Julia Hartz

Whether you're a founder, a leader, or an individual contributor, building a strong team is critical to your success.

As far as funding and building a team, you being romantically involved with your cofounder really shouldn't play a factor in how you run the company and how you create a team or find resources. It's all about the partnership.

I'm thrilled to share the story of my journey in building Eventbrite and what I've learned along the way as a working mother and entrepreneur.

My goal is to create one of the greatest companies that's ever existed, and that has everything to do with the people, the culture, and what our core values are versus what we build or how we're perceived out in the market.

I think I lead with empathy and connection to our people. I find that the most effective leadership style for me is to just talk and listen. It sounds simple, but it's so effective.

I graduated from college and went straight into a job with MTV.

Great leadership and great companies aren't built overnight, and they're not built without capital. And capital can sometimes be counter-productive to building a great culture.

We always had a sense that we were the underdog. There's lots of competition and niche players. But we have every type of event on Eventbrite, whether you're a consumer or you're organizing a bacon festival. Our identity is our users.

One of the reasons why we were so successful in integrating with Facebook was because we saw people using Facebook to promote their event and link back to Eventbrite before Facebook Connect and before the event's API was even available.

Our platform is self-service, so we enable people to host events themselves. The biggest events tend to be the free ones. We had 100,000 at a salsa congress in Mexico.

Four Seasons' legendary brand epitomizes the highest standards for service in the hospitality industry worldwide.

I wasn't the kid with the lemonade stand.