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When global tech startups, especially unicorns, expand into new markets, they face unique challenges and opportunities to tap into local talent and establish a strong presence. As renowned tech companies enter emerging Asian markets such as India, achieving engineering excellence becomes essential. Once a unicorn, now a public company, Eventbrite offers an intriguing case study on how tech leaders approach new territories.
Eventbrite, Inc., a global events marketplace active in nearly 180 countries, appointed Himanshu Verma as Vice President of Engineering and Country Head for its India Development Hub in early 2024.
Verma leads the India development hub in creating innovative cloud, mobile, and marketplace technologies that change how millions of people organize and attend events worldwide. With over two decades of experience in engineering and product development at renowned tech companies like Oracle, Yahoo!, Flipkart, and Amazon, Verma brings a wealth of expertise to his new role.
In this exclusive interview with Himanshu Verma, we explore the strategies and insights behind Eventbrite’s entry into the Indian tech space. Discover how Eventbrite navigates AI integration, talent acquisition, and remote team management to drive innovation and success in dynamic Asian markets.
Eventbrite is known for its user-friendly platform. Could you share some recent enhancements or upcoming features aimed at improving user experience on your platform?
Eventbrite Ratings is a new tool that we expect to launch before the end of this month to help event creators learn what attendees love and what needs to be improved about their events and event-goers choose events based on feedback from other attendees to make sure that they’re spending their money in the right place.
As part of an exciting new pilot, select Eventbrite organizers will be given verified badges, signifying that Eventbrite has confirmed their identities. Consider it as the orange version of the blue tick for live events, which helps event organizers increase ticket sales by fostering customer trust.
Event organizers will also benefit from significant updates to Eventbrite Ads, which will provide them with additional options for ad placement and improved geo-targeting tools to easily engage with their target audience. Additionally, we also have rolled out Stripe’s Tap to Pay throughout the US (with plans to go globally later in the year). It allows event organizers to accept in-person payments directly on their mobile devices, saving time and eliminating the need for event creators to purchase any additional hardware.
The 2024 Spring Releases include even more upgrades for event organizers: expanded promo code options, increased customization for recurring events and improved marketplace personalization through Eventbrite discovery channels.
How is AI being utilized to boost user and product experience? Can you provide specific examples of AI-driven features or improvements?
We believe that we were among the first ticketing systems to use AI-powered solutions in early 2023 in order to enhance the user and product experience. Small company owners and “solopreneurs” on the platform have benefited greatly from this since it allows them to make better use of their time and maximize the potential of our AI-powered tools.
Event creators can make use of the “Get Started AI” feature in combination with the marketing tools to serve targeted audiences with event recommendations and display ads. With Eventbrite Boost, an all-in-one event marketing platform to grow their audience and improve their social network ads, creators sell 63% more than they would do themselves. Automating summary and description generation alone has increased the publish rate for both new and existing creators by between 4 -10% while reducing the time and effort for new users to create their first event by 30%. Social media ads with AI-generated copy have shown a 17% better Cost Per Click (CPC) compared to campaigns without AI-powered content. Creators have been able to launch ad campaigns 30% faster with AI-powered copy compared to non-AI.
We are using AI and ML (Machine Learning) technologies to improve the way people discover live events and to provide attendees with personalized experiences. This has resulted in a surge in the number of event-goers coming to the Eventbrite platform to discover unique events around them, and AI helps us to efficiently serve them with highly tailored and targeted event recommendations. In addition to the functionalities that are now available, we are experimenting with “conversational AI for people who need help [with an event] or who can’t find their ticket.”
How is Eventbrite tapping into the Asian talent pool, and what unique advantages does this region offer in terms of skills and innovation?
Thanks to the region’s high concentration in STEM education and promotion of an entrepreneurial spirit that encourages innovation and creativity, Asian software developers are at the forefront of technological innovation, making them valuable assets for global companies seeking to stay ahead in the competitive tech world.
