Julia Hartz is the Co-Founder and President for Eventbrite, an online event ticketing and services provider

Cass: What was the biggest mistake you made in the early development of Eventbrite?

Julia: Early on, we decided to go with a freemium model and offered the basic service for free with enhanced features offered to the Premium users.  Well, Kevin and I were horrible at forcing ourselves to put features we developed into the paid service only.  Our instinct was to democratize ticketing and by making some of the advanced features only available to users who paid for the service, we felt like we were contradicting ourselves.

Cass: How did you recover from it?

Julia: We ultimately made the hard decision to go from a basic/premium model to just one flavor of a great product.  Everyone had access to all the features for a very low price.  We decided to also offer the service for free to those users who weren’t charging anything for their tickets.  While we were fearful of attrition, we actually saw our new user conversion rates increase and overall satisfaction remain high.

Cass: What advice would you have for early-stage founders to avoid a similar situation in their own companies?

Julia: Be confident in the great product you’ve built and offer users the most simple model in deciding on how to use your service.  If you focus on product and delighting your customers, they will in turn feel satisfied by paying for your service.