Case study
Industry
Global Ticketing, Marketing & Event Technology
Company HQ
San Francisco, CA
Number of Employees
850+
Office Locations
Across 9 Countries
Eventbrite Navigates Change Through Skill-Building and Leadership Development
Udemy driving business outcomes
Case study details
Eventbrite is a global self-service ticketing, marketing, and experience technology platform that serves a community of hundreds of thousands of event creators in nearly 180 countries. Since inception, Eventbrite has been at the center of the experience economy, transforming the way people organize and attend events. The company was founded by Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz and Renaud Visage, with a vision to build a self-service platform that would make it possible for anyone to create and sell tickets to live experiences.
The Eventbrite platform provides an intuitive, secure, and reliable service that enables creators to plan and execute their live and online events, whether it’s an annual culinary festival attracting thousands of foodies, a professional webinar, a weekly yoga workshop or a youth dance class. With over 290 million tickets distributed for over 5 million total events in 2021, Eventbrite is where people all over the world discover new things to do or new ways to do more of what they love.
Eventbrite has earned industry recognition as a top employer with special designations that include: a coveted spot on Fast Company’s prestigious Brands That Matter List, the Great Place to Work® Award in the U.S., Best Employer in Argentina by Apertura; and Inc.’s Best-Led Companies honor. Headquartered in San Francisco in the heart of SoMa, Eventbrite currently has over 850 employees across 9 countries.
A Need to Rebuild and Restructure the Business Model
Since the company was founded, the core business focused on providing sales and services to support a diverse spectrum of live and in-person events such as musical concerts, holiday festivals, networking events and conferences, recreational, wellness and hobby classes, and several community and cultural events. The Covid 19 pandemic put a sudden halt to all in-person events and upended Eventbrite’s business model.
With in-person events seeming implausible in the near future, the company needed to rapidly pivot to online events and services. This implied a shift from a sales and marketing focus to developing deep expertise as a product engineering company. Eventbrite needed to rapidly transform and rebuild its business model, restructure jobs and roles, and embark on a drastic skill-shift journey to support this change.
John Adcock, Eventbrite’s Chief People Officer explains, “Our business came to a standstill when the pandemic struck. We needed to restructure and transform the business, and it required us to rethink our budget spend. We strongly believe that our investments in learning are indeed investments, and not costs. The Eventbrite team unanimously agreed to continue investing in skill development with Udemy rather than cutting back, reinforcing our focus on our people over processes.
Chief People Officer, Eventbrite
A “People Over Processes” Approach
Eventbrite approached change management with a laser focus on its people. It prioritized investments in upskilling employees and developing leaders. Rather than a shortterm focus on cost-cutting and processes focused on short-term business continuity, Eventbrite took an approach centered around optimizing learning and leadership, focused on building long-term business resilience.
Rebuilding the New Business Model
Eventbrite undertook a three-pronged transformation effort to rebuild the new business model, with a focus on the following areas:
- Skill-Building
- Leadership Development
- External Hiring
Skill-Building – Powered by Udemy Business
Eventbrite leverages Udemy Business to empower learners to grow personally and professionally. Unlike several companies that reserve access to licensed subscriptions for a select cohort of learners, Eventbrite provides company-wide access to Udemy Business.
“We saw tremendous value in providing skill-building opportunities even through our cost-cutting needs, and that was well validated two years into the pandemic. Especially amidst business disruptions and rapid change, people lean into opportunities for self growth. The number of enrollments on Udemy Business per employee is 30-40% higher now than it was pre-pandemic. This spike has stayed true all the way to date. People want to learn new skills now more than ever before,” said Adcock.
Through messaging from HR and leaders, Eventbrite reinvigorated awareness and interest in the learning opportunities available to employees. Leaders leveraged group and in-person meetings to create moments for self-reflection and generate conversations around topics, behaviors and skills that are most relevant and why. These conversations organically triggered interest in important topics, encouraging people to search for related courses on the Udemy Business platform. In parallel, the L&D team actively curated courses on pertinent topics and themes within the platform and pointed people to them, but participating in these courses was not mandated.
When employees took courses and recommended them on the platform, it drew more people toward the programs. While some specific recommendations came from leaders, much of the uptick in the consumption of digital learning happened organically. This was, by design, intended to be self-directed and bottom-up rather than prescriptive and top-down.
Chief People Officer, Eventbrite
With the transition to the new business model, the company also commenced a technical skill shift geared toward front-end engineering.
Across the past few years, employees have heavily leveraged Udemy Business for developing a wide variety of behavioral and technical skills, as seen in the chart below. With the transition to the new business model, the company also commenced a technical skill shift geared toward front-end engineering. The courses reflect this shift, which is further substantiated with the increased number of technical certifications completed by employees through Udemy Business.
Leadership Development
The Eventbrite Talent & Organizational Development team made a heavy push on developing leaders and managers as another lever for navigating change as they transitioned to the new business model. They launched an in-house custom developed leadership development program called “Lead to Win,” a series of virtually facilitated “live” sessions. The program was developed internally by Eventbrite leaders and was supplemented with courses from Udemy Business carefully selected to support the development of leadership skills.
External Hiring
Eventbrite’s new business model leans heavily on engineers and product developers, who now support 60% of the company’s functional requirements, compared to under 30% prepandemic. While the company has been focused on building skills internally, in parallel, they are also hiring engineers externally. Eventbrite recognizes that hiring the right talent in a particularly tight and competitive talent market requires hiring talent wherever it exists. The company has been rapidly hiring engineers to work remotely across multiple states within the US and internationally.
Chief People Officer, Eventbrite
Growth Mode Restored
Eventbrite has resurrected its business and is in growth-mode once again. During the last quarter of the previous year, the Eventbrite team re-imagined their company values in order to create an even more high-performing, inclusive culture. To help shape the more inclusive culture, Eventbrite leveraged Udemy Business Learning Paths with curated courses on DEI, management training, and career development.
“Udemy Business was an integral part of upskilling and nurturing employees and leaders during the pandemic and that enabled teams to navigate change and be ready to drive revenue growth going forward, especially as in-person events get back into mainstream.” shares Adcock. The company reported recent Q3 2022 revenue of $67.5M, 187% higher than Q3 2020.
The company continues a healthy growth path to meet its evolving business needs. Designing change with people at the center, prioritizing a focus on inspiring learning, skill-building and development, and fostering leadership behaviors have been instrumental in Eventbrite’s successful business transformation.
Chief People Officer, Eventbrite
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