Since launching Eventbrite’s India Development Center in 2022, we are committed to working with the best talent – in the best environment. Part of this is empowering our employees to work where they work best, and that includes 100% remote options. Our remote-forward work culture has helped us connect with a wider pool of top-tier talent in the country which brings together a rich array of perspectives, ideas, and problem-solving approaches to a technology company like ours operating on a global scale. We continue to expand our talent pool in India to work on some of the exciting and mission-critical projects.
With the rise of remote work, what strategies has Eventbrite adopted for effective remote engineering team management?
As we move towards becoming the indispensable marketplace for live experiences, Eventbrite continues to constantly experiment and embrace “new work principles” and tap into quality talent beyond geographical barriers through flexibility, autonomy, and cutting-edge tools and technologies to establish a culture that not only inspires and desires engineering excellence but also promotes holistic well-being for its people.
In order to ensure a level playing field for engineering talent across the country with specialized and diversified tech skills—which are essential to achieving our engineering goals—we have implemented DEI initiatives, bias training, and remote hiring policies that extend beyond tech hubs and metros to emerging cities and remote villages. India Britelings (nickname for Eventbrite employees) are empowered to choose what works best for them: to be fully remote, work from the Hyderabad office, or take advantage of the best of both worlds.
While we value flexibility, we also function as teams. For this reason, various rituals—such as sprint demos, retrospectives, and daily standups—are calendared with virtual meetings to ensure continuity. We value our employee’s time and make use of tools that let us work together and obtain the information we require asynchronously, like:
Slack & Google Workspace
Atlassian tools: JIRA, Confluence
Zoom, and Google Meet for regular All-Hands, periodic meetings with top leadership – recorded for async viewing.
Intranet using Simpplr
Glean: AI Search & Knowledge Discovery
Many online cloud architecture courses are generic and may not apply to specific projects. What kind of cloud-native training programs does Eventbrite recommend to cater to the specific needs of different roles such as Cloud Architect, Application Developer, and DevOps Engineer? Can you provide examples of practical usage?
Cloud native computing is a very broad topic. Regardless of roles, one must have a solid foundation in what we refer to as the first level before delving deeply into containers and cloud native technologies: principles of networking and operating systems, a basic understanding of cloud computing and DevOps, and a working grasp of Linux, Git, and GitHub.
Following a thorough comprehension of the basic concepts and skills needed, we go on to the second level, which entails working knowledge of any Public Cloud, Containers, Docker, Kubernetes and package managers such as Helm, monitoring solutions, observability frameworks for backend analysis, microservices and service mesh etc.,
Anything beyond the first two levels can be customized into distinct tracks according to a role, project, or business requirement. For instance, an application developer should concentrate more on how to structure, package, and release an application to a Kubernetes cluster utilizing an automated CI/CD pipeline, while a DevOps Engineer should acquire advanced skills in setting up a hybrid Kubernetes cluster.
There can’t be a single Cloud Native training program that works for everyone. Instead, there will be different levels and customizable tracks that will be delivered using a mix of instructor-led, self-paced, simulated, and hands-on learning based on real-world projects. As part of our endeavor to close the knowledge gap in this area between academia and industry, some of our recently hired interns will actually participate in specialized cloud native training programs.
We also do periodic and personalized skill gap analysis of people in various roles especially for cloud native skills and provide them the opportunity to fill those gaps via tailored, time bound online training and certifications. This has proven to be the best way to continuously raise the bar in the midst of a fast evolving technology landscape.
How does Eventbrite link career advancement opportunities and recognition to the acquisition of cloud-native skill credentials such as Kubernetes and DevOps certifications?
Although certifications are indicators of a candidate’s commitment to gaining knowledge and staying up-to-date in a specific area, we do not view them as the only factor in evaluating and rewarding an employee’s technical knowledge and potential. These credentials are more valuable when paired with real-world experience.
Having said that, as an organization, we consider the money spent on employee skill development as an investment and not money lost. We have a defined Learning & Development budget for all teams, which allows employees to pursue tech training and certifications. Unlike several companies that reserve access to licensed subscriptions for a select cohort of learners, Eventbrite provides company-wide access to Udemy Business.
