A conversation with Julia Hartz & Ashwin Sreenivas
Two longtime friends and founders sit down for a candid conversation, having built consumer-facing companies on opposite sides of the two biggest platform shifts of the last 20 years.
Julia Hartz spent 20 years building Eventbrite through every major dislocation of the modern internet – the 2008 financial crisis (which nearly killed the company before it had ten employees), the 2018 IPO, COVID (which wiped out 90% of revenue overnight), and the 2025 sale to Bending Spoons that brought her run as CEO to an end. Through all of it, she built a company with a distinctive culture and a single mission that didn't change for two decades: bring the world together through live experiences.
Ashwin Sreenivas is the co-founder and President of Decagon, valued at $4.5B three years after founding, powering customer experience for some of the largest consumer brands in the world – including Eventbrite. He's also a close friend of Julia's.
This conversation is built around four blocks: what Julia learned building over 20 years through every fad, wave, and crisis; what experiences mean across two different but adjacent businesses (Eventbrite makes live ones happen, Decagon shapes customer ones); what's the same and what's changed about company-building between 2006 and now; and how she thinks about culture, which is the work she's most personally identified with at Eventbrite.
