Eventbrite CEO sold her company for $500 million—without a job for the first time since 15, she’s playing chess with a robot and eyeing internships
Twenty years ago, Julia Hartz ditched a budding career at MTV and FX, drove up the coast of California, and bootstrapped ticketing platform Eventbrite with her two cofounders. Now, the longtime CEO wakes up to a blank outlook calendar; Hartz sold her company in a $500 million exit, and is deciding on her next chapter in the wake of parting ways with her brainchild.
“It’s not unlike what I experienced when I had my baby. I feel a little postpartum…I’ve been literally not without a job since I was 15,” Hartz tells Fortune. “I have a really deep passion for learning and starting from zero.”
The entrepreneur has been booked and busy for more than three decades. As a teen, she made her first buck working in cafes and driving kids to after-school activities; and while studying at Pepperdine University, she worked as an intern on the sitcom Friends, later joining MTV’s series development department. Four years into her stint developing shows like Jackass and The Shield, Hartz made a break for entrepreneurship. Eventbrite has been her path ever since; she’s led the business through nearly $350 million in funding, an IPO, the COVID-19 shutdown, and a $500 million sale to Bending Spoons.
In the aftermath, Hartz is weighing all the ways she can spend her newfound downtime.
“I’m fielding really interesting inbound opportunities, which I’m grateful for,” she says. “I also can’t help but shake this notion that there’s this incredible symbiotic way in which I’m starting [over] again.”
Hartz is playing chess with robots, building code, and eyeing internships
On March 13, Hartz clocked into her last day leading the events and ticketing company. Now, she’s embracing the rare opportunity to chart out her next course.
Hartz says her husband and Eventbrite cofounder, Kevin Hartz, has already made a list of 27 different companies they could build together, and she’s weighing entrepreneurship against all her other career options.
For now, the 46-year-old has joined the board of the Live Like Braun Foundation, run by Jenn and Dan Levi, in helping raise grants and awareness about the risks of impaired driving. The entrepreneur also says a good chunk of her free time has been spent as a “one-woman recruiting show” in helping affected Eventbrite staffers land new work opportunities.
But otherwise, she’s finally taking on all the hobbies founders often move to the backburner. Hartz is learning how to play piano again, working on her golf game, and even playing chess with a robot in her house.
Building upon her expertise in tech entrepreneurship, she’s also taking time to tinker with all the new AI tools fueling the latest tech revolution.
“What I’ve spent just an inordinate amount of time doing is working deeper and deeper with Claude code and OpenClaw,” Hartz continues. “I’m doing the things I think a lot of people should be doing, but unfortunately, don’t have the time.”
The businesswoman is also excited by the idea of doing it all over again, but not by putting her name behind another company. Instead, she’s keen on learning by returning to the very bottom of the corporate totem pole: through an internship. Hartz values that early-career experience as a way to gain access and learn more—and she wishes other seasoned leaders took time to intern for one another, even spending a week at the bottom of the food chain.
“I love the idea of internships,” Hartz says. “I’ve always loved the idea of people who are established in their careers going to intern for each other.”
Hartz’s $500 million exit after two decades building Eventbrite
Eventbrite has been connecting users with niche community activities for over two decades, distributing tens of millions of paid tickets annually and platforming millions of events each year. But last year, when Hartz and her board reevaluated how the company should move forward, it was clear something had to change. They landed on the decision to sell to Bending Spoons and go private, ending Hartz’s two-decade run scaling Eventbrite into a cultural staple.
“I always likened myself, visually, [to] a granny with a shotgun on the porch. I never wanted to sell the company, [it] never was a gold mine,” Hartz explains. “In fact, I felt that I needed to make that abundantly clear so that no one would try to come and take the company.”
“In that, one of the hard things that you have to do as the CEO of a company is constantly be looking out ahead and making somewhat dispassionate decisions on what is best for the company…even if it’s orthogonal to where your heart is.”
There have been a host of financial concerns since Eventbrite went public in 2018; the IPO initially valued the company at $1.76 billion, but in the eight years following, its stock has cratered. And the COVID-19 pandemic didn’t do the business any favors—its consumers were quarantined at home, as large public gatherings were heavily restricted. In the last several years, Eventbrite has struggled with profitability, and weathered a slew of headcount reductions. Hartz said the company was rebuilt after lockdown, but the cycle had “come to fruition,” and it was time to think about Eventbrite’s next metamorphosis.
“My mindset was: let’s take the company private. It was clear that Eventbrite needed to be a private company. We would benefit greatly from not having that overhead, cost, and burden,” Hartz explains. “I needed to put my ego aside to do the right thing.”
It was a hard decision to make, and Hartz says her board—consisting almost entirely of women, save for one man—chipped in a diversity of opinions. However, they decided that a small cap company like Eventbrite has a harder time gaining a dedicated investor base to see them to greater success.
Taking the business private, and stepping away from her role as CEO, was no cake walk. But Hartz is excited for Eventbrite’s next iteration and what her own future holds as a free agent.
“I’m so grateful that I got to lead a company that I helped create,” Hartz says. “I just think that shouldn’t ever be a foregone conclusion or entitlement, people have to really earn that privilege, and it’s the honor of a lifetime.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com