\u201cIt\u2019s not unlike what I experienced when I had my baby. I feel a little postpartum\u2026I\u2019ve been literally not without a job since I was 15,\u201d Hartz tells Fortune.<\/em> \u201cI have a really deep passion for learning and starting from zero.\u201d<\/p>\n 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, <\/em>later joining MTV\u2019s series development department. Four years into her stint developing shows like Jackass <\/em>and The Shield, <\/em>Hartz made a break for entrepreneurship. Eventbrite has been her path ever since; she\u2019s led the business through nearly $350 million in funding, an IPO, the COVID-19 shutdown, and a $500 million sale to Bending Spoons.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the aftermath, Hartz is weighing all the ways she can spend her newfound downtime.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m fielding really interesting inbound opportunities, which I\u2019m grateful for,\u201d she says. \u201cI also can\u2019t help but shake this notion that there\u2019s this incredible symbiotic way in which I\u2019m starting [over] again.\u201d<\/p>\n On March 13, Hartz clocked into her last day leading the events and ticketing company. Now, she\u2019s embracing the rare opportunity to chart out her next course.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hartz says her husband and Eventbrite cofounder, Kevin Hartz, has already made a list of 27 different companies they could build together, and she\u2019s weighing entrepreneurship against all her other career options.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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 \u201cone-woman recruiting show\u201d in helping affected Eventbrite staffers land new work opportunities.\u00a0<\/p>\n But otherwise, she\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n Building upon her expertise in tech entrepreneurship, she\u2019s also taking time to tinker with all the new AI tools fueling the latest tech revolution.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I\u2019ve spent just an inordinate amount of time doing is working deeper and deeper with Claude code and OpenClaw,\u201d Hartz continues. \u201cI\u2019m doing the things I think a lot of people should be doing, but unfortunately, don\u2019t have the time.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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\u2014and she wishes other seasoned leaders took time to intern for one another, even spending a week at the bottom of the food chain.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI love the idea of internships,\u201d Hartz says. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved the idea of people who are established in their careers going to intern for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s two-decade run scaling Eventbrite into a cultural staple.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d Hartz explains. \u201cIn fact, I felt that I needed to make that abundantly clear so that no one would try to come and take the company.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn 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\u2026even if it\u2019s orthogonal to where your heart is.\u201d<\/p>\n Courtesy of Julia Hartz<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n 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\u2019t do the business any favors\u2014its 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 \u201ccome to fruition,\u201d and it was time to think about Eventbrite\u2019s next metamorphosis.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mindset was: let\u2019s 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,\u201d Hartz explains. \u201cI needed to put my ego aside to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n It was a hard decision to make, and Hartz says her board\u2014consisting almost entirely of women, save for one man\u2014chipped 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. <\/p>\n Taking the business private, and stepping away from her role as CEO, was no cake walk. But Hartz is excited for Eventbrite\u2019s next iteration and what her own future holds as a free agent.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so grateful that I got to lead a company that I helped create,\u201d Hartz says. \u201cI just think that shouldn\u2019t ever be a foregone conclusion or entitlement, people have to really earn that privilege, and it\u2019s the honor of a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Eventbrite #CEO #sold #company #millionshes #playing #chess #robots #eyeing #internships<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[426,369,2395,1285,2396,630,2377,2378,2397,800,2405,2398,2379,2399,2400,430,2401,2403,874,2404,747,580,1113,602,2402,167],"class_list":["post-1363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-careers","tag-ceo","tag-chess","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-coding","tag-company","tag-entrepreneurs","tag-entrepreneurship","tag-eventbrite","tag-executives","tag-eyeing","tag-female-founders","tag-founders","tag-internships","tag-ipos","tag-jobs","tag-lifestyle","tag-millionshes","tag-pandemic","tag-playing","tag-robots","tag-sales","tag-sold","tag-tech","tag-tennis","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Hartz is playing chess with robots, building code, and eyeing internships<\/h2>\n
Hartz\u2019s $500 million exit after two decades building Eventbrite<\/h2>\n
![\"Hartz](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/EventbriteIPO_cecb2d.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>\n