MARCH | TECH
celebrating its 20th anniversary in
2019, having undergone a long and
perilous journey to success.
What began as a two-person
start-up between Reggie Aggarwal
and Chuck Ghoorah grew to a larger
size through venture capital funding.
The company almost went out of
business during the dot com crash
that occurred at the end of the 90s,
before finding a second wind in the
last decade.
In 2016, the company was taken
private for $1.65bn. It currently
employs 3,700 people.
Ghoorah explains how Cvent
survived during the difficult years of
the dot com crash: “Rather than be
distracted with raising more venture
capital, we focused entirely on our
customers, and delivering the service
and products that they needed most.
“Cvent started as an online event
registration point solution. Now, we
offer comprehensive platforms that
help hoteliers and event professionals
manage every aspect of an event’s
lifecycle. We are at the centre of the
event ecosystem.”
“Our customers didn’t want to
juggle three to ten different solutions
– they wanted one platform to pull off
a well-executed event.”
In order to offer the kind of
integrated platform Ghoorah is
talking about, Cvent has embarked on
an ambitious series of acquisitions.
He explains: “In 2018, we acquired
three event tech companies (Social
Tables, Kapow and QuickMobile) that
were delivering exceptional solutions.
We are constantly on the lookout for
start-ups that are offering a unique
value proposition.”
There are few companies large
enough to sustain a business model
like Cvent’s, which actively searches
for start-ups that it can fold back in to
its existing tech platforms.
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But the key to Cvent’s success
is not the business model or the
acquisitions themselves – rather, it is
the adaptability and resilience, even
through difficult periods of business,
that has allowed them to reach this
critical mass.
When asked what advice he would
give to emerging event tech start-ups,
Hoorah says: “Find a pain point that
no one else addresses and solve it. Or,
be better at solving that pain point
than anyone else in the marketplace.
“There an oft-repeated business
truism here at Cvent – be the aspirin,
not the vitamin. Essentially, be the
must have, not the nice to have
solution.”
Conclusion
For those willing to take the
plunge into the event tech sector, the
rewards can be huge. A recent study
by Oxford Economics found that the
business events industry has more
than a £1 trillion impact on the global
economy.
But Hoorah points out that there
are also more than 1,000 event
technology companies out there, all
of which are hungry for a piece of the
pie.
Venue Search London,
DBpixelhouse and Cvent all provide
very different case studies about how
to succeed in the event tech sector.
They highlight the importance of
planning and funding, an ambitious
business model, and mapping out
a strategy for expansion as the
business grows.
If companies can manage all that,
while bringing an innovative new
idea or approach to market, they can
harness the power of our interactive
age and find success in the event tech
market.