YouSaid · the spoken record

Julia Hartz

lines on the record: 71
first: 2020-02-17
most recent: 2020-02-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Saying goodbye to this career that was on this uphill trajectory, in driving north and literally the next day pushing sawhorses and plywood into a windowless phone closet in a warehouse in Petreo Hill where we had gotten some free office space with Kevin, and I remember pushing a sawhorse behind him thinking I hope he's not crazy like there's a reason why he's so excited and I really trust that there's this reason but there was a little bit of me that was thinking like should I really have done this That was terrifying”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it really wasn't well defined when I moved up There were several ideas that he had actually prototyped and to some extent had built early versions of. One of the things was about this very simple transactional platform to sell tickets to any kind of event. And it was really the conversation about why we would go and approach ticketing was much, much less about the industry and more about the notion that experiences are so vital to human beings thriving and that became that was the first idea that we had to work on together and just so happened to stick. But I really didn't give it much thought and all of a sudden I was packing up my window office on the 42nd floor of Fox Plaza, which is the, you know, iconic building in Century City.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened there was Zoom was about five years old at the time and it finally reached a point where it was clear that they were on their way to becoming a grown-up financial services company and Kevin was not interested in being the CEO of a financial services company. That wasn't his kind of endgame. And so he was already transitioning out of Zoom and he was starting to look at what he wanted to do next, what he wanted to build next. So he was primed to be in ideation phase. And now that I know him a lot better than even when I did in 2005, I know what that means.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do think the genesis of why Kevin was so convincing there is because his optimism was contagious. And I thought, why not?”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Joel Hyatt and Al Gore had a great vision, and in fact I met with them. I mean, it was really exciting, and I was offered a middle management position on the founding team. And then I got the offer. And the numbers that I remember, roughly speaking, are I was making $80,000 at FX and they offered me $50,000 in annual salary to join. I brought the offer to Kevin to get his opinion. He just, I think, saw an opening. I'm not sure how calculated he was in this, but he just said, you know, you could go work on someone else's startup and make less than your worth for sure. Or you could build something with me and make no money, but at least it's our own and we could even invest our own money in bootstrapping something. I really don't know. Why or how that sounded more compelling?”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a moment where we imagined I would still work in Hollywood he would still be working on Zoom but doing it somewhat remotely. But ultimately what ended up happening is I knew I was in the wrong industry. There was something nagging at me when I would learn more about the tech industry from Kevin or I would see these early ideas come to light and the thing that was nagging at me was something was moving faster than cable television and I love velocity. I just felt disruption coming. It just was very clear that something was going to disrupt traditional media. And so I thought that I needed to just find a career here in San Francisco that married my experience in television with maybe the future of media. That was the plan.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did you, I mean, eventually, I think two years into your relationship, you guys decided to get married, which meant that one of you would have to move, and I guess you decided it was going to be you, that you were going to move back to Northern California and kind of leave your job at FX behind?”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was. It actually worked for us to be long distance because during the week he was And I would do my television thing and that also included going to nighttime events. And so we just worked really hard during the week. And then on the weekends, we would get together and spend this really quality time together. And he would come down and he would go through his 85 page slide deck for funding. And he would attend movie awards with me. And it was just interesting. This two-year kind of study in these very different worlds.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we were standing on the lawn at the reception, and he brought me over a drink. And then I realized like, oh no, I'm not actually going to get rid of this guy tonight. Like, this is, you know, this isn't like just a fleeting thing. And that was it. I mean, that literally was it, Kevin and I have been together ever since.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My reading was there, and I got through it, and it came back, and I was so relieved. And this guy turned to me and goes, you're amazing. I'm so proud of you. I remember finally sort of focusing on him and being like, okay, what is going on? You know, like, he's just so friendly and not creepy friendly, like earnestly just so friendly, but didn't even know his name. And so he introduced himself as Kevin. And I remember standing on the steps of the church after the ceremony and, you know, we were throwing rice at the bride and groom and they were running down the stairs. And I saw him across the way and I thought, oh, I'll never see him again.