INTERVIEW |
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bunch of investors and scaled from six people to 125 staff in a single year . When the perfect storm of 09 / 11 and the dotcom meltdown hit , so too did reality . We blew through $ 16.6m of that $ 17m to keep a company afloat that was doing $ 1.5m in revenues . We were on the point of bankruptcy so we made the only choice available , which was to cut 80 % of our staff . It was a major low point in my life . You start questioning yourself , you question the business model and you question whether you ’ ve surrounded yourself with the right people . Then your investors start trying to micro-manage a business they don ’ t necessarily understand so the situation gets worse .
We reduced to 24 employees and I didn ’ t take a salary for three years . For almost a year , it was hard for me to get out of bed . I was living with my parents at the time and it was my mum who forced me to go into the office every day and kept me moving forward . CW : I love your mum for getting you out of bed . What are the lessons you learnt from that period ? RA : You learn more on the way down than you do on the way up . And the things you learn will always help you in the next crisis or the next difficult time . You also have to be persistent and consistent . What I saw with many entrepreneurs is that they gave up too easily . Nothing in life is easy to build - you just have to be persistent and consistent . Every Cvent employee knows
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that 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 . You have to just keep getting up .
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 . Don ’ t get fancy - the fundamentals never fail . CW : How did you then navigate Cvent through the Covid pandemic ? RA : It was extraordinarily difficult . At the start of
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“ Your people are the DNA of your company and they are your most important asset .”
the pandemic , 96 % of our revenue came from in-person events . We didn ’ t have a virtual product so we knew we had to make a pivot . 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 could . I was so impressed that our people didn ’ t panic and instead , we planned a pivot that saw us
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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 . We held our breath throughout that event but again , it was a time to be bold and make bold bets . The agility my team showed was astounding and I ’ ll be forever grateful for the loyalty shown by our customers because they waited patiently for us to come up with a solution and they believed in us . I was so impressed that our employees acted like entrepreneurs because there was no playbook for how you pivot in a pandemic . Our minds went back to those tough times in 2001 and we had to consciously decide to get back up and lead . CW : What does good leadership mean to you ? RA : Leadership means a lot of different things but fundamentally , it comes down to hiring the best people . Your people are the DNA of your company and they are your most important asset . From a leadership perspective , 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 , all with the agility to pivot during the most difficult of times . CW : What leadership role have women played in your life ? |
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22 — Winter |