virtual events

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What is TC Early Stage? 

TC Early Stage is a two-day virtual event where early-stage founders can take part in highly interactive group sessions with top investors and ecosystem experts. This particular Early Stage event has a focus on marketing and fundraising.

The event will take place July 8-9, and we’d love to have you join. 

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Pivoting from offline into virtual events for enterprises nets Tame a $5.5M seed round

In March 2020, Tame had a digital event suite for offline corporate events. But with the pandemic hitting, it did a hard pivot into providing a highly customizable virtual events platform, primarily used by companies for their sales events. The result is that it has now raised a seed round of $5.5 million, a large round for its native Denmark, led by VF Venture (The Danish Growth Fund), along with byFounders and three leading angels: Mikkel Lomholt (CTO and co-founder, Planday); Sune Alstrup (Ex-CEO and co-founder, The Eye Tribe); and Ulrik Lehrskov Schmidt.

The investment will be used to scale from 20 to 60 new employees across Copenhagen, London, and Krakow; expand to the U.K.; and grow revenues.

Founder Jasenko Hadzic, CEO and co-founder, said the pivot to virtual grew revenues “by 700% organically last year. No sales. No marketing. Organically. Therefore, Tame sees a huge opportunity and is going all-in on expanding aggressively to position itself as a market leader.”

Jacob Bratting Pedersen, partner, VF Venture, said: “At VF Venture, we want to help develop and drive innovation. The corona[virus] crisis has brought digital momentum with it, and here Danish IT entrepreneurs have the opportunity to seize that agenda and bring Danish technology and expertise to the global market. Tame is a really good example of that. Tame has great potential to create a strong, global business for the benefit of growth and jobs in Denmark.”

Hadzic himself is already a success story — he eventually made it into the tech industry after arriving in Denmark as a child refugee from war-torn Bosnia during the Yugoslavian civil war.

But don’t mistake Tame for a Hopin. Hadzic told me: “We’re not interested in getting TechCrunch Disrupt as a customer, or the big trade fairs. We just want to focus on those enterprise companies which we sell to a marketing department or an HR department.”

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Introvoke raises $2.7M to power online events that can be embedded anywhere

While there’s been plenty of attention and money lavished on virtual event platforms over the past year, Introvoke co-founder and CEO Oana Manolache predicted that we’re only at the beginning of a “third wave of digital transformation.”

In her framing, the first wave came at the beginning of the pandemic, when everyone was using video conferencing tools like Zoom for their virtual events. Next came conference platforms like Hopin (which has been raising money at a mind-boggling clip). But Manolache argued that even Hopin represents a “Band-Aid” that customers are hoping will tide them over until in-person events can resume — particularly when organizers have to point attendees to a third-party platform.

“One size does not fit all,” she said. “The Band-Aid solution that was only supposed to last for a couple months has had big benefits as companies grew their customer base and revenue targets. Now we’ve reached the third wave, as organizations want to bring solutions to their own universe and own their relationship with the audience.”

San Francisco-based Introvoke is a Techstars Accelerator graduate aiming to provide this third-wave solution. It’s announcing today that it has raised $2.7 million in funding led by Struck Capital, while Comcast, Social Leverage, Great Oaks, V1vc, Time CTO Bharat Krish and Resy co-founder Mike Montero also participated.

The startup offers components like virtual stages, chat rooms and networking hubs, all customizable and embeddable on a customer’s website. Manolache said Introvoke (the name comes from the idea of “thought-provoking introductions”) is designed for a hybrid future, which will take multiple forms: “Hybrid is going to mean virtual-only events, in-person only events and events that have in-person and virtual elements.”

Introvoke

Image Credits: Introvoke

Introvoke charges customers based on live event minutes, a model that it says is accessible to companies large and small. Its components can be embedded on websites built with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Splash and other platforms, but also on a customer’s internal intranet.

“We’ve been so impressed by the way customers are using the technology — conferences, career fairs, employee engagements,” Manolache said.

She added that as customers like Comcast, Wharton and Ritual Motion have used the platform in private preview mode, they’re beginning to break free of the in-person model. For example, Introvoke events can allow for attendees to chat with each other over weeks or months, not just a few days.

In a statement, Struck Capital founder and Managing Partner Adam B. Struck suggested that virtual events “will continue far beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Right now, virtual experiences, from conferences and concerts to company all-hands, are generally hosted on third party platforms, which creates a disjointed experience for the brand or organization hosting the event,” he continued. “Virtual enablement should be native to the website and platform of the enterprise itself, and it’s the role of technologists like the Introvoke team to make these experiences as seamless as any in-person event.”

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VCs are chasing Hopin upwards of $5-6B valuation

Virtual events platform Hopin is hopin’ for a mega valuation.

