How Eventbrite applies the growth mindset to bring the world together through live experiences - #GHConf18

Eventbrite | Brian Rothenberg | @bmrothenberg | brianrothenberg.com

Mission-Driven Growth:
Bringing The World Together
Through Live Experiences
Brian Rothenberg
VP of Growth
@bmrothenberg
02.06.18

A company’s vision and
mission are born from the
startup’s founders.
The mindset starts at the top.

Our mission: To bring the world
together through live experiences

A clear mission isn’t enough.
The ‘Why’ and the ‘How”
behind it matters.

‘Why’ matters because it’s how great leaders inspire action

Your ‘Why’ is the purpose, cause or belief that inspires you to
do what you do
WHY
Very few organizations know WHY they do
what they do. It’s the very reason your
company exists.

Your ‘Why’ will color ‘How’ you uniquely do it
WHY
company exists.
HOW
Some organizations know HOW they do it.
These are the things that make them special
or set them apart from their competition.

When your team knows the ‘Why’ and the ‘How,’ the right
‘What’ follows
WHY
company exists.
HOW
WHAT
Every organization on the planet knows
WHAT they do. These are the products they
sell or the services they offer.

At Eventbrite, we’ve spent a lot of time
synthesizing the ‘why.’

Our ‘Why’ then starts to blend with
the ‘How.’

“Not having a platform that
was easily accessible or
self-service to sell tickets to
events meant that nobody
was catering to the long-tail
and mid-market
opportunity,” said Hartz.

“Things that were once
available only to the biggest
customers are now made
available to the masses.”

"The idea was really to
democratize ticketing," Hartz
told CNBC.
"We wanted to harness the
power of technology to make
it possible for anyone to
create a movement, or an
event or a live experience
around any topic, passion,
curiosity or cause.”

Democratize
Simplify
Easy-to-use
Innovation
Open
For the masses
Accessible
Self-service
Any category
Empowering
Discovery
Save time
Create
Free events
Grow

Our CEO/founders then evangelize this message to the world,
and critically to employees. Over, and over, and over...

Repeatedly driving this message home
shapes how the team seeks growth.
It strongly colors how the front-line
“do’ers” make decisions and work
together.

Some of these decisions can be pivotal
for a company’s growth...

Eventbrite started out self-service and built for paid events

“When a platform is
self-service, even the
improbable ideas can
get tried, because
there’s no expert
gatekeeper ready to say
'that will never work!'”

Some of Eventbrite’s most foundational growth drivers were
embraced when the spark happened

Free-to-paidconversionovertime
And thus, Eventbrite’s early freemium model was born...

Why was this embraced vs. rejected?

Why was this embraced vs. rejected?
Because the ‘What’ aligned with
our ‘Why’, and our ‘How.’

Eventbrite is now the largest live experiences platform
in the world by number of events and event creators
200M Tickets Sold
Across 180 Countries
in 2017
50M+ Ticket Buyers
in 2017
$10B+ Gross Ticket
Sales Since Founding

“How do we keep driving toward
our mission in a way that is true to
our ‘Why and our ‘How?’”

Compound Growth vs.
Step Changes
2

Growth teams largely focus on iterative, compound growth
What do “growth” teams do?
1. Analysis, model building, planning: “Why does growth happen?” and
“how do we think we can do more of it?”
2. Experimentation & optimization: Brainstorm ideas that can make those
numbers go up and to the right… lots of A/B tests for pretty short ideas
that prove out the concept… if it works out, then keep investing.
http://andrewchen.co/what-does-a-growth-team-work-on-day-to-day/

There’s a huge difference between linear and compound growth

As you scale, even with compound growth you may start to
approach the top of your current hill
Local Maximum
Global Maximum

We felt we were approaching our local maximum, and
needed to make a bigger shift
How do we get here?

Because the best companies do both: drive continuous
compound optimizations and seek step-changes
How do we get here?
So that we can optimize
again to here

Eventbrite’s recent step-change
opportunity
3

37
For the past 10 years, we’ve had a one-size-fits-all product

For one, event creators placed different value on our product
Segment 1 Segment 2 Segment 3
Perceived
Value
Perceived
Value
Perceived
Value
Price

That disconnect led to lost customers and lost revenue
Segment 1 Segment 2 Segment 3
Perceived
Value
Perceived
Value
Perceived
Value
Price
Lost
customers
Lost revenue

Missing out on a segment of customers ≠ Eventbrite’s ‘How’
Segment 1
Perceived
Value
Lost
customers
!

We recognized that product segmentation and pricing would
be major levers to expand reach and drive growth
Good Better Best
Perceived
Value
Perceived
Value
Price 2
Perceived
Value
Price 3
Price 1

“Available to the masses”
“Empowering”
“Self-service”
“Easy-to-use”
“Growth”

To validate, we first took a lean, growth-oriented approach

Was likely going
to get us here
Was definitely
not going to get
us here
But optimization alone wasn’t going to get us a step-function
change

So, we embarked on more rigorous research to inform
jumping to a whole new product package architecture

Which we designed, re-built much of the product, and launched
in a few short months

Widely knowing the ‘Why’ and ‘How’ increased cross-functional
coordination, speed, and quality of decisions

“We knew what we were driving toward and Why.
And super importantly, everyone in the company did too.
Many decisions that could have taken days or weeks, were
actually made in minutes or hours. And because we had a
framework for How we’d make the big decisions, it turned
out that nearly all were at least directionally correct.”
—Core team member, during retrospective
Widely knowing the ‘Why’ and ‘How’ increased cross-functional
coordination, speed, and quality of decisions

Acquisition & Retention Package Distribution
Essentials
Professional
Premium
It’s early, but so far, so good

Applying growth team process
to our new package framework
3

We made the step-change. Now our growth team is pushing
up the new hill using our iterative growth approach
We were here
How do we now
optimize to here?

