The Exchanges

Q That's awesome. Now, just to be clear, are you, I mean, is this sort of in the hop in visible, the fair sort of world, or are you, would you say you're different?

A Uh, fundamentally it looks like that. Yes. But our focus is more in the niche of B to B marketing teams. So we only go after B to B marketing teams and we are more agile, agile, In the way that we can serve the small, you know, 30 to 40 person webinars all the way up to, you know, bigger, multi-day, multi-track conferences. We don't go after, like, the big, you know, 50,000, 100,000 person trade shows, which is what, you know, VFairs hop in, specialize in. We don't do, like, very complex ticketing and stuff, because that's what not, you know, BtoB marketers are looking for. They're typically looking for, you know, 30 to 5000. That's where You know, the B to B marketing use cases lie, and that makes a lot of difference in how our UX is, how our technology is, how our, you know, everything is, and how easy the product is to use.

AI assessment note: “fundamentally it looks like that. Yes. But our focus is more in the niche”

Q And what's the growth strategy? You went from 110 customers to 200 over the past 12 months. How do you go from 200 to 300?

A Yeah, Nathan, so right now our focus is very much go after large enterprises in tech, so the likes of LG, Adobe, et cetera, right, who we already Where we already have non-tribular traction, and then we are seeing success in non-tech B to B as well, right? Where the go-to-market motion is the same, just that their stack is a little different, right? So they'll use LexisNexis instead of Salesforce, for example, right? So law firms, accounting firms, and things like that. So our goal is to very much go after them. And the motion there is very outbound, right? And, um, Event heavy, actually, which is our core, you know, strength. So that's our strategy. And in, in our core market, cash cost right now, which is B to B in market tech, we already get a lot of inbound. So that market, I think is set and will keep on giving us the baseline group.

AI assessment note: “our focus is very much go after large enterprises in tech”

Q you another question. A lot of people, when they do a live event, right in person, they don't want to also do it virtually because they're scared. People then won't pay for the in-person ticket and they want to fill seats at the in-person event. How would you, for someone with that concern, i.e. me with SAS open, how would you recommend we, we take, you know, tackle that challenge?

A Yeah. So there's no straight answer, but what I have seen, at least in marketing domain, people do is that they would do some kind of gating for the in-person conference. They would get it to what they would call as high value target accounts, right? So they'll say, okay, if you are part of one of these, like, 500 accounts that we want to go after this year, we will allow you to come and participate in this in-person event. Otherwise, you can participate in this, like, huge Virtual event, right? So, and we have seen a lot of people do that with pretty high success that keeps your in-person conference smaller, more targeted, and high value because it's very expensive, and you can still open it up to a wider audience virtually.

AI assessment note: “they would do some kind of gating for the in-person conference”

Q How do you sign up these first, you know, 10, 20 customers?

A So Nathan, the first 10, 20 customers were really through, through a lot of growth hacking. So my, like me and my co-founder would reach out to the CAOs and CMOs asking for advice and talking about our view on the market. Um, and we would ask community partners and, you know, people who get an exposure to CMOs and, and, um, you know, the marketers to do events. So our first big customer was Drift, uh, that we signed because they spoke at underscores event, like the CEO, David Kanceli spoke at underscores event. That was hosted by Goldcaster and underscore was our investor. That's how we signed Drift and then Drift because it targets the same kind of persona that gave us virality. So there's a huge virality in this business. Um, and that works best for us because we speak the language of those customers and not our general events. So largely driven by virality. Like the first, after first 10 customers, it was mostly involved.

AI assessment note: “my co-founder would reach out to the CAOs and CMOs asking for advice”

Q That's more than double from exactly a year ago when you were at 250,000 a month. So congrats on the growth. How are you winning deals over Hoppin and some of the other players?

A Yeah, it's, uh, It's honestly just our focus on the persona, right? So our product is honestly the best in the market if you are a B to B marketer, and it shines in, in three ways. One is that it is the most brandable, right? So if you are a Sixth Sense, our product does look exactly like Sixth Sense, or if you're an LG, it looks like LG. Second is, it is very adaptable to your strategy, right? So if you are doing Webinars, or if you're doing multi-day events, or if you're doing even field events, you can, you know, you can use Google Cast, and that creates a lot of advantage for teams because you can centralize your data. You can use the same product for the entire team, and it's just easy. You can, you know, save a lot of money by doing, you know, using the same product and the same, you know, license. The third is that our integrations and analytics and all the martech functionalities that, you know, the sales and marketing teams need. They are just The best in the market, tenx better than what, you know, horizontal platforms like Hopin, et cetera, offer. And they are very appealing to the marketing team, especially marketing ops, who are the key stakeholders in all of those deals. And they, all of these things really resonate with them.

AI assessment note: “tenx better than what, you know, horizontal platforms like Hopin, et cetera, offer.”

Q session has like a thousand people. Three hours in, you've got like five people on, right? No one's going to sit in front of a computer for two days and just watch your streaming event. So like, first off, is that accurate? You have the data. And if it is accurate, what would you tell event organizers in terms of how to plan a virtual event to maximize live eyeballs?

A Yeah, for sure, Nathan. So digital events are just like any other marketing tool, right? It depends on how you use it, right? You can, similar to how you can bundle up a digital event, you can bundle up ads or any other medium, right? So our, our suggestion to event organizers is always to do what, you know, is right for our audience and seldom is a big two day, three day event with, you know, such a complex agenda in digital mode is the right thing to do. Unless you are, you know, something like an LG or Adobe, right, where you have such a wide audience across time zones that it means something to you. So typically we suggest something like a, you know, two to four or five hours with, you know, punchy sessions and, and, um, And there is a whole marketing strategy that needs to go behind it. So there's like a full playbook that we publish and we have published multiple playbooks. And it also needs to tie in with your marketing strategy, right? So a digital event cannot be just like a tentpole in-person conference, right? Where it's a thing of its own and people are traveling just to have drinks or something, right? It needs to be part of a big campaign, right? Either there's a, there is a big piece of content that you've released or a playbook that you've released or a product That is being launched and this is part of that. And that's where digital events are so powerful, righ…

AI assessment note: “seldom is a big two day, three day event... typically we suggest something like”