Renaud Visage is the co-founder and CTO of Eventbrite, an event ticketing and discovery platform. He discusses how Eventbrite scaled from its founding in 2006 with one engineer to processing over $1 billion in ticket sales. Key steps included upgrading infrastructure, adding redundancy, automating processes, and hiring specialists as the company grew. Lessons learned include expecting the unexpected, welcoming challenges, and having fun along the way.
2. me
Civil engineer by training
Fell in love with the web in 1998
Self-taught
Developer for photo-sharing pioneer Zing
Co-founded Eventbrite in 2006
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
8. Series E
May 2011
$50M
Series D
Oct 2010
$20M
Series C
Series B Nov 2009
Series A $6.5M
Nov 2006 Jun 2008
$250k $1.3M
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
9. here is how we did it and
what we learned
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
10. 2006
one engineer
custom python framework
mysql database
apache
all on 1 server!
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
18. constantly upgrade and
separate the pieces
before they break
(if possible)
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
19. split the database and
web server
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
20. don't forget to
back the hell up!
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
31. some landmark moments and
why it's never too late to do
the right thing
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
32. 2008
build an API
expose your data
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
36. 2009
move to EC2
painful but so worth it
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
37. 2010
start using load-balanced
slave pool for reads
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
38. 2010
start writing
unit and automation tests
(yes way late but again better
than never)
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
39. 2010
switch to git for source control
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
40. 2010
give Django some love
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
42. 2010
automate server
deployment, server
configuration and release
process in 2010
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
43. 2010
replace apache with
haproxy+nginx for load
balancing and nginx+uwsgi for
web servers
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
46. 2011
use queueing system for
async processes
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
47. 2011
build ticket queue service for
fast-selling events
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
48. 2011
big push for big data
for reporting, fraud, spam,
event recommendations
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
51. 2012
180 servers in production today
big data (30%)
web servers (25%)
databases (10%)
l oad balancers (10%)
queue servers (10%)
apps, ops, email, etc (15%)
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
52. 2012
Big data processed per day
2 GB of transactional data
11 M log lines
15 GB of log data
3.5 TB of social data analyzed
1.2 trillion edges
30-machine hadoop cluster with 2TB of RAM
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
53. lessons learned along the way
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
57. ...but recognize when you
need help
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
58. hire smarter than you
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage
59. hire generalists to start up and
specialists to scale to the
next level
Renaud Visage / co-founder & cto / www.eventbrite.com / twitter @renaudvisage