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so these two particular people who were getting married had been really big brother and big sister figures in my life. And so I was tapped to deliver an excerpt from Corinthians at the altar and I did not grow up in a church. I do not know the Bible. So I'm a little bit all around anxious about this particular wedding. And I got to the church and I realized that I didn't bring a copy of the excerpt. I wasn't sure if it was at the altar. And so I thought like, okay, I have to sit at the end of the pew. So I went to the end of a pew and I asked this guy to move over so that I could sit at the end. And I was sitting there pretty stressed out. And this guy started striking up a conversation with me. And that was that. And then I went up to the altar and thankfully”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, and for me, definitely on, I think, a very strong trajectory. I joined FX as a manager of current series and worked on Niptuck Rescue Me and the Shield, which were all incredible pieces of content. So formative years for me, and certainly something I'll never forget, but in total my whole career in Hollywood was five years Set against the backdrop of now the balance of my life, it was a brief stint. However, in those five years, I really loved the work.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I did. I graduated on a Friday and was employed by Monday. I've been working since I was 14 with no break. And that was a really fortunate thing that I was able to just pick up where I'd left off and join the team as an assistant. And so I was in the development department and we jackass was one of our shows amongst several others that we worked on to put on air. And being a development executive is not unlike being a VC, I guess, of several stages. So, you know, you start with seed where you're cultivating talent and you're taking a lot of pitches. And then you help to cultivate the idea, and then you get to a place where down the line it may become a series. And our job was to take it from concept or person to series and then manage the series as it was on air.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was a witness. I mean, I don't, you know, I certainly didn't have any contribution that was significant, but I witnessed something that was groundbreaking. It was different. It was weird. People didn't know how to feel. I remember the weekly phone calls that we would do between the network, the standards and practices department, OSHA, the lawyers And then the guys, and they would in the course of a week come up with maybe two full pages of ideas for stunts and just the description and the brainstorming around how one would pull these stunts off was so entertaining. It was irreverence at its very best.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it turned out to be jackass. And that was an incredible experience to watch something go from demo all the way through to series. And I have a lot of really great memories from that experience.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think that between friends and MTV and landing and MTV in my senior year, I discovered two things for myself. One was I was not passionate about production and everything that goes into actually filming. The second thing was I just wasn't passionate about celebrity. And so when I landed at MTV in the series development department, it was as if I finally found the perfect place because development really marries business and creative And being anchored in a network and especially in a cable network was really exciting and dynamic and I'll never forget I was there when we got this demo tape and from these guys who were doing just really stupid stuff.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it was pretty surreal because it was at the height of, you know, the friends' popularity as a show. It was as exciting as you can imagine. And there was Jennifer Anniston and Courtney Cox and, you know, all these huge celebrities within arm's reach. And my job on the Saturday. It was still today the most terrifying job I've ever had of my life because if you have the set phone number for friends, you're probably not someone who's super patient. About who you're looking for”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I couldn't believe it. And so basically, what that meant was I took on a ton of debt, student loan debt, and I had three jobs. And my parents obviously contributed everything they could. So it was a group effort. And I sat through my first semester of classes that were, you know, your basic college courses. And then the second semester I'd made a big change. I didn't realize it at the time, which was to actually concentrate on television production as my focus.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, I applied and was admitted to Pepperdine in the early admissions timeframe, but I couldn't afford to go to Pepperdine. But I also wasn't in the bracket that would get full financial aid. And my mom said, you know, if you really have your heart set on Pepperdine, you should write them a letter and tell them that. And I remember thinking like, mom, come on. They're not going to, that's not going to work. And thank God I took her advice because I wrote a letter. And with no other warning a full financial aid package showed up.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for Julia Harts, not much from her early life suggested she'd become an entrepreneur. In fact, growing up in Santa Cruz, California, she was really into broadcast journalism and applied to college thinking she'd eventually get into television news.”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of a sudden I was packing up my window office on the 42nd floor of Fox Plaza, which is the iconic building in Century City. And literally the next day pushing sawhorses and plywood into a windowless phone closet in a warehouse with Kevin. And I remember pushing a sawhorse behind him thinking, should I really have done this?”
2020-02-17 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Eventbrite: Julia Hartz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT