Kevin Hartz: evaluation

Transcript context

…I think for something that is like Eventbrite, we have a platform that enables an activity that is the human experience. I still to this day think it's just not helpful. I mean there is some data that we can use in which GO are certain categories a big opportunity, but there's nothing that comes close to the data that we have from what's going on any given moment on the platform. That's not going to be picked up in a study; that's ours. It gives us such a clear indication of where we should focus our efforts, whether it's building products or going to the market. I think Kevin's thesis was that you really focus on making it friction-free, you give the tools that the people need to be successful (the product that they love), then you give the service that makes them feel loved, and then you keep building that. Today, we're sitting on a lot of interesting data that's actionable not just for us as a business but actually for our customers. We can turn that data around to give them content and actionable insights on how they can grow their businesses. I think one of the misnomers about Eventbrite is that it's for an informal gathering. These are small businesses and professionals. We're not used for RCP events like backyard barbecues; it is actually a bad product for that. It's really for professional ticketed events. But I think that it's interesting because when we were out fundraising that first time, there was this persistent question, just like you maybe never would have thought that bringing craft fairs online would be a big business. Our story is somewhat similar to Etsy as well where you see this extraordinary long tail emerge and come into the platform, and all of sudden you start creating a market because you're bringing people from the offline to the online and that you're also helping people become more successful and build their businesses on the platform. I think an inherent driver of our business has been that need for humans to gather and that has been more powerful than ever. A second component has traditional media like magazines. There are all these hobbyist magazines in different areas that, as declined, the live experience grew. Magazines that we're from train collectors to home and garden, their revenue, their income started to grow in offline events and they really leaned into that. That was the crossing of moving from the print and media world to the offline and gathering a world that became so visceral and powerful. Then, you had social media which became about your experience, not the things that you own. Just as your feed is more representative of you, you want to do interesting things, be in interesting places, and you can influence others. That's what Eventbrite is all about and those beautiful exciting experiences and the thing you were doing became this broadcast mechanism to display what you were about and who you are, whether it's a triathlon or whether it's attending a craft beer festival. That's awesome. Listeners, as you know, normally in the Acquired format, we would take you blow-by-blow all the way up through how the company became what it became today but since we have Julia and Kevin here. There are a few key moments that we want to fast forward to and talk through with them. We've talked through the 2008, 2009 timeframe where they had mostly bootstrapped it. Once they started raising money, frankly, they raised a lot of money, Sequoia came in and did that Series C. Then, they raised $20 million, then $50 million, then $60 million, and then $130 million. This company became very well-capitalized. It was growing very quickly. It was a part of this stay private longer ethos that was really dominating the 2014–2019 stretch of technology companies and I want to talk about two things with you, Julia and Kevin. One, why stay private longer, and had you thought about IPO sooner? The second thing is a question for you Julia where you formally became the CEO I think in early 2018, kicked Kevin to the curb, and said, look, I've been operating the company with you and now it's time to be the CEO. Kevin, you win and spend some time at Founders Fund and obviously now starting a SPAC that we'll talk about here shortly. Julia, I want to hear about the roadshow process. I want to dive into what it was like to take a company public.…

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