We take these certifications into consideration as an indicator of an employee’s dedication to learning new technologies and staying current in their field. Engineers who exhibit proficiency in their domain through these credentials are empowered with opportunities to work on complex projects and challenging assignments across global teams.
In an effort to upskill those who are pivoting or seeking to advance their skills in Cloud Native roles, we encourage and appreciate the majority of our Principal Engineers, who hold certifications recognised by the industry, to share their knowledge through organized sessions and mentoring/coaching programmes.
In the era of AI, what are the key factors Eventbrite focuses on to build and maintain high-performing engineering teams?
Building and sustaining high performance teams in an AI era necessitates a combination of strategic leadership thinking, communication of shared goals, people-centric culture, technological prowess including AI, as well as an environment that fosters trust, collaboration, and innovation. While we steer our teams to view artificial intelligence (AI) as a catalyst for high performance, we also recognize the need to balance AI-powered automation with the use of human knowledge for more complex activities involving critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence.
In addition to investing in the appropriate tools and technologies, including a robust AI infrastructure, for our teams to work effectively, we provide them with opportunities to work on challenging projects that impact our global user base of creators and attendees. Most importantly, we promote a culture of continuous learning and innovation while utilizing AI for data-driven insights to analyze performance data, identify skill gaps, and suggest personalized learning modules, enabling our workforce to reskill and upskill in order to remain competitive in a rapidly changing technological environment.
In addition to empowering teams to work with AI and other futuristic technologies, our commitment to DEI has been instrumental in creating safe spaces for open conversations and collaboration across teams, which enables a diverse range of perspectives, skills, and knowledge to be applied to support comprehensive problem solving for our global customers across 180 countries.
Peakon surveys, Focus groups, Q&A sessions, Stay interviews, Performance Evaluation surveys, and one-on-one check-ins give us actionable insights to evaluate team dynamics, resolve issues, and modify our overall strategy as necessary to maximize performance in the dynamic field of artificial intelligence. We are unified by our mission rather than by physical offices because of our remote-forward culture. We don’t think it’s important to monitor how much time individuals spend in front of computers; instead, we encourage them to achieve amazing outcomes for our customers via shared goals.
An all-encompassing strategy for creating and maintaining high-performance teams makes sure that our people are empowered with the flexibility, resources, and personalized benefits necessary to lead healthy and balanced lives, which in-turn will enhance their abilities and enable them to perform exceptionally well in remote, globally dispersed teams.
Himanshu Verma is Eventbrite’s Vice President of Engineering and Country Lead for India. He also leads the Marketplace/Platform teams globally and has pioneered a unique program to train interns and upskill existing employees focusing on Cloud first development. Under his leadership, Eventbrite received several industry accolades including the Great Place to Work 2024 recognition and also won the Best Firm for DEI in Tech in India award at The Rising (DEI Summit) by Analytics India Magazine.
His career spans more than two decades of engineering and product development leadership at some of India’s and the world’s largest and best known tech companies, including Oracle, Yahoo!, Flipkart, and most recently, Amazon prior to joining Eventbrite.
Reporting directly to Eventbrite CTO Vivek Sagi, Verma is expected to be instrumental in expanding Eventbrite’s presence in India. Sagi emphasized Eventbrite’s flexible-first workplace culture and commitment to diversity as key factors in attracting top talent across India.
Eventbrite, a global events marketplace, has changed the way people organize and attend events since its founding in 2006 by Julia Hartz, Kevin Hartz, and Renaud Visage. With a vision to create a self-service platform for event ticketing, Eventbrite has distributed over 300 million tickets for more than 5 million events in 2023 alone.
The company is a major player in the experience economy, helping people discover new activities and pursue their passions. Eventbrite has earned prestigious recognitions, including spots on Fast Company’s “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies” and “Brands That Matter” lists, Inc.’s Best-Led Companies honor and the Great Place to Work® Certification in the US, India and Spain.
In March 2022, Eventbrite expanded its operations with the launch of the India Development Center in Hyderabad’s HITECH City. This center now employs over 120 professionals who have the flexibility to work fully remotely, from the office, or in a hybrid setup.
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