According to multiple sources who spoke with TechCrunch, the company, which was founded in mid-2019, is running around the fundraise circuit and perhaps nearing the end of a fundraise in which it is looking to raise roughly $400 million at a pre-money valuation of $5 billion for its Series C. The two names out in front, likely part of a joint ticket, are thought to be Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.

Two sources implied that the valuation could have gone as high as $6 billion, but with greater dilution based on some offered terms the company has received. The deal is in flux, and both the round size and valuation are subject to change.

One source told TechCrunch that the company’s ARR has grown to $60 million, implying a valuation multiple of 80-100x if the valuation we’re hearing pans out. That sort of multiple wouldn’t be out of line with other major fundraises for star companies with SaaS-based business models.

Hopin has been on a fundraise tear in recent months. The company raised $125 million at a $2.125 billion valuation late last year for its Series B, which came just a few months after it raised a Series A of $40 million over the summer and a $6.5 million seed round last winter. All told, the roughly 20-month-old company has raised a known $171.4 million in VC according to Crunchbase.

When we last reported on the company, Hopin’s ARR had gone from $0 to $20 million, while its overall userbase had grown from essentially zero to 3.5 million users in November. The company reported then that it had 50,000 groups using its platform.

Hopin’s platform is designed to translate the in-person events experience into a virtual one, providing tools to recreate the experience of walking exhibition floors, networking one-on-one and spontaneously joining fireside chats and panels. It’s become a darling in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has seen most business and educational conferences canceled in the midst of mass restrictions on domestic and international travel worldwide.

It’s probably also useful to note that our business team uses Hopin to run all of TechCrunch’s editorial events, including Disrupt, Early Stage, Extra Crunch Live and next week’s TechCrunch Sessions: Justice 2021 event (these software selections and their costs are — thankfully — outside the purview of our editorial team).

Hopin may be the mega-leader of the virtual events space right now, but it isn’t the only startup trying to take on this suddenly vital industry. Run The World raised capital last year, Welcome wants to be the “Ritz-Carlton for event platforms,” Spotify is getting into the business, Clubhouse is arguably a contender here, InEvent raised a seed earlier this month and Hubilo is another entrant, which nabbed a check from Lightspeed a few months ago. Plus, quite literally dozens of other startups have either started in the space or are pivoting toward it.

We have reached out to Hopin for comment.

Post updated to report that Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst are in the lead.

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Join a conversation and AMA with Run The World on virtual events now and post COVID

Join TechCrunch for its first 2021 installment of the Ask Me Anything series, where TechCrunch interviews experts and answers your burning questions about virtual events.

Our first guest is Xiaoyin Qu, co-founder and CEO of Run The World

Friday, February 26, 1 p.m. PT

Register here

Run The World is a one-stop shop virtual events platform with a focus on community engagement. TechCrunch has written about Run The World in the past. It launched in 2019, with backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, and skyrocketed in popularity when COVID canceled in-person events and created an overwhelming desire for one-on-one connection. Run The World has since grown to 45 employees and has hosted more than 10,000 events, including for TechCrunch. 

At this AMA, Xiaoyin and TechCrunch will discuss: 

  • How COVID changed the virtual event roadmap
  • What virtual events look like when in-person events come back
  • Lessons learned from managing products at Facebook and Instagram
  • What’s next for Run The World
  • Audience Q&A 
  • 1:1 networking using Run The World

Who should attend? Event organizers, event marketers, event sponsors. 

It’s free. Register here and submit your questions for Xiaoyin. 

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InEvent raises $2M for its virtual conference platform

InEvent, a startup powering virtual and hybrid events, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures.

That’s just a tiny fraction of the $125 million that online events platform Hopin raised last fall — in fact, a recent Equity episode suggested that Hopin might be the fastest growth story of the current startup era.

CEO Pedro Góes told me that even in a world of more established and better-funded platforms, his team sees an opportunity to break out by focusing on business-to-business events.

“There’s an opening in the space for us to be the leader that we want on B2B,” Góes said. “We don’t intend to compete with platforms in the B2C market.”

Put another way, InEvent is less focused on replicating giant consumer events and more on helping businesses hold virtual events where they can connect with clients and partners. Góes said this is something that he and his co-founders Mauricio Giordano and Vinicius Neris saw in their previous work running a digital agency, where they were often asked to help with events in this vein.

“Since we had a lot of experience with events, we could see where the industry was broken and how to fix it,” he said.

InEvent screenshot

Image Credits: InEvent

Góes suggested that two of the big needs for B2B events are customization and support, so InEvent has created what he described as a “really beautiful” product that can still be customized with the organizer’s branding, and the company also offers 24-hour support.

The platform is a virtual lobby where participