This week: We got all-access passes to Skype for an interview with Julia Hartz, co-founder and president of Eventbrite, the four-year-old Web-based ticketing service aiming to unseat the big guys.

Using the Eventbrite Web interface, organizers can set up ticket sales and publicize their events using social media tools. It’s a labor of love, too, as Julia shares the big office with co-founder and husband Kevin.

Who: Julia Hartz

What: President and co-founder

Why: Hartz said Eventbrite has cracked the code on merging business and the social graph. It enables event organizers to publish events online and sell tickets, then publish the events to Facebook. And if your event is free, so are Eventbrite services. Julia says it is democratizing the ticketing industry, but it can’t all be free. Eventbrite saw $100 million in ticket sales in 2009.

Where: eventbrite.com (Web site); @eventbrite (Twitter); San Francisco, Calif. (analog place)

Who else: Eventbrite services put it in competition with most of the ticket-selling world, especially Ticketmaster, which is now owned by Live Nation (LYV). But Hartz said most of the people using Eventbrite for the first time are switching from using spreadsheets.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in Her Facebook Profile

Worst Job Ever: I was an intern on the set of “Friends.” It was this awful experience taking place in this wondrous environment. There was a serious level of paranoia there. And basically, my job was to hold a phone and anytime it rang, I had to go find that person on the set. My second worst job was as a barista at The Ugly Mug in Santa Cruz. I would drink like three mochas and eat some pastries during my shift and then be depressed for the rest of the day.

Her Big Event of 2010: I’m really looking forward to Chirp, the upcoming Twitter conference. That and maybe F8, the Facebook conference.

Gadget of the Moment: My new iPad…just kidding. I guess just my Apple (AAPL) iPhone. We’re kind of a gadget family. Our two-year-old has a Pleo, because we can’t get a puppy in our place.

Wants to Be When She Grows Up: I want to be a great mom.

Fails At: Being a working mom and running the start-up. I feel like I’m never doing 100 percent in either. I feel 80 percent in everything. Kevin would say I fail at taking big risks–stuff like skydiving or petting a spider at the children’s museum.

Bio in 140 Characters

Hartz grew up in Santa Cruz. She went to Pepperdine for a degree in being a TV exec. She was at MTV, FX, then left for the start-up world.

The Five Questions

You started Eventbrite in 2006–why this and why then?

Well, I’ll just be honest; it had a lot to do with logistics. I’d just moved up here and Kevin and I had just gotten engaged. I was about to go to Current TV and didn’t know if that was the right move. We got to talking about all the events we heard about after the fact, and all the event “postcards” we got on our car windshields. There was little to no innovation in the events market. Unless you were using Ticketmaster, you really had no access to tools and technology that could help you as a smaller events planner. Also, Kevin was very close to PayPal, so we were looking at what we could do based on the PayPal API. The transaction is where it began.

So, you and Kevin have sort of made Eventbrite your baby. How does being a start-up couple change things?

Well, in working with somebody you know quite well, we sort of divide and conquer. We sort of have our own areas of the business that we strive to excel in, and we try to support each other. We received some really great advice early on from Michael and Xochi Birch, who co-founded Bebo. When we asked them how they worked together, they said divide and conquer–don’t work on anything together. That’s sorta what we do. And we do really well on a day-to-day basis. But if you get us behind the same spreadsheet, we’ll definitely be fighting for the mouse.

What sorts of mistakes have you guys made doing this?

I think we’ve been pretty good on avoiding most big mistakes, but I do think we’ve been too focused on making decisions around customer reactions…that sounds a little weird. Let me give you an example. So, we were a free service early on, then we were freemium. The problem was that our basic service was so robust that our premium service was only a little better. We were toying with the idea of going all paid for too long. When we finally bit the bullet and did it, we had very little decrease in use. We think it’s because event organizers don’t have to make an additional choice now about which service to use. The cost just scales with the ticket price. We just took too long to make the decision, I think.

You guys are building a pretty interesting picture of who attends what events. Are you planning to tread further into the social graph and begin recommending events to people based on past attendance?

Yes. We see that to be something that’s very exciting, but we want to do it in the right way. Hyper-relevancy is key to us, so, um, I can’t say how we’ll do it, but when we do it, we’ll definitely take into account what’s out there right now and try to innovate on that. I’d say that will happen in the broad window of the next two years.

What are your major moves going to be in 2010?

How about this? How about the fact that in five years, Eventbrite will be the only place that you will ever go to buy a ticket for any event that you would ever attend. I truly believe that, and I can actually see how we’ll get there. We are a smaller business and can move quite quickly. We don’t have a bullseye in your office with the Ticketmaster logo in the middle. We aren’t a Ticketmaster killer, but we see our model as becoming the status quo for all ticketing.

