Eventbrite’s CEO quit his Cushy career in Hollywood and launched a $225 million company with his own money.

Just five years after her rise in television career, when she moved up to junior executives at Forex, Hartz threw a towel 9-5 in 2006 to launch Event Bright, bootstrapped the company entirely with her husband and fellow co-founder Renault Vision.

The pitch is as follows: “Track on something that doesn’t exist. We use our own money to fund it. If it’s a disaster, it’s just breaking,” says Hertz. luck.

EventBrite is currently estimated to be worth $225 million, with comedy shows from wrestling classes, Cheese Rave and Queer Eye Stars Antoni Porowski.

But it all began when Harts and her husband (judicial entrepreneur and early paypal investor Kevin Harts) formed a dream team to pull Eventbrite off the ground. They hired the face of their fellow co-founders as chief technology officers, and the trio of entrepreneurs decided to chuck their own $250,000 in money to move to San Francisco and run Eventbrite.

Harts had to sacrifice her work and put all her energy into Eventbrite and clean the routes of other entrepreneurs It’s gone:Juggling full-time jobs Scaling The company next to it. Instead, she felt it would be best to wipe her slate clean and leave her television career behind in pursuit of Eventbrite. It was a professional gamble that paid off in the long term.

“I’ve seen entrepreneurs do that, and I think it’s a smart way to be more suited to the verification and product market without putting themselves in such a dangerous state,” says Hertz. “I didn’t do that.”

Inspiration was hit during her 9-on-5 work on television while working friend and shield

Harts began working at 14, a coffee-swallowing age 14, and took his children to after-school activities, but hasn’t stepped out of the gas since.

While attending Pepperdine University, she worked as an intern on the set of a hit TV show friend, He then won an internship at MTV, the series development department. It was a “magic” experience that eventually landed her work at the station. Jackass, Shield, and I’ll save me It crosses MTV and FX. Part of her work involves researching fandom events and suddenly something clicked.

“I remember going to this fandom event, which was a crazy niche and feeling the energy of the people in the room. “It was this obvious, motor energy… When I first started Eventbrite, I was thinking about it all the time.

While most couples can narrow their hands down to the idea of putting their finances on the line to launch a company, Herts partners were keen to go all in at the light bulb moment.

In fact, the nearly 20 years of success for Gen X CEO may not have pand out unless it was for her Husband Kevin– Who was it successful to invest in a startup that was not known at the time? PayPal– Raised her to dive into entrepreneurship.

“Only a serial entrepreneur can convince anyone about that,” says Hertz. “We got it for under $150,000…I’m really, really proud.”

Expanding business ideas to the $225 million ticket giant

When Harts decided to leave TV forever, she packs her things into boxes and runs up the California coast to settle in San Francisco, the company’s new headquarters. The Silicon Valley Hub has access to technical connections and industries that help keep things off the ground. In that way, she set up a shop in Potrero Hill, the “warehouse district.”

“I showed my horse and plywood in this warehouse district in San Francisco on Monday in a windowless phone closet and said, ‘Wait, what if he’s crazy?’ Well, that’s a bit late,” Hurts says. “I’ve been working without a break since I was 14, so it was really important to be working on the first day.”

EventBrite was able to get things off the ground thanks to perfect timing. In the mid-2000s, social media platforms were trying to attract users in real life. Facebook has made EventBrite one of its first Connect Partners, solidifying its huge new customer base looking for community events to attend.

Then came 2008, and thousands of workers across the country were fired in large numbers during the financial crisis. Harts said that in these tragic years, “the world has collapsed,” and people were desperate for their communities while they faced difficulties. It was a tough time for corporate American workers, but Eventbrite was the opportunity to bring them together. Over the next decade, the business will raise a total of $373 million in equity funding through 11 funding rounds. According to It attracts investors such as Pitchbook, Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital and Square.

The ticketing platform has since accumulated a fanbase in nearly 180 countries. In 2024 alone, 83 million paid tickets were distributed to over 4.7 million events. With 89 million users each month, people earn seats at events ranging from the Sunset Bach concert in Central Park to the House Music Cruise on the Hudson River.