When any public meeting was stopped a year ago, the business with convention services was very hopeless. Until then, Eventy, a domestic company with a three-month acceleration plan in New York, expects multiple growth and its upcoming break. But its co-founders, Roman Mastale and Peter Fiala, had to decide whether to look for a new job instead. They did not leave. Eventi came back to millions of newcomers and surpassed himself.
In March 2020, Roman Mastale picked up the phone with a trembling hand and voice. The worst call of his business career awaited him. The founder of the hitherto successful company expects 100% growth for the coming months – in a hopeless variation – all of a sudden he had the money to operate his account for four or a maximum of six weeks. Zero opportunities for any sale. At the same time, this phone call should be about a new investor in the first place and celebrating success since management has confirmed what they have long agreed to.
“I remember exactly the week everything was closed. It should have been a talking point when we signed contracts.” Says Maštalš. Instead, he produced a speech at the end of the business. The start based on his conference was clearly doomed to failure in the Govt world.
On the other end of the phone was Wat Virpa, founder of Webnote, investment fund Novira Capital and first investor Eventy. First, they had to talk about new investor Martin Cutlock. However, Virpa is grateful for the help and trust he has given in previous years and months. A moment earlier, Mastale and Cuttack had suspended investment talks. It was done.
But in a few weeks, the founders Event They decided there might be a chance. Maštalíř and Fiala agreed with investors on a new procedure: to wait for the company’s earnings for 2020 to reach the previous year’s level. So they can start talking again about new money, potential growth, and other projects. At the end of 2020, they signed an investment agreement.
Roman Mastale, co-founder of Eventy
“For a start, everything rarely goes according to plan.” Says new investor Martin Godlock. “Roman and his team were able to transform the entire product and business model in a matter of weeks. By the second half of 2020, Eventy had gained thousands of new customers, and companies and universities became a platform for virtual and hybrid events across dozens of countries.” Explains.
It was a significant change in the whole product that was able to bring in new customers, which eventually led to a successful deal. Even thanks to Martin Godlock, the event received a total of 000 500,000 from investors, which is about 10 million crowns, and the company eventually tripled.
Driving on sparks
Of course, getting at least anything from zero is not free. For a start, it is important to have time to think importantly. Mastale resigned himself and was supported by other members of the team when he agreed to a half pay. “I could not do without a better team.” Now agree. They extended the company’s range from one month to three. “We went to the sparks,” Comments.
Mastale tried to apply for a Govt I loan. “I knew I had to guarantee my assets and, in addition to the company, colleagues and guitarists, I could easily lose the roof over my head. I realized this was not the way to go.” He says. He then began reworking the business model.
Eventee is an application that has so far acted as a complement to real conferences. He showed the program, allowing users to create their own book workshops, provide feedback, ask questions, share ideas or create new contacts through online networking. For organizers, this means a simple piece of information. The original business model includes the event and the fee for the participant. Now it is necessary to get paid quickly, because no one came into the company.
“Our way is to offer a lifetime package of 999 euros (26,000 crowns) of the premium version of the event to all existing users with the promise of supporting virtual conferences in the future. It turned out to be a step in the right direction because April was our strongest month.” Describes the astonishing growth of Mastalin.
This gave him courage, and in the following weeks the company introduced the Event 2.0. He then launched a campaign on ProductHund, launched a web-based version of the event, and finally supported Virtual Conferencing. Negotiating for cooperation with the AppSumo virtual market is a big step.
Czech application Eventee
The site sends offers of interesting apps to more than a million people, and hundreds of thousands of people follow it on social networks. It has already given a good start to thousands of startups. However, its users need special offers, and before it can be recommended to the public, candidates must go through a network of complex tenders.
“Eventually, thanks to AppSum, we finally reached the millions of customers from whom Eventee acquired thousands of customers. Today, Eventee is used by small and large conferences around the world.” Says Maštalš. Thus he received a total of six million crowns on stage for selling licenses.
Changing the entire product was logically necessary for Eventee. After all, the site completes the function of virtual conferences, so it can stream videos from the record and then follow live input with questions and answers. It can automatically create conference websites, allow organizers to control, relocate or delete the entire program or sponsor sections.
He simply worked so that conferences could be arranged in the application in a few ten minutes, or that anyone who could use the calendar on the computer could do so. “It turned out that in the world of virtual conferencing mobile applications ultimately belong to the competitive advantage. Today’s event is one of the few platforms that can handle traditional, virtual and hybrid conferences at the same cost.” Summarizes Maštalíř.
Today, the event has a revenue of millions and aims for eight digits, i.e. tens of thousands of crowns. It has grown from six to eight people in the past year and plans to hire two more. At the end of the year, the group expanded to include marketing and sales positions, and is also active in sales strategy. The moment it is optimized in this direction, it wants to measure.
This site is used by people all over the world. It has about seven thousand organizers and about 100 thousand conference participants. It has one-third of the customers in the Czech Republic, and the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom account for more than half of the sales.
In person, i.e. return among the people
Currently, smaller companies or organizations are increasingly interested in event services, such as virtual conferences. But Charles University in the Czech Republic also has some very popular names for its opening day, which was used by thousands of participants on the first day. Furthermore, J.E. University of Burkina Faso or the inaugural World Cup & Summit. In the UK, Eventy bought one of the local high schools to streamline its operations.
In the previous “life”, Eventy used many big names. It used Singapore’s satellite company Kacific, a SpaceX client, to launch its satellite. For example, it was also used at conferences when visiting management on the SpaceX campus. The client was also the British government, which had to audit event security for its conference.
“I sincerely hope everything starts quietly from the second half of the year.”
Since then, the dictionary of the event group has expanded to include the word person conference. That is, they do not exist now, because they do take place. “It simply came to our notice then.“Smile Maštal. But he was able to cope with what he had to learn. Its clients want to return to the personal world. “They seem to have touched on virtual conferences. They want to do them in a hybrid way, just like we offer them.” Adds.
That’s where the event goes. This year, it will introduce a feature that will create a homepage for the entire conference with a single click and integrate it with existing features. Mastale plans his own gateway to ticket sales and his video streaming technology.
“I sincerely hope that from the second half of the year everything will start quietly. But I do not know if anyone will be able to organize big conferences because it is a one-year production. , Eventee would be a good site, “ Mastalir thinks.