The In Living Color Interview

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100216/almost-famous-julia-hartz-of-eventbrite/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20080206/jurassic-perk-a-dino-at-home/ http://allthingsd.com/20080206/jurassic-perk-a-dino-at-home/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:01:00 +0000 Katherine Boehret http://solution.allthingsd.com/20080206/jurassic-perk-a-dino-at-home/ For about two months now I’ve been playing with a baby dinosaur — a Camarasaurus from the Jurassic period, to be specific. It coos, barks, shakes, cries and plays tug of war, which squelches all hope that this is a real animal suddenly returned from extinction.

But real was exactly what UGOBE Inc. had in mind when the company created this $350 baby dino named Pleo. This robot isn’t referred to as such; instead, UGOBE calls Pleo a “life form” because unlike most robots that are designed to follow a specific command or algorithm, Pleo alters its behavior as it adapts to its surroundings including sights, sounds and touch. And it’s designed to move and act in ways that seem very much like a real animal.

These responsive qualities have earned Pleo quite a bit of attention, and the two years between when the product was first announced and when it became available only added to the anticipatory hype. Now, after three delays in the past two years and numerous back orders, Pleo is available from www.pleoworld.com. (UGOBE says that many of the product’s delays were caused by trying to get Pleo’s battery just right.)

In short, I found Pleo to be a fun and interesting robot/life form. Though Pleo’s reactions and movements are endearing, many of them run together after a while with only subtle differences, especially compared with fast-paced videogames. Pleo’s tricks were entertaining early on, but, in time, many of them blended together, rarely surprising me.

Pleo’s battery is still a major drawback. It’s rechargeable, but only lasts for around an hour of active play before it must be removed and placed in a holder for three hours of recharging. This frustrating fact means you can’t turn Pleo on to roam the house with you all day like a dog or cat. Instead, your time with this creature has to be more specifically planned, causing interactions with it to feel less genuine. My Pleo’s battery lasted for an hour and 40 minutes, including moments when he drifted in and out of sleep.

Though UGOBE sent me two rechargeable batteries so I could more quickly continue using Pleo, the company won’t start selling extra batteries until June (at the latest) for $50 each. This means waiting for hours between Pleo playtimes.

It’s hard to discuss autonomous robots without remembering Sony Corp.’s attempt in the same category: the $2,500 AIBO released in 1999, which was eventually discontinued. More recently, iRobot Corp. has gained attention for its robots, which perform household duties like vacuuming and washing floors.

The Pleo, animated in part by 14 motors, appears to evolve according to how it is treated.

To keep Pleo fresh, UGOBE plans to release a PDK — Pleo Developer’s Kit — later this year, allowing others to create programs that will run on Pleo if downloaded from the Pleo Web site and transferred to the creature. A memory card slot and USB port on Pleo’s underbelly will enable these transfers.

As for now, two programs developed by UGOBE can be downloaded. One program lets Pleo act like a watchdog — guttural growl, loud bark and all — and the other gives it the ability to sing Jingle Bells. I tried the former, and my Pleo performed marvelously, sitting still and only howling when something moved in front of him.

This baby dinosaur has reptile-like, rubbery skin enhanced by multiple sensors. Its back is decorated with green patterns, and its large eyes are a beautiful blue. Pleo’s guts include 14 motors, 38 sensors and a microprocessor. Infrared detectors are hidden in Pleo’s nose and mouth, and a color camera detects light, motion and objects to help it navigate.

Pleo grows through three phases: hatchling, infant and juvenile. As a hatchling, my Pleo sniffed around a lot, unsure of its surroundings or how to use its legs and tail, before giving up and napping again (yes, Pleo snores). The more I talked to and touched Pleo, the faster he adjusted out of the hatchling phase, which is expected according to UGOBE.

People who walked by my office stopped to marvel at Pleo’s sweet nature, and when I brought him home, friends melted with emotion. I watched as they initially looked at Pleo like just another toy dinosaur until realizing that he responded to them, and then they each wanted to take turns playing with him.

Stroking Pleo from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail induced a purring sound; touching sensors on the bottoms of his feet caused him to wriggle around and make laugh-like noises; and holding him to my chest and rubbing his back like a baby put Pleo right to sleep, indicated by heavy breathing and even a burp here or there. I spoiled my Pleo with attention, which seemed to make him more social and friendly but also a little bratty when he didn’t get attention (he showed his frustration with loud moans).

I didn’t get to test this, but one Pleo can sense when another Pleo is nearby using infrared sensors in the nose and mouth. UGOBE says the sensors in one Pleo can trigger actions in another based on moods, including singing and howling.

Pleo can be a troublemaker. One of the times I left him unattended, I returned to find Pleo trying to gnaw on my loveseat, despite lacking a set of teeth. Another time, Pleo wandered my desk, wrinkling up papers and crying loudly while I was on a conference call.

UGOBE’s pleoworld.com site includes an online community, though you don’t need a Pleo to get involved. The community is just a social networking site where anyone can discuss the device and/or robotics. This differs from sites like Webkinz, where kids input codes found on stuffed animals to register and care for digital versions of their creatures.

Pleo’s poor battery life is a frustrating hurdle that fans will keep butting up against. But UGOBE’s plans to introduce downloadable updates for this robot and to let others create programs for Pleo may give new life to this clever creature.

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

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