Today’s callers: Mia from Germany wants to know how to balance her pottery business between an online shop and a YouTube channel. Then, Jen from Connecticut is looking for ways to reach more families with her print magazine for tweens and teens. And Anagha from California wonders how to convince people to embrace the time required for her globally-inspired baking kits.
Plus, Julia reflects on Eventbrite’s recent acquisition announcement, and how in-person events can help brands and creators build community in today’s digital world.
Thank you to the founders of Pottery to the People, Anyway Magazine, and Aunty Misri for being a part of our show.
If you’d like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode—where Guy and former show guests take questions from early-stage founders—leave us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you’d like answered. Send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com or call 1-800-433-1298.
And be sure to listen to Eventbrite’s founding story as told by Julia on the show in 2020.
This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.
You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com and on Substack.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Kevin Hartz, Co-founder of A*, Eventbrite, Xoom, and Sauron.
Kevin has been building and investing in technology companies for 30 years, and we talk about how the industry’s evolved, why he calls AI the Mother of All Bubbles, why we’re still early, and lessons today’s breakout AI companies can learn from those that survived the Dot Com Crash.
Kevin is a big proponent of backing young founders. A significant percentage of his latest fund at A* is invested in teenagers, and he shares how he identifies outlier talent so early, from Seed investments in Airbnb, PayPal, and Pinterest, to many of today’s hottest AI companies.
He also shares the insane story of investing 100% of the proceeds from his first startup into PayPal’s Seed round, how PayPal’s early fraud systems inspired Palantir, what he learned from the PayPal Mafia, from Peter Thiel, and what makes Founders Fund special.
We also talk about how he and his wife recently had two babies, five months apart, using genome screening and surrogates.
Thanks to Ramtin Naimi, Navya Gudimetla, and Bennett Siegel for helping brainstorm topics for the conversation.
Try Numeral, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance: https://www.numeral.com
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Timestamps:
(4:25) Power shift from VC’s to founders since the 90’s
(9:08) AI is the mother of all bubbles
(12:40) Why AI is still underhyped
(14:10) What Kevin and A* are investing in today
(16:02) Investing 100% of his first startups proceeds in PayPal’s Seed round
(21:21) What made the PayPal Mafia special
(23:37) Parallels between the 90’s and today
(26:40) What makes Founders Fund special
(35:07) How Palantir evolved from PayPal’s fraud models
(39:06) Building Xoom on the PayPal API
(43:38) Lessons between Kevin’s 1st and 2nd startups
(46:52) Starting Eventbrite off early PayPal API app
(51:51) Eventbrite’s hidden TAM challenge
(53:49) Selling Eventbrite to Bending Spoons
(54:59) Investing 20% of A* in teenage founders
(1:02:33) Incubating Sauron, the home security company
(1:08:44) Making breakfast for our kids
(1:13:33) Having kids with genome screening and surrogates
(1:20:31) Collecting art, how to get started
Referenced
https://www.a-star.co/
https://www.eventbrite.com/
https://www.xoom.com/
https://www.sauron.systems/
https://www.orchidhealth.com/
Setting the Table by Danny Meyer: https://www.amazon.com/Setting-Table-Transforming-Hospitality-Business/dp/0060742763
20% of fund in teenage founders: https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18/this-top-vc-bet-close-to-20-of-his-fund-on-teenagers-heres-why/
https://nypost.com/2025/12/14/us-news/xu-bo-chinese-billionaire-reportedly-sires-more-than-100-kids/
Follow Kevin
Twitter: https://x.com/kevinhartz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hartz
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Kevin Hartz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at A*, an early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to founding A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite, a publicly traded company, and served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company. Before Eventbrite, Kevin co-founded Xoom, a money remittance company that was acquired by PayPal in 2015 for over $1BN. Kevin is also a prolific angel investor having backed companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril at the seed stage, and was an early investor in Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto and many others.
In Today's Episode with Kevin Hartz We Discuss:
1. What Makes the Best Founders:
What questions does Kevin always ask founders in the investment process?
Does Kevin prefer serial or first time founders? Why?
Does Kevin prefer founders who are new to a problem or who are insiders and experts?
When Kevin has gotten a founder bet wrong, what did he not see that he should have seen?
2. The Exploding Term Sheet That Cost $10BN:
How did an exploding term sheet for the seed round of Airbnb cost Kevin $10BN?
What did Kevin see in the seed round of Airbnb that so few other investors saw?
Does Kevin agree that the best businesses often start off as ridiculous or toys?
3. From World's Greatest Angel to VC with $600M AUM:
Why does Kevin think a barbell strategy of Seed and Series C is best today?
Does Kevin agree that the Series B and growth stage is dead today?
Why does Kevin strongly disagree that seed is the hardest stage of the market?
Why does Kevin think that venture is less collaborative than ever?
How does Kevin approach when to sell vs when to hold a position?
What are his biggest lessons from seeding and holding Opensea?
4. Learning From the World's Best Investors:
What have been Kevin's lessons from his relationship with Peter Thiel?
What have been Kevin's biggest takeaways from investing alongside Roelof Botha in many deals?
What have been Kevin's biggest lessons from watching and observing the great Pierre Lamond?
Back as the show’s first-ever ‘three-peat’ guest is Julia Hartz, co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite. The events industry has been transformed by the past three years, giving Julia the opportunity to evolve Eventbrite to better serve its key customers — event creators.
This week on How I Built This Lab, Julia goes back in time to review how she kept a ticketing service afloat when no one was buying tickets. Plus, thoughts on effective leadership from a public company CEO, and Julia’s tips for designing meetings that your colleagues actually want to go to.
Be sure to listen to Eventbrite’s origin story told in February 2020, and Julia’s Resilience series dispatch from July 2020.
This episode was produced by Rommel Wood with music by Sam Paulson and Ramtin Arablouei.
It was edited by John Isabella with research by Kerry Thompson. Our audio engineer was Patrick Murray.
You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.
This episode is brought to you in part by Canva, the easy-to-use online design platform for presentations, social posts, videos, websites, and more. Start designing today at Canva – the home for every brand.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Brought to you by Amplitude—Build better products | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | Ahrefs—Improve your website's SEO for free
—
Casey Winters is a longtime and legendary advisor and operator. He’s worked with companies like Airbnb, Faire, Canva, Whatnot, Thumbtack, Tinder, and Reddit and until recently was the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite, where he managed the PM, design, research, and growth marketing teams. Before Eventbrite, he led growth and product teams at Pinterest and Grubhub. In today’s episode, we discuss what Casey calls the “zero interest rate phenomenon” product manager and how to avoid becoming one. He provides valuable insights on thinking outside popular frameworks, shipping products efficiently, and avoiding overreliance on user research. We explore the three types of network effects, how to leverage them, and how to break someone else’s network effect. Finally, Casey shares his contrarian approach to interviewing product managers and his thoughts on the future of PM roles with AI.
—
Find the full transcript at: Zhttps://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/thinking-beyond-frameworks-casey
—
Where to find Casey Winters:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/onecaseman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseywinters/
• Blog: https://caseyaccidental.com/
—
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Casey’s background
(03:36) What Casey is up to
(05:24) Why the CPO position is frequently short-lived
(07:26) What Casey learned in his role as CPO of Eventbrite
(10:15) The “zero interest rate phenomenon” product manager
(12:17) Advice for thinking outside common frameworks
(18:35) When to bring in research
(21:16) What Whatnot does
(21:59) Casey’s approach to interviewing PMs
(23:29) Red flags in interview responses
(24:27) The future of product management with AI
(27:47) Founder intuition vs. team expertise
(33:33) How to influence founders
(37:17) Adding the delivery driver app at Grubhub
(40:00) Network effects
(43:10) Why Zillow is a sticky product
(44:05) How Grubhub’s network effect got taken over by DoorDash and Uber Eats
(51:47) Don’t underestimate the competition
(54:43) SaaS adding marketplace and vice versa
(01:02:30) Defining marketplaces
(1:03:34) What Substack is nailing
(1:05:43) Tips for B2C subscription startups
(1:13:15) Lightning round
—
Referenced:
• Casey Winters on Lenny’s Podcast previously: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-sell-your-ideas-and-rise-within-your-company-casey-winters-eventbrite/
• Whatnot: https://www.whatnot.com/
• The 700-calorie breakfast you should eat if you want to live forever, according to futurist Ray Kurzweil: https://www.businessinsider.com/what-ray-kurzweil-eats-to-live-forever-2016-4
• The Way of the Gun on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/movie/the-way-of-the-gun-0fc9590c-3f85-48ab-96e9-1da1b9695065
• Notion AI: https://www.notion.so/product/ai
• Zapier: https://zapier.com/
• Founder intuition vs. team expertise vs. customer expertise: https://caseyaccidental.com/founder-intuition-team-expertise/
• Erika Warren on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erika-warren/
• Alyssa Ravasio (Hipcamp) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-ravasio-23114717/
• Marketplace supply strategy: comprehensive, exclusive, or curated: https://a16z.com/2021/03/31/marketplace-supply-strategy/
• Nassim Taleb on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nntaleb
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244
• OpenTable: https://www.opentable.com/
• Booking.com: https://www.booking.com/
• Faire: https://www.faire.com/
• How to increase your retention: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-increase-your-retention-issue
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement: https://www.amazon.com/Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement/dp/0884271951
• Thinking, Fast and Slow: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374533555/r
• Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times: https://www.amazon.com/Profit-Core-Return-Growth-Turbulent/dp/1422131114/
• Party Down on Starz: https://www.starz.com/us/en/series/party-down/2011
• The Last of Us on HBO: https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us
• Station Eleven on HBO Max: https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:series:GYZWoOQ6F9cLDCAEAAABP
• Kicking and Screaming on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/70052286
• Raven by Kelela on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/06uhdSmIYrWRkdnAPjcRcT
• Optical Delusion by Orbital on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2jQbFspnSh7erex6RDKQGJ
• Stakes Is High by De La Soul on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/3jlC2uhYNrhikZXLviEnpu
—
Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey led the growth product team at Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Casey started the marketing team at Grubhub and scaled Grubhub's demand-side acquisition and retention strategies.
Elena Verna is the Interim Head of Growth at Amplitude. Former exec @ Miro, Netlify, SurveyMonkey. Growth Advisor to companies including Krisp, MongoDB, Ledgy, Builder.io and SimilarWeb.
Kieran Flanagan is SVP Marketing at HubSpot, where he has helped the business grow internationally, move to a product-led business, quadrupled its marketing demand, and built out its media team, including the acquisition of 'The Hustle.'
Andy Johns career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President.
Bangaly Kaba is the Director of Product Management @ Youtube. Prior to Youtube, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, helping grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs.
Ed Baker is a growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook.
Adam Fishman was the Chief Product and Growth Offer @ Imperfect Foods. Before Imperfect, Adam was VP of Product and Growth @ Patreon, Before Patreon, Adam was the Head of Growth @ Lyft, Adam was the first growth and marketing employee hired and grew the team to 18 people.
In Today's Discussion on When To Hire a Head of Growth:
1.) When is the right time to hear your first growth hire?
2.) Is this hire a senior growth leader or a more junior growth engineer?
3.) What can early-stage startups do to entice senior growth leaders to their early-stage company?
4.) What data infrastructure should be in place prior to hiring your first growth hire?
5.) What does the optimal onboarding process look like for all growth hires?
6.) What can founders and CEOs do to set their growth hires up for success?
The people who rise fastest in product know how to sell their ideas to customers, and also to their coworkers. Casey Winters, the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite (previously at Grubhub, Pinterest, and advisor to dozens of companies) shares what it takes to be successful as you rise in the ranks within product. In this episode we’ll talk about how to land presentations, how to win over executives with strategic communication, the skill sets that are most in demand in product, and new growth trends. Join us.
—
Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this episode possible:
• Coda: http://coda.io/lenny
• Mixpanel: https://mixpanel.com/startups
• Whimsical: https://whimsical.com/lenny
—
Where to find Casey Winters:
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/onecaseman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseywinters/
—
Where to find Lenny:
• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, learn:
[00:00] What to expect in this episode with Casey Winters
[03:23] An overview of Casey’s career
[06:18] A look into the most-fulfilling and challenging roles Casey has energized
[06:50] Communicating upward
[11:18] How to derisk meetings
[13:53] Are you properly preparing for your meetings?
[19:09] Striving for perceived simplicity
[24:22] Justifying non-sexy product improvements
[27:47] Protecting what you’ve built vs continuously scaling
[31:03] The downfall of functional ops roles
[35:21] The CPO role: what it is and how to get there
[40:44] The spectrum of product people
[45:11] How to level up your skills
[47:01] New growth trends, tactics, and strategies
[50:32] Casey’s two stages of growth: kindle strategies and fire strategies
[51:51] Under appreciated growth strategies
[54:02] Where to find Casey
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe
Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite where he leads the PM, product design, research, and growth marketing teams. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey spent close to 3 years at Pinterest where he led the growth product team.
Andy Johns is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. Andy's career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President.
Bangaly Kaba is the Head of Platform Growth @ Popshop Live, a live streaming mobile marketplace that combines commerce, entertainment, and social. Prior to Popshop, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, where he built and led the product team that helped grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs.
