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She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... → Learn More
There’s no doubt that online ticketing platform Eventbrite is growing like gangbusters. The platform is on track to sell $400 million worth of tickets this year, which is double the $207 million it did last year. The company could reach $1 billion in gross ticket sales in 2012. And part of Eventbrite’s future plan will include a public offering. Co-founder Kevin Hartz tells ZURB in a recently published podcast that Eventbrite could file to go public as early as late 2012 (at the 38 minute mark in the podcast) if the company reaches certain performance benchmarks.
Hartz had some interesting commentary about going public in general. He believes companies should IPO earlier rather than later, and that staying private too long allows for “bad habits to fester” under little regulation. As for Eventbrite, Hartz says that he wants the company to be around 30 years from now and being a public company is part of that strategic plan.
Eventbrite just raised another $50 million in a Series E financing round led by Tiger Global, bringing the company’s total funding to $80 million. Over 10 million people have attended an event ticketed by Eventbrite, and to date the platform has helped over 120,000 event organizers in 150 countries host more than half a million events.
The performance benchmarks Hartz is referring to in the podcast most probably include ticket sales and revenue. In terms of revenue, $1 billion in ticket volume translates to roughly $50 million in revenues for Eventbrite. The platform takes a small cut of each sale.
In order to scale even further, Eventbrite is hoping to create the ‘Eventbrite Box Office,’ for event planners. The startup is bundling together an iPad with an Eventbrite app, a card swipe, and a ticket printer so that event organizers can take payments and issue tickets at the event itself.
Hi my name is Chris Dickson. This is Founder Stories. Today we have Kevin and Julia Hartz from Eventbrite. Thanks for being here.
Thank you Chris.
So can you guys first tell us a little bit about your backgrounds?
I, in the late nineties, founded a startup called ConnectGroup, and had a modest acquisition by a public company, and didn't want to take a big job, didn't want to go into a big tech company so, started angel investing. And one of the deals I got involved in was PayPal. New Peter Thiel, and a lot of that crew, David Sacks, Keith Berkowitz, from college.
as I invested in that business and really saw it take off, I would say that really launched my career.
And so, it launched your career, in terms of your next startup?
You know, what happened is that, you see something really incredible, blasting off, as we see today with Facebook, as we see with the iOS with Apple development, platform, it opens up lots of doors and opportunities. So, in my case I started a company called Zoom. Peter Thiel was the seed funder.
Sequoia, also got involved, has been very involved in that business and it's a transaction business really building off the PayPal platform and Zoom is a company that helps immigrants send money to their families overseas. We today...
It's like a Western Union competitor kind of a...
Precisely like, I like businesses that go after large incumbents and this case Western Union does about 5 billion a year in remittance. charges quite a bit, and we are producing something better, cheaper, faster.
So just as like, so this is like kind of PayPal is known to have written EBay's growth, right and likewise, I guess Zoom kind of wrote PayPal's and I guess EventBrite as well? Is that fair to say, or?
Very fair to say that you're always looking for those macro trends in the market, that you're looking for, what new wave of growth is happening.But just as we see, social is a very important wave that a lot of companies are riding, or mobile is a very important wave. For us, we saw Paypal, a transaction platform and I stepped out of Xoom full time and started Eventbrite for that reason, to really change ticketing and founded the company with Julia Hartz, my wife, as well as Renaud Visage, our third co-founder of the business.
I see. And the, sorry Zoom, so you left Xoom. Is it Xoom? How is that company doing? Is it doing well?
Xoom's on track to do ery fast. There's a great management team in place and it's actually been one of those get to learn so much from those board meetings, and from John Kuntz, who's the current CEO there. And I would say that, just stepping back a bit, I'm an active, or I have been an active angel investor, and I've learned so much from the other companies I'm involved in.
That I can kind of pick and choose and apply to our own business, to Eventbrite and that's been very key. But Zoom's doing really well, and is still an independent company, but we 'll see how that changes over the quarters.
Some entrepreneurs see themselves as sort of, you know, going through the full life cycle of a company. And some I think it 's quite reasonable to just be someone who says I go, I do it for the first, you know, I get to product market fit, and maybe to fifty million in revenue and then I pass it off to somebody who builds sales forces and manages thousands of people.
Was it that sort of thinking that led you to go to have a transition? Or was it just your desire to start a new company? Or a combination?
I had a really challenging time at Zoom. We hit some really rough spots. I was a first time CEO, we had massive fraud attacks, we had regulatory issues and we needed to bring in a new CEO. and I... In a lot of ways, I regret not seeing that company through, but I'm very thankful that John Kunes has done the work he has done to get it there.
At Eventbrite, I absolutely want to do the business. It's the company I want to be with for the rest of my life. It's a company that, I think will, that should be here in thirty years and be that brand in ticketing.
Yeah. I mean, what the rumors or something or whatever I've heard about Zoom, were that it had a sort of crisis moment and then it was pulled out of it, I think, by a really great board and management team and now it's doing super well, or something. And I've heard Sequoia was particularly helpful in this thing.
I don't know. It's just that these are indeed the rumors that...
Yeah, I'll pay special attention to special kudos to Sequoia. They are often... It's easy to point fingers at, "Oh, the evil of VC," but Sequoia really stuck through that company. We had some cash crunches and, different parts of the last decade, when there were some downturns and then there are some company challenges, and business model challenges Sequoia stuck with us.
Roelof saw that vision and backed us for the long term. Getting a little choked up about that.
It's good to hear a positive VC story, because you know how they always get beat up so much.
Well, and they also invested in the Eventbrite. Roelof sits on our board. And so far, they've been behind us 2000%.
Eventbrite believes that anyone can be an event organizer. That’s why they offer tools that make it easy to sell tickets to all kinds of events whether it’s a photography class or a sold-out concert, an inspiring conference or an air-guitar competition. With Eventbrite, organizers can create a customizable event page; spread the word with social media; collect money; and gain visibility into attendees and sales.
Eventbrite is for anyone planning or attending an event. It empowers event organizers to...
