obvious. I mean, it's in sports and in music. I mean, the teams and the leagues are obvious. But the relationships are not obvious. We had partners that we were paying tens of millions of dollars to that didn't talk to us because we didn't have great relationships.
Mm-hmm.
We didn't have people that looked at that as a relationship. As much as these things seem like they're corporate, at the end of the day, everything in business, everything in entrepreneurship, Ultimately, it's a commitment between 2 human beings that say, we trust one another, we want to work together, and here's how we can do it. That's what it took for us to change that. It still is a process.
Were some of the partnerships a bit rocky in the beginning and didn't have good communication? Oh yeah, absolutely.
StubHub itself is a controversial business. It's a business that literally didn't— existed, but not in a marketplace. It existed in the alleyway and the street corner. StubHub decided to disrupt that, move that experience offline and into a transparent marketplace with a guarantee that you were going to be protected in that transaction and created a $10 billion category.
Did you have any strategies in kind of going into partnership meetings, or?
No, I mean, I think the other biggest strategy was really taking the business global. I mean, it was a business that was uniquely positioned in the US, but people go to events around the world. So one of the big strategic decisions was taking the business globally. We expanded from 4 countries to 48 countries.
To 48 countries?
48 countries.
Currently operating in all 48 different countries?
Yeah.
That's amazing. Going back to the two-sided marketplace, I'm sure you've had to deal with that through the course of your career several times. Do you find it harder to build the buying side of it or the selling side of it?
Yeah, it's a great question. Demand-driven marketplaces are super powerful, but ultimately you do need supply. The example is, StubHub built its brand and its experience because it was creating this opportunity that didn't exist. Ultimately, you did have to have something that you were selling on the supply side.
Right.
When I came, it was like, hey, we've got to focus on the supply side to make sure this buying flywheel continues to operate. eBay started by creating a marketplace for opportunity for sellers. Pierre, who started it, sold a laser pointer. That was the first thing that transacted on eBay. It's almost a $100 billion marketplace today globally, providing opportunities for sellers to reach buyers.
Right.
around the world, and we've got 170 million people every day that, you know, want to shop on eBay.
Do you have a favorite thing you ever bought off of eBay?
I've been buying— I'm most proud of in the last month having sold $1,000 worth of things.
All right.
On eBay. And I've been raising money for a girls' school that we support in Africa, and I'm trying to essentially sell things to fund donating to this school in Africa.
What's in the eBay store that you have?
Well, tonight I'm putting up a Garmin 520 on my bike, and I'm putting up 2 Apple Watches that just got purchased in our home and never used.
So if anyone's looking for some Apple Watches, going up later tonight. When you're looking to expand globally with StubHub, you can't do it alone, so you're gonna need to build a team. How do you go about starting to build this team that's gonna spread StubHub to 48 different countries?
It's the hardest thing to do as a leader, and that's where, as a leader, you have to have the ability to attract a group of people that are are willingly choosing to work for you and with you. I think as a leader trying to build a leadership team that, as was read to open this up, reflects the diversity of the customer base and the employee base, those are really important as a leader to be focused on. At StubHub, I always felt as though running StubHub, the 2 things that I uniquely controlled in my position, even though the whole business reported to me, I felt as though I could influence strategy, what direction we were gonna go, and I could influence culture. What is the place that we call work gonna look like every day? I could influence both of those things in my position directly. I spent a lot of time focused on those 2 things.
How did you influence culture, Wael? StubHub.
Culture, I gave the power to the people to build up and define what was gonna be uniquely StubHub. We started something called StubHub One, which was how we would operate as one team to connect people to inspiring event experiences. Literally empowered a team of culture carriers around the world to come up with ideas that made it a fun place to work every single day. Then I used those people to drive programs like diversity and inclusion, women in technology, areas that I knew were opportunities for StubHub, but yet I needed people to drive it home, make it come to life. That came through employees. It couldn't come from me top-down. It had to be empowered from the bottom-up.
Did you guys have any programs to drive this empowerment internally?
Yeah, you have to put money behind it. Then you've gotta support it as a leader. Whether that's marching in parades, showing up to intern events, hosting dinners with different people with different voices and perspectives. It has to be a regular percentage and a significant percentage of your time as a leader if that's important to you, and it is to me.
And you had 800 people under you at one point?
No, at StubHub we had about 1,500 people.
1,500 people that you were responsible for?
Yeah.
And how do you— I mean, that's a lot of people to be responsible for. How do you show up to each one of them And kind of convey that you personally care about them, even if you couldn't personally care about all of them?
You know, you just try and be reachable as a leader and as a person. It's tough to know 1,500 people, let alone 20,000 people individually. But I think as a leader, the way I tried to do that is I was pretty transparent with the things that I felt as though I needed to work on as an individual and as a leader. And I was pretty transparent with my team of, here are the things that I feel are my weaknesses, and here are the things that I'm working on as a leader. And I was pretty transparent with the company to say, here's what I've gotta do better at.
Yeah.
And I think that, At least opened the crack for people to say, oh yeah, he's a human being.
And on the other side of building this team and expanding globally and kind of bringing a new image to StubHub, along the way there had to have been some bumps in the road and some failures that I'm sure you had to fight through. Can you share some of the things that didn't work out?
I mean, I think if I would sort of describe I would describe failure as an important part of the process of learning because I think failure and your ability to recognize failure and your ability to recognize weaknesses gives you a position to say, OK, here's the things that I can actually work on to strengthen. If I was only focused on the muscle that was strongest, you'd be out of balance. Yeah. I think failure is important to recognize as an individual, as a company, and use those as opportunities to learn, to build, and hopefully change. That's hard. It's hard to do, and very few people have the ability to be self-aware enough to recognize their own weaknesses and failures. I think that's hard for me. It's hard for most people, but boy, if you can get there and work on that, you'll unlock amazing opportunities for growth.