Elena Verna is a master when it comes to all things starting and scaling growth organizations. Previously, Elena spent over 7 years as SVP Growth @ SurveyMonkey where she ran product, growth marketing, and data teams. Post SurveyMonkey, Elena worked with the rocket ship that is Miro both as Interim CMO and as an advisor.
Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook.
Rob Schutz is Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder at Ro, the healthcare technology company building a patient-centric healthcare system. Under Rob's growth leadership, Ro has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Prior to Ro, Rob was VP of Growth at Bark, the makers of BarkBox, and helped scale revenue from zero to $100 million.
In Today's Episode with Ed Baker You Will Learn:
1.) Casey Winters:
How does Casey define "growth"? How does it differ from product?
How do the best growth leaders decide between art vs science when making growth decisions?
2.) Andy Johns:
What is Andy's biggest advice to founders looking to build their first growth team?
What unexpected choice did Andy decide to make at Twitter that moved the needle for new user acquisition?
3.) Bangaly Kaba:
What were some of Bangaly's biggest takeaways from scaling Instagram from 440M users to 1BN?
What decisions did Bangaly make without data? How did they go? What did he learn?
4.) Ed Baker:
What are Ed's biggest takeaways from facebook around structuring growth teams?
What are Ed's biggest pieces of advice for startyups looking to grow internationally?
What were some of Ed's biggest learnings from working with Travis @ Uber?
5.) Elena Verna:
What is the difference between a good vs great growth model?
When does one need to change or amend their growth model? How does one know when it is working?
6.) Rob Schutz:
Why does Rob believe that startups should not diversify their customer acquisition channels too quickly?
How does Rob assess resouirce allocation and spend on new channels? How did this process look when partnering with the MLB for Ro?
Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite where he leads the PM, product design, research, and growth marketing teams. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey spent close to 3 years at Pinterest where he led the growth product team. At Pinterest, Casey turned SEO into a scalable acquisition strategy, increasing conversion to signups 5x. Before Pinterest, Casey started the marketing team at Grubhub and scaled Grubhub's demand-side acquisition and retention strategies. Casey played an instrumental role in scaling Grubhub from 3 cities to 1,000+ and from a $1 million series A to an IPO and $7.3 billion exit. If that was not enough, Casey has also advised the likes of Canva, Hipcamp, Reddit, Faire and Career Karma to name a few.
In Today's Episode with Casey Winters You Will Learn:
1.) How Casey made his way into the world of startups and came to lead some of the most powerful growth orgs in the world from Pinterest to Grubhub to Eventbrite?
2.) How does Casey define "growth" and "Head of Growth"? When is the right time to start thinking about implementing a growth team? When should one hire a growth leader? How should founders structure the process of hiring a Head of Growth? What do the stages look like? What signals suggest A* talent? What questions does Casey always ask? What tests does Casey do?
3.) What does the optimal onboarding process look like for growth teams? What tasks should a growth team perform in their first few months? What are clear signs you have an amazing candidate in place? What are some obvious red flags? How do the best growth teams approach post-mortems? How are they structured? Who attends them? How often?
4.) What is the ideal relationship between the Head of Growth and the CEO? How often do they meet? What do the best CEOs expect from their growth teams? How does Casey approach the relationship between growth teams and product teams? How does one know when to have an independent growth team vs within the product or marketing team?
5.) Casey AMA: What has been a decision that Casey made without data to back it up? How did it go? What were Casey's lessons? How does Casey prevent past experiments from impacting his future tactics? How does Casey's management style differ when managing larger vs smaller growth teams? How has angel investing impacted his approach to scaling growth teams?
What the what is DivOps?! That’s the question Jonathan Creamer is here to answer. In so doing, we cover the past, present, and future of frontend tooling.
Join the discussion
Changelog++ members save 3 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!
Sponsors:
AWS Amplify – AWS Amplify is a suite of tools and services that enable developers to build full-stack serverless and cloud-based web and mobile apps using their framework and technology of choice. Amplify gives you easy access to hosting, authentication, managed GraphQL, serverless functions, APIs, machine learning, chatbots, and storage for files like images, videos, and pdfs. Learn more and get started for free at awsamplify.info/JSParty
Raygun – With Raygun Error and Performance Monitoring you have all the information you need at your fingertips to quickly find and fix errors and performance issues across your tech stack down to the line of code. Get started with a free 14-day trial, head to raygun.com and join thousands of customer-centric software teams who use Raygun every day.
DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with a 99.99% uptime SLA, and 24/7/365 world-class support to back that up. Get your $100 credit at do.co/changelog.
Featuring:
Jonathan Creamer – Website, GitHub, X
Amal Hussein – GitHub, X
Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Mastodon, X
Divya – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Announcing DivOps
Survey/discussion for divops naming?
Bolt
Rush
Snowpack
AST Explorer.net
Github Codeowners
Link to Ben’s show
Kent C Dodds – avoid hasty abstractions
David Neal
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Kevin Hartz is Co-Founder & Partner @ A*, a newly listed special acquisition company which raised $200M to acquire and take public a tech startup. Kevin is also the Co-Founder, former CEO, and Chairman Eventbrite (NYSE: EB). Before Eventbrite, Kevin was the Co-Founder & former CEO of online money transfer service, Xoom (acquired by PayPal for $1.1B). Kevin is also one of the most successful early-stage investors in the business with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb (Seed, Series A), Uber (Series B), Pinterest (Seed, Series A), Trulia (first check) and PayPal (Seed).
Troy Steckenrider is Kevin's co-founder and Partner @ A*. Prior to A*, Troy was COO @ ZeroDown changing the landscape for homeownership with $136M in funding. Before ZeroDown, Troy spent 5 years at Opendoor as Director of Capital Markets. Before that hyper-growth experience at Opendoor, Troy enjoyed roles at both Bain Private Equity and McKinsey.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Troy and Kevin came together to co-found A*? What is a SPAC? What are Kevin and Troy looking to achieve with the SPAC?
2.) What does Kevin believe are the primary drivers for the rise in SPAC's over the last few years? How will they change the structure of both the VC and startup industry? How will the SPAC landscape evolve over the next few years? What is the biggest challenge they face?
3.) Why does Kevin believe that the fee structure for SPACs is egregious? How would they like to change the incentive structure? How does the timeline for a SPAC transaction compare to that of an IPO? How does the fee structure compare when comparing SPACs to banks in IPOs?
4.) Why did Kevin and Troy choose $200M for the right size for their first SPAC? How does the size of the SPAC determine the type of company the SPAC will merge with? What are Kevin and Troy looking for in their partner company?
5.) What does the fundraising process look like for a SPAC? How do SPAC sponsors deal with the challenge that LPs call pull out if they do not like the proposed partner deal? When evaluating SPACs, what do investors look to invest because of? What makes A* special?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Troy's Fave Book: Churchill: Walking with Destiny
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
We dive into everything you need to know about SPACs — what they are, why they're a compelling alternative to IPO/DPOs, and how they might play an even more important role in startup financing going forward — with two of the very best people to teach us: Kevin Hartz and Troy "SPAC Professor" Steckenrider of the newly-minted $200m SPAC, AONE.
Sponsors:
Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
TLDR:
SPACs are an alternative path for companies to go public, however until recently they were mostly obscure and little-known/used.
Meanwhile, the traditional IPO process has become onerous and broken: it takes 9+ months of company time, yet investors get only 15 minutes of management access and must make a decision in
Links:
A* and ONE: https://www.a-star.co
John Luttig's great Medium piece on SPACs: https://luttig.substack.com/p/spac-attack-everything-a-founder
Bill Gurley on SPACs as an attractive alternative to IPOs/DPOs (posted after recording): https://abovethecrowd.com/2020/08/23/going-public-circa-2020-door-3-the-spac/
Founder Julia Hartz is reckoning with COVID-19's impact on the live events industry, which uses her company, Eventbrite, to sell tickets and market events. While her users are quickly pivoting to virtual events, Julia has been making tough decisions, which include laying off 45 percent of her staff. These conversations are excerpts from our How I Built Resilience series, where Guy talks online with founders and entrepreneurs about how they're navigating turbulent times.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In the early 2000s, Julia Hartz was helping develop TV shows for MTV and FX Networks, and seemed headed for a promising career in television. All of that changed in 2003 when she went to a wedding and found herself sitting next to a serial entrepreneur named Kevin. They started dating, and Julia eventually quit her job and joined Kevin in the Bay Area. In 2006 they married, and co-founded the online ticketing service Eventbrite out of a warehouse closet. 14 years after launch, Eventbrite is a publicly-traded company with 1,100 employees and offices around the world. PLUS in our post-script "How You Built That," Tomo Delaney describes how raising two picky eaters led him to create Noshi For Kids; brightly colored fruit puree that kids can paint with.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Building a company made up of distributed teams presents a plethora of complex challenges that can derail productivity and impact employee retention. But with it comes immense benefits and competitive advantages such as the diversification of ideas, speedier product development, and representation in important regions and time zones. Come and hear about the typical pitfalls (and how to avoid them) from Eventbrite SVP of Platform Pat Poels, an executive with over seven years under his belt leading Eventbrite's now 300+ strong engineering team that sits across North America, South America, and Europe.
