Story Time - Eventbrite Acquisition of Ticketfly

It was a hot day of summer in San Francisco, July 4, 2017. Coming home after celebrating Independence Day with my friends left me ecstatic and unusually ambitious for the rest of the day. I left the celebration around 8PM. As I was walking home I was wondering in my thoughts as I tend to do after being filled with different emotions - mostly positive ones. At that time I worked at Ticketfly, which was one of the Pandora Radio subsidiaries. A few weeks ago, I learned that Eventbrite was going to acquire Ticketfly off Pandora Radio.

Frankly, I wasn't sure how to feel about the news. I heard different stories on how the acquisition process usually ends and the most concerning part of it for me was potentially massive layoffs. Nerve-wrecking anticipation and anxiety filled the hearts of most, if not all, Ticketfly employees. The working culture at Ticketfly was laid-back and yet wholesome - there were only 160 employees - consequently, people formed friendships and relationships that made the atmosphere at Ticketfly quite startup-like, except that we had opportunities to risk without much fear and viciously explore new tech or business ideas since it's all was backed up by Pandora Radio. It wasn't easy for my co-workers to let this grand chapter of their lives to end.

Not everyone felt as anxious though. For some it was another chance to find new opportunities. A few of my co-workers told me that acquisitions happen quite often in Bay Area. Hence lots of folks got used to the stress and intensity of the whole situation... but not me. I was just confused. I accepted the Ticketfly offer in May and started working in mid-June. Started with an offer and could end up with a severance package the next month, ain't that fun eh?

So, I am glad you got a little bit of context before I move forward to the fourth of July. After I came home I sat on a regular office chair you can get from Amazon for the cheapest price I could find. Because who wants to spend any money on things when you can just spend all of that on the sky-reaching rent costs in San Francisco? Anyways, as I was sitting on that amazing chair, I wrote down all the things I could think of to adopt the technology skills they need at Eventbrite. I wanted to be as competitive as possible. Maybe I didn't grasp the whole Ticketfly platform architecture as fully as other engineers, I did have a few advantages working for me:

1. I wasn't paid as much as most other engineers
2. I was young and full of potential (Yes, I was. Believe me.)
3. I could learn React fast.

React is a JavaScript library. No need to know much about it, except that it helped me write a lot less JavaScript code than I would have otherwise had to write if I haven't used it. Nevertheless, before I started digging deep into React world I asked myself this question: how can I learn React in a way that could help people and make the learning experience more enjoyable? I believe it is truly important to enjoy the learning process in order to facilitate meaningful and comprehensive learning experience. As a result, I made a decision to build a web application that will allow Spotify users to make amazing playlists by combining songs from different, personal and public, playlists together. I named the app with one of those names that end with "fy" because it uses the Spotify API - Componofy. I will write a separate post describing architecture and design decisions I've made in a brand new blog post after this one.

After numerous errors and sleepless nights I was able to build a fully functional React application after which I realize how intuitive and powerful React is as a JavaScript library. I remember how my friends and I were QA-ing the application and found a bunch of bugs that I had to fix in order to enhance overall user experience to make it usable for the people around the world. It was one of the most memorable experiences I have had in my life and that's why this project is so important to me. This is the very first project that made me believe that I can build production ready applications that is now used by dozens.

At the end of the day, I was given a new offer from Eventbrite to join the checkout team. The main takeaway from this story is short and sweet - always be prepared for new challenges by learning relevant things. The main motivator for me to learn is the idea that I can help other people solve daily tasks with software. I hope you can find your own reason or motivation to learn and build new cool things.

Cheers,

Daler