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friends , we ’ ve shared stories and life events and it ’ s very special . What I ’ ve learned is that meeting planners in particular are very smart – they know what they want and in many ways , they ’ re mini CEOs managing budgets , sponsorship , logistics and actual businesses within larger organisations . If you listen to them , 90 % of your roadmap is set because they ’ ll tell you their pain points and empower you to create the aspirin . |
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difficult time . You also have to be persistent and consistent . Many entrepreneurs give up too easily . Nothing in life is easy to build . I love a Japanese proverb that says : ‘ You can fall down seven times , but you get up eight times ’. The problem is that too many people just stay down after the seventh fall .
Between 2001 and 2005 , we learned the most and our culture was formed . We learned to stick to the basics and prioritise long-term profitability over short-term sales . The fundamentals for us were to build the best products , hire the best people and listen to our customers . It ’ s the same mantra as we have today .
How did you then navigate Cvent through the pandemic ? It was extraordinarily difficult . At the start of the pandemic , 96 % of our revenue came from in-person events . We didn ’ t have a virtual product . In those first few weeks , over 10,000 customers phoned us to say they wanted out of their contracts because if we couldn ’ t do virtual events , they needed to find a company that
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could . I was so impressed that our people didn ’ t panic and instead we planned a pivot that saw us build a virtual product in just five months . It launched at Cvent CONNECT in 2020 and we had 42,000 people register to experience it , It was our Moon landing because if it had failed in front of all those customers , the ramifications for our future business would have been catastrophic . Again , it was a time to be bold and make bold bets .
What does good leadership mean to you ? Leadership fundamentally comes down to hiring the best people . Your people are the DNA of your company and they are your most important asset . You need to give them direction and then provide them with the freedom to perform . If you do that , you ’ ll have thousands of internal entrepreneurs helping you to run your company at scale .
Tell us a bit about the importance of customers . I ’ ve spent a lot of time with our customers over the past 24 years . They ’ ve become
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Above : Claudia and Reggie |
What does the future hold for the events industry ? Technology solutions such as facial recognition and Augmented Reality still have a way to go but others such as AI and Machine Learning ( ML ) are transformative for our industry . Video also plays a vital role , extending the life of your event content throughout the year .
The power of the event planner as part of the marketing function of a company will also grow in importance as the different methodologies available to reach and influence new audiences continue to scale .
Give us your thoughts on AI . Generative AI is growing twice as fast as the evolution of the mobile phone . Initially , it has made our 5,000 employees more efficient through automation . Now , both AI and ML have empowered our developers to develop 15 % faster because they can predict the code that our people are writing . It ’ s still early days but a simple example is to give customers generative AI writing tools that will help them to construct formatted event emails and more concise agendas . I don ’ t believe AI will ever replace meetings and event planners but it will continue to empower them to do better and accelerate their careers . n
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