Principles
Durable claims that survive beyond the speaker's biography — each with explicit limits, transferability judgment, and evidence.
Principle
Trust your fear — go through it, not around
Fear in crisis is a signal that the path forward is necessary; sidestepping the painful moment usually means losing the path entirely.
When fear is telling you to sidestep a painful decision, the fear is usually the sign you''re looking at the necessary path. Sidestep at your peril.
“Trust your fear instinct. Stare it right in the face and know that you have to get through it. You can't go around it. You can't go over it. You can't go under it. ... The fear that you feel in your gut is actually a really helpful signal. That you're gonna have to get pretty tough and go straight through it.”Julia Hartz
“Had I tried to sidestep some of the more painful moments of this journey, we probably wouldn't be here today.”Julia Hartz
Principle
Make tectonic shifts early and often — especially pricing
Companies systematically wait too long on tectonic shifts because the perceived risk of breaking the current model is more vivid than the compounding cost of staying with it; the corrective is shifting earlier and more often than fear suggests.
For every tectonic shift you''re considering, ask: am I waiting because the data isn''t there, or because the shift feels scary? Only the first is a reason to wait.
“The biggest lesson I learned from changing the pricing model is to be willing to make these types of tectonic shifts early and often. We had waited too long to do this, and in the end it was the right thing for the business.”Julia Hartz
“I think being afraid to break the model in some way held us back and probably delayed us by a couple of years. So there was just a lot of growing up that happened in that moment, and I wish we would've done it a couple years earlier.”Julia Hartz
Principle
Bottoms-up PLG and sales-led culture don''t mix easily — assume oil and water
PLG and sales-led cultures optimize for different things (volume vs. deal-size; product-as-distribution vs. sales-as-distribution); merging them creates an org that''s neither, and the dominant model usually devours the weaker one.
Before any M&A that crosses go-to-market motion lines, assume the cultures will conflict. Build the conflict-resolution plan before the deal closes, not after.
“You're mixing this bottoms up product-led-growth motion business with a sales-led motion business. And would those two mesh? Would you get synergy from those? Or are those oil and water and they're just gonna not mix at all.”Roelof Botha
“First and foremost, they are sales driven, so that would be a huge change for us to bring on that kind of capability at such scale.”Julia Hartz
Principle
In existential crisis, ask the abundance question — not the scarcity one
Scarcity-framing in crisis produces cuts-only thinking; abundance-framing produces reimagining-with-cuts thinking — the difference is whether the org rebuilds toward something or just shrinks toward survival.
When your team enters scarcity-mode, ask the abundance question. The same crisis-driven attention can produce reimagining instead of just cuts.
“March 23rd, when I gathered our executive team on Zoom, and I asked them one question, which was: Given what we know about the business, what would we do if we could do it all over again? And I'm pretty sure everybody thought I had lost my marbles.”Julia Hartz
“What had ended up happening from asking that question is the team started to think about, well, what are all the things that we've known about this business over the last 18 months that we would do? ... it took a conversation that would've been about scarcity, about where are we gonna cut to survive and it flipped it to abundance.”Julia Hartz
Principle
Phoenix-clarity from crisis — try to mimic it deliberately, without the calamity
Crisis produces clarity by removing optionality — when most of what you''ve accumulated has been stripped away, you''re forced to decide what to rebuild from. The same clarity is available without the calamity if the team is disciplined enough to enforce it.
Schedule an annual "barnacles" review with the senior team — what would we strip if the crisis came tomorrow? If you can''t name 10 things, you''re under-honest about your accumulation.
“You accumulate barnacles as a business. You accumulate little decisions. You decide to do this, you add this product feature. You start serving this customer. You open up this office, you hire this team. And you accumulate these things. ... Then you face a crisis moment like this and it strips you down all the way and you're bare. And then you have to figure out how to rebuild. Like the Phoenix rises from the ashes.”Roelof Botha
“To what extent can one mimic that experience? You don't have to actually experience such a calamity for you to benefit from the clarity that it can bring in focusing on what's most important for your business.”Roelof Botha
Principle
Customer-obsession is the resilience reserve in existential crisis
Customer goodwill accumulated in non-crisis times is the reserve that buys survival time in existential crisis — when the business can''t deliver normally, the relationship is what continues.
Audit your customer goodwill. In a hypothetical 90%-revenue-loss event, what reserve would you have to spend? If the answer is "transactional revenue," you don''t have a reserve.
“The company was always customer obsessed, and so part of that means that they'd built up an enormous amount of goodwill with their customers. It wasn't just a financial transaction between them and the customers. And the customers, in some sense, depended on Eventbrite as well.”Roelof Botha
“Consumers didn't really feel right about asking for money back from creators when their doors were closed, and they're a local small business that they care about. So we built the ability to offer a credit to future events, in addition to refunds. ... that really helped stabilize trust and credibility.”Julia Hartz
Principle
Pricing changes are a CEO-only decision — and you must be the one yelling "go"
Pricing decisions are uniquely CEO-led because no one else holds the full accountability surface — they touch every product, every customer segment, and every revenue line simultaneously.
If pricing is in flight and you''re not the one yelling "go," you''re not leading the change — and the apology will still land on your desk.
“For pricing, in particular, something that is highly sensitive and has risk attached, there needs to be one person in the room who's yelling, "Go!" And that had to be me. I truly think that pricing in particular, given the risks that are associated, must be led by the CEO and the CEO alone. Because by the way, when something goes bad, it's the CEO who's apologizing and taking responsibility for it.”Julia Hartz
“Changing something that's fundamental, like the way in which you interact with the cost of doing business is something that I think is, you know, again, only a CEO can really lead that change, and so you just need someone to say, "Let's do it. Let's go for it."”Julia Hartz