Eventbase booming with return to live events

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Written by Jeff Sinclair Co-founder & CEO, Eventbase 

After enduring the shutdown of the events industry through COVID, Eventbase is enjoying a resurgence as customers flock back to hosting in-person events. 

Revenues have more than doubled in the past six months and we’ve been hiring rapidly to keep up with demand for our industry-leading mobile event apps. Customers including Cisco, SAP and Adobe hosted large scale events this spring, as did South by Southwest (SXSW), the massive tech/music/film conference and festival. It’s also exciting that much of Eventbase’s growth has come from new customers including Salesforce, Intel and Red Hat.

The Magic of Live Events

The recent global pandemic forced our customers to switch from hosting their events for customers, partners and staff in-person to hosting them virtually. While this move allowed event organizers to attract attendees who might not have made it to a live event, it often reduced engagement dramatically. Events that were used to interacting with attendees for three or four days in-person had to make do with talking to attendees for one or two hours online.  

Our customers have been excited to return to in-person events and attendees have too. Gartner’s recent CMO Spend Survey reported a big shift back to event marketing. Following record lows in 2021, marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue climbed from 6.4% to 9.5% in 2022, with Event Marketing & Sponsorship showing the largest increase in spend.  

There is something special about live events. Our customers excel at creating memorable in-person attendee experiences and we feel fortunate to be providing technology that helps deliver the magic of these live events. 

Adopting a Remote First, Flex-Work Approach

Through a competitive job market, Eventbase has maintained high team engagement and attracted many new team members. Some of this success can be attributed to our reputation for working on mission-critical technology for an expanding roster of blue-chip customers. But we strongly believe our focus on reinventing our work style and renewing the culture of our company have been big contributing factors as well.   

It’s been a few years since we adopted a remote-first approach to work. Our team members receive an allowance for setting up their home office and the tools they need to do their job remotely. While we do offer an office space in downtown Vancouver for those who want it, most are content to work from home or to visit occasionally. A few years ago, 95% of our team were based in Vancouver. Now, remote-first has allowed us to extend our hiring nationwide, with one of our three delivery teams serving customers in the Eastern time zone.

In addition to embracing remote work and flexible work arrangements, our team enjoys “No-Meeting Fridays”. We also have a 9-day fortnight giving almost everyone every second Friday off, which equates to an extra 26 long weekends every year.

Another draw has been the opportunity to travel to live events. Eventbase powers technology for events worldwide, so there are plenty of opportunities to go onsite to support our customers and to see our event apps in action. This year our team members have traveled to cities including New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Austin, Houston, Boston, Orlando, Seattle, San Diego and Aspen. 

Preparing for a Busy Fall Events Season

With the spring conference season now behind us, the Eventbase team is preparing for an even busier fall. We’ve already secured a large number of contracts for events in September and October, including Salesforce Dreamforce in San Francisco, Adobe MAX in LA, TwitchCon in San Diego, North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Elevate TechFest in Toronto, and Workhuman Live in Dublin.

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