Evidence receipt / prediction
Published · transcript-backedKevin Hartz: prediction
25 Aug 2020 Acquired Eventbrite (with Julia & Kevin Hartz)
“Our thesis was that PayPal would open up this API what they call as a directive at PayPal before it was acquired to find non-eBay growth in merchants.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Kevin Hartz
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- prediction
- Recorded
- 25 Aug 2020
- Publisher
- Acquired
Transcript context
…The company proposal, did you have the idea? Ticketing was something you talked about the PayPal team on the PayPal API. Was Eventbrite in your mind as you're thinking about this? Or was it like no, we're going to jump in together and we're going to figure something out. Just us and then we'll come to an idea. The thesis always was there was this conventional thought in the Valley that PayPal was this parasite on eBay. It turned out to be the other way around. I wouldn't call eBay a parasite. It turned out to be simply PayPal, this payment platform's first vertical. Our thesis was that PayPal would open up this API what they call as a directive at PayPal before it was acquired to find non-eBay growth in merchants. Bringing PayPal into money remittance was one mechanism to distribute but also we saw this broken, messed up—still messed up—industry in ticketing that really needs a lot of help. We want to build these verticals on top of PayPal. I was once told, why are you building these pimples on the ass of PayPal? That's really how all industries start. There's an API, there's a platform, and there's PaymentsOS that will power so many great businesses. Who would think that today, PayPal doing three-quarters of a trillion dollars in payments volume or where Stripe is, it’s absolutely extraordinary? We were fortunate to see that thesis come true. Julia, in this moment where Kevin comes to you and says, wait. Not only is that offer only too low, but you should be betting on yourself instead of accepting little money from a job. Take little money but all the upside for yourself. Let's do something together." Was this idea there? Or did that come out in the coming weeks or months?…
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