Bootstrapped through a crash, tested by a pandemic

Key takeaways from the TechCrunch (Build Mode) interview with Eventbrite co-founder and former CEO Julia HartzDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (August 2026):

Democratising live events. Founded in 2006 by Julia and Kevin Hartz with engineer Renaud Visage, Eventbrite set out to let anyone sell tickets to any event; an early scaled customer was Michael Arrington's TechCrunch, and the founders manned the check-in desk at the first TechCrunch Disrupt.

Bootstrapped for years. The three co-founders used their own money, spending under a quarter of a million dollars in the first two and a half years before raising an angel round.

27 firms, 27 nos. Pitching in the autumn of 2008 financial crisis, Eventbrite was rejected by every venture firm it met – then thrived through 2009 as people ran classes and networking events, and returned to close a round led by Sequoia Capital.

A rare founder handover. Kevin was CEO for the first decade; Julia took over in 2016, calling the transition "terrifying", before leading the company through acquisition, IPO and crisis.

Public in 2018. Hartz became one of the few women to lead a successful tech IPO, having raised over $395M across the company's life; Eventbrite acquired its largest music-ticketing competitor in 2017.

Negative revenue overnight. Around 14 days into COVID the business was processing more refunds than revenue – dashboards broke because they had never modelled below zero – forcing a full strategy reset by April 2020.

Talk to your customers. Hartz's core lesson: when in crisis, stop the strategy, metrics and execution and have direct human conversations with customers, and treat a flat "no" from investors as "not yet".

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