Missed the session? Here's what Pat talks about:
Engineering your own luck
How to build an engineering team
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
SaaStr
That constant roar of customer feedback? Be thankful for it. It holds all the secrets to your success, if you learn how to read the signs. Listen to what users say, sure. But also watch what they do and interpret what they need. Eventbrite's Julia Hartz embodies this principle. She believes passionately in learning from her customers, and has made rapid response to user feedback the driving force behind Eventbrite’s strategy — as it grew from a simple ticketing app to a full-service platform for event creators, offering everything from ticket sales to custom RFID readers.
Read a transcript of this interview at: https://mastersofscale.com/julia-hartz-let-your-customers-be-your-scouts/
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Julia Hartz is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Eventbrite, the unicorn startup that is the world's largest event technology platform, powering over 2 million events around the world each year. They have raised over $330m from some of the greats of industry including Roelof Botha @ Sequoia Capital, Jeff Clavier @ SoftTech, David Saks, Bebo's Michael Birch, Tiger Global and many more. Under Julia's leadership, she has taken Eventbrite to become the world's largest event technology platform and has received multiple accolades for workplace culture, being named the best place to work in SF for 7 years running. Personally, Julia has won numerous awards including Fortune's 40 Under 40, Inc's 35 Under 35 and Most Powerful Female Entrepreneurs.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Julia came to found Eventbrite with her husband Kevin from a small apartment in Potrero Hill and turned it into the unicorn it is today?
2.) How did Julia and Kevin meet? What was the meet-cute? How did that translate into the founding of Eventbrite? How did Julia think about partnering with her fiancee at the time, as a business partner? What made it also a great business partnership?
3.) Why does Julia believe that creating a company is like creating a family? How has Julia seen herself scale as CEO of the company, with the immense scaling and growth of the firm? What have been the challenges and how did she overcome them?
4.) What does Julia believe are the requirements for successful CEO transition? How can this be managed correctly both internally and externally? What other elements made last year a particularly momentus year for change at Eventbrite?
5.) How does Julia think about balancing the immediate elements of the present day with the long-term vision for the roadmap? What is the right mindset to adopt? How does one look to prevent "Innovators Dilemma"? How does Julia split her time?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Julia's Fave Book: Overwhelmed
Julia's Fave Blog: The Skimm
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Julia on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Lattice is the #1 performance management solution for growing companies. With Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 performance review cycles as often as you want. And you also get a continuous feedback system with OKR goal tracking, real-time feedback, and 1-on-1 meetings to make sure employees get feedback between reviews. Find out why the likes of CoinBase, PlanGrid, Birchbox and WePay trust Lattice as their performance management solution by heading over to lattice.com to start investing in your people. That's Lattice.com.
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Kevin Hartz is a Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the world's most prestigious and successful VC funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Spotify and many more incredible companies. Prior to Founders Fund, Kevin was Founder & CEO @ Eventbrite, the company that powers thousands of millions of events around the world with backing from the likes of Sequoia and SV Angel. Before that Kevin was the Founder of Xoom Corporation, the international money transfer company that went public in 2012 and was acquired by Paypal in 2015. Kevin has also been a prolific angel with a personal portfolio including Airbnb, Uber, Paypal, Pinterest and Yammer.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) Question from Brian Singerman: How did Kevin come to be the world famous Kevin Hartz? What was Kevin's entry into the world of VC?
2.) How has Kevin seen his investment decision making and evaluation process change when comparing his angel deals in Uber, Paypal and Airbnb to today, investing institutionally with Founders Fund?
3.) How does Kevin see believe his time in operations lends to him being a better investor today? Does Kevin agree with Pat Grady @ Sequoia in stating, 'the rate of decay on operating experience has never been greater'?
4.) With no Monday morning Partner meetings, if a Partner wants to push a deal through, how do you do it at Founders Fund? How do you structure those conversations internally?
5.) What have been Kevin's biggest learnings since joining Founders Fund? How did Kevin look to scale the VC learning curve as fast as possible? What elements did Kevin find most challenging?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Kevin's Fave Book: Peter Thiel: Zero To One
Kevin's Most Recent Investment: HyperTrack
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kevin on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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