The woman behind a ticketing juggernaut

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What do the hit shows Friends, Jackass and The Shield have in common with Silicon Valley tech firm Eventbrite, the digital ticketing platform used around the world? The connection lies in one of its co-founders, Julia Hartz, who spoke to us for our Business Leader podcast.

She used to work in television production in Hollywood, before taking the plunge in 2006 with her now-husband Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage and setting up a tech start-up in San Francisco. It meant a short-term pay cut, but they had spotted a gap in the market. The three co-founders believed they had “complementary superpowers” that would allow their company to take advantage of it.

Hartz and her team realised that anyone could become a merchant and set up payments and this was democratising lots of different industries. Could one of them be the ticketed events industry? Ticketing for large concerts was dominated by firms like Ticketmaster, but beneath that market, there were lots of medium-sized, often community-driven events taking place.

Eventbrite realised it could offer them a ticketing solution, taking advantage of the revolution in mobile phone ownership and QR-code technology. It started out by helping to organise meet-ups for people who worked in technology in The Valley.

As more people used the platform to access mobile tickets for events, word quickly spread. In the wake of the financial crisis, people also used it to organise networking events and create work opportunities for themselves. Eventbrite expanded across different states in the US, before it went global. Private investors were wary to begin with, but the organic growth of the company eventually persuaded them to come on board with significant amounts of capital.