Our new framework unlocked many new levers for optimization
2017
Traffic
Funnel Conversion
Virality
2018+
Package Selection
Onboarding
Package Upgrades
Category/Geo Packages
Expand Market via Lower-Priced Packages
Many more...

Which our growth team is now enthusiastically optimizing
● Clear North Star metric & KPIs
● Dedicated x-functional growth
team: Product, Engineering,
Marketing, Analytics
● High-velocity testing to learn
quickly & find greatest impact,
then doubling down

Quick recap: let’s bring it all home!

Your mission, your ‘Why,’ and your ‘How’ matter deeply in how
you grow
WHY
company exists.
HOW
These are the things that make them
special or set them apart from their
competition.

Your team widely knowing your ‘Why’ + ‘How’ will lead to the
right ‘What.’ This empowers teams to work together toward it

Embrace the ‘sparks,’ especially when they align with your ‘How’
Free-to-paidconversionovertime

Step changes must align with your ‘Why’ and ‘How.’ Improve
through #1 prioritization, deep customer insights + lean testing
How do we get here?
again to here

The best performing companies seek step-changes and drive
continuous compound growth toward the global maximum
How do we get here?
again to here

Thank you! Brian Rothenberg
VP of Growth
@bmrothenberg

Teamwork is one of the biggest and most untapped
competitive advantages
Widely know your Why + How, and how they
relate to your growth will lead to the right
‘What’
and empower teams to work together toward
it

It’s a competitive advantage to widely know your Why and
How → they will lead to the right ‘What’ and empower teams
to work together toward it
WHY
company exists.
HOW

Many companies grow in linear fashion

Great companies drive continuous, compounding growth

Takeaways
1. Lead with meaningful ‘Why’ and ‘How’ → the right ‘What”
will follow
2. Company mission & founder vision matters. Understanding
and alignment matters.
3. Step-change efforts + “growth” efforts need to be
combined, especially at scale.
4. For growth goal setting: Align on a local vs. global maxima
5. Step function changes: Gain confidence via deep customer
insights

Growth teams largely focus on iterative, compound growth
What do “growth” teams do?
1. Analysis, model building, planning: “Why does growth
happen?” and “how do we think we can do more of it?”
2. Experimentation & optimization: Brainstorm ideas that can
make those numbers go up and to the right… lots of A/B
tests for pretty short ideas that prove out the concept… if it
works out, then keep investing.
http://andrewchen.co/what-does-a-growth-team-work-on-day-to-day/

Even with compound growth, eventually you approach the top
of your current hill
Local Maximum
Global Maximum

We felt we were approaching the local maximum, and
needed to make a bigger shift
How do we get here?

Global go-to-market was massive. Required alignment with
our mission and top-down prioritization.
Overall narrative
Package-specific positioning
Customer communications &
support to drive migration
New sales & marketing content
and funnel evolution
Localization and execution across 8 major markets & 180+ countries
In-product user experience (package selection, upgrades, etc)

While we shipped a bigger leap, we maintained a lean,
growth-oriented mentality to prepare for a range of outcomes
“We knew there was no way we’d get it 100% right, so we
never assumed we had the answer.
We built scenario plans, kept an iterative mindset and
continued to question decisions along the way, testing
where we could, all while staying focused on a singular
goal.”
—Core team member 1, during retrospective

77
Free Events Paid Events
Package 2 Package 3 Package 4+
And we have an expanded framework for future new
segmentation + product/pricing packages, & new growth levers
Package 1
Add’l Features Add’l Services

Eventbrite’s Mission and the
Company’s Growth Are
Inextricably Tied
1

Eventbrite’s mission and the company’s
growth are inextricably tied.

Why the ‘Why’ matters

Eventbrite | Brian Rothenberg | @bmrothenberg | brianrothenberg.com 82
Some of the primary growth drivers were built-in, or embraced
when the spark happened, because they aligned w/ the vision
Originally intended to only support paid events. Organically event creators started putting $0 into price field. Rathe
made free event functionality. This was a huge growth driver.
Paid Events Free Events

83
Free Events Paid Events
Package 1 Package 2 Package 3
We developed new segmentation and product/pricing
packages

Julia Hartz / Founders [find and add inspirational photo(s)]
The mental mindset starts at the top
The mission and vision live with a startup’s founders. They then evangelize to the world, and to employees.
(key focus for Julia for many years)

“... available
to the
masses.”

"Kevin and I were inspired by the
idea of really democratizing
ticketing.
Essentially, making it possible for
anybody to create a movement,
or an event or a live experience
around any topic, passion,
curiosity or cause.”

As Kevin Hartz, CEO and founder says, he's
"democratizing tickets," giving anyone the
ability to easily create, organize, market
and sell tickets to an event.
While some of these events have been in
existence well before Eventbrite, the
ability to easily manage them has been
lacking. The result has been the emergence
of even more events as newbie event
organizers, like me, feel empowered to put
on an event, like VatorSplash, which is
hosted on Eventbrite.

Eventbrite by the numbers in 2017...
We’re the largest live experiences platform in the world by number of
events and event creators.
200M Tickets Sold
Across 180 Countries
in 2017
50M+ Ticket Buyers
in 2017
$10B+ Gross Ticket
Sales Since Founding

91
Some of these decisions can be pivotal for a
company’s growth...

How Eventbrite applies the growth mindset to bring the world together through live experiences - #GHConf18

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How Eventbrite applies the growth mindset to bring the world together through live experiences - #GHConf18