Among the speakers we just added—Kevin Hartz, a well-known venture capitalist and co-founder of Eventbrite. This lively and provocative presentation will occur live onstage as part of TechCrunch’s Disrupt show in San Francisco on Monday morning, October 27. Hartz’s session will take place on Tuesday, October 28. He’ll provide a glimpse into his unconventional approach to investing in young talent, particularly first-time teenage founders.
Hartz has gained notoriety of late for endorsing a company started by youths aged 18, 18 and 15. Notably, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of this innovative startup was only 15 years old at the time of Hartz’s investment. This trend is a testament to Hartz’s dedication to identify and grow creative young talent in the tech industry.
Along with Z Fellow Doug Young, Hartz directs Z Fellows, an intensive one-week accelerator program. He gives technical founders, including high school students, a no-strings-attached grant of $10,000. This new initiative gives young entrepreneurs the tools and training they need. It gives them the capital they need to refine their ideas and get their businesses off the ground. Hartz knows that investing in these young minds is the surest way to inspire the next wave of innovation in technology.
Beyond Z Fellows, Hartz is responsible for a fund that supports those same founders further down their journeys. He writes $100K pre-seed cheques into a very small handful of entrepreneurs. This move leaves no doubt about his deep commitment to empowering the next generation of innovators.
This simple investment strategy Hartz’s felt driven him to put 5% of his portfolio into founders under the age of 18. He challenges us to find those bright young minds who are the square pegs in the round holes, who drop out or check out of conventional education.
“You find these really bright kids who are just very bored in school.” – Kevin Hartz
His future-minded approach was born from his own educational journey. Hartz co-founded Xoom in 2001 and was deeply involved in Eventbrite’s meteoric growth leading up to its public offering in 2018. He certainly raised a big enough ruckus in the investment world. Later in 2021, his blank-check company, “one,” finished a $2.1 billion reverse merger with the 3D printing firm Markforged.
Hartz’s vision of the future reads like a technology utopia. He thinks that the industry is poised to undergo a massive, titanic shift.
“We’re just at the beginning of what I’d call a super cycle of expansiveness in tech, with AI and everything else — especially AI.” – Kevin Hartz
Perhaps best of all, his outlook underscores a departure from the corporate milieu that once suffocated careers three decades ago. Those were the days when people went to work for life at companies such as Nestlé and IBM. Now, Hartz considers the dropout-and-build movement—exemplified by tech icons such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg—to be an appealing lifestyle choice for ambitious youth.
Hartz is looking ahead to his appearance at StrictlyVC. People are excited to hear his vision for the future of tech entrepreneurship and his commitment to leading our young founders down a path to success. His participation underscores a crucial shift in venture capital towards embracing innovation from younger generations, thereby setting the stage for the next wave of groundbreaking technologies.
