Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz said “I do” to Kevin Hartz twice: once when they got married, and again when she decided to become a co-founder with him. Julia says she doesn’t even remember the latter moment. All she knows is she trusted Kevin’s entrepreneurial instincts and it paid off. But when Kevin needed to step down as CEO and have Julia step in, she describes the transition as going from “Candyland” to “Tron”.
In this episode of 9 to 5ish, Julia shares:
What her internships on “Friends” and “Jackass” taught her
The unofficial exit strategy she and Kevin agreed on in case they didn’t work out romantically
Why it was bittersweet stepping up as CEO while Kevin navigate health issues/struggles
How Eventbrite’s IPO was the most diverse in NYSE history
Why she takes it personally when female executive leadership exit the business after going public
On How Her Family Values Shaped Her Relationship to Work
Julia: My dad and my mom have worked since they were teenagers. I got my first job in high school at the Ugly Mug, the local coffee shop in Santa Cruz. And I worked weekends from the time I was 14 or 15. I've never not worked. The underpinning of grit and work ethic, and then also empathy and kindness, I think, are the sort of amalgamation of my parents' most winning attributes. It just was always in our family the rule, not the exception, that you would work hard and you'd earn your way.
On Advice from Other Co-Founders That Helped Her
Julia: We literally figured it out from our good friends, the Birches, who had started Birthday Alarm and Bebo together and are still married today. We asked them: how did you make this work? And they just said, kind of casually, “we just divide and conquer. We never work on the same thing at the same time.” I felt like that, as an operating mode, was really useful for us because we have complementary skill sets. And if you put us behind the same spreadsheet, we will quite literally start wrestling over the mouse. So it really worked for us.
On Handling the Separation of Work Life and Home Life
Julia: We had kids, is how we handled that. I would say that the first year and a half, we were 24/7 Eventbrite. It really, truly feels like our first baby. We never turned it off. And then we had Emma. We thankfully shared a perspective that we wanted our time with her to be fully her. So that meant a couple of things that have taken on big meaning. That meant turning off work, and it also meant outsourcing our non-core competencies, which I told Kevin, “If that means you're outsourcing it to me, it doesn't count.” We found someone to help us clean the house and we had childcare, gradually, not all at once. But we were able then to come home and just be present with her and have weekends and night times just with her. That built in a really nice, automatic level balance. But it took our commitment to not let it all seep in.
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