EventVue

What did it do?

EventVue was a software start-up that offered conference organisers private social networks for their events, helping attendees find one another before and during the event. The company later turned into a web widget aimed at drawing more attendees to events, and finally into a service offering a real-time conversation stream about events.

Why did it shut down?

Started by Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser at the TechStars programme in 2007, EventVue raised its first angel investment on the strength of heavy usage at a single free customer. After the investment, instead of developing the product, it focused on selling the existing tool to conference organisers within its own network. Although it won customers such as IDG, Techweb and IBM, the combination of a low price and a sales cycle of more than six months meant the enterprise sales model did not work. The EventVue Discover widget, designed to bring in attendees, lost its first customers money, and the team never fully committed to that pivot. Having turned itself into a real-time conversation service as a last move in January 2010, the company failed to attract enough interest and, with its capital exhausted, announced its closure on 5 February 2010.

The story

EventVue took shape in 2007 in Boulder, Colorado, in the hands of Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser during the TechStars programme. The idea was to build private social networks for conferences so that attendees could get to know one another before the event. During the programme the product, used free of charge at a conference for technology enthusiasts, drew strong interest, and the team closed its first angel round on the back of that data. According to the Failed Startups blog, the company raised $256,000 in total.

According to the assessment the founders published at the closure, the first big mistake came straight after the investment. Instead of strengthening the product so that it would draw more attendees to events, the team set about selling the existing social network tool to conference organisers it already knew. A few customers were won, but the team never learned what the wider market wanted. The price was low, and because organisers planned their events six months or more in advance, the sales cycle was long. So the team turned to large publishers; deals were signed with IDG, Techweb and IBM, but the hoped-for company-wide contract never came.

The first big pivot was the EventVue Discover widget, designed to bring new attendees to events. The product lost its first customers money, and the team never fully committed to that direction. Noticing that users liked the real-time stream of tweets about an event, the company relaunched itself in January 2010 entirely around that conversation feature. The founders described the move as the last hope of a team that had run out of capital and was trying to buy time with consulting work.

When enough interest failed to materialise, EventVue announced its closure on 5 February 2010. In their write-up, the founders admitted that they had built the product as a nice-to-have rather than a must-have for users, that they had embraced learning fast and failing fast far too late, and that in their early hires they had prioritised speed over talent.

Lessons for founders

• Do not mistake heavy usage at a single friendly customer for market demand; before raising your first round, measure how customers you do not know adopt the product.
• Selling a low-priced product through enterprise sales with a long sales cycle breaks your unit economics from the start; change either the price or the sales model.
• When pivoting, half-heartedly keeping the old product running for revenue splits your focus; either commit fully to the new direction or do not go there at all.

Sources

1. EventVue post-mortem (archived copy) (EventVue Blog, 2010-02-05)
2. A letter from the founders (archived copy) (EventVue, 2010-04-13)
3. EventVue (Failed Startups, 2011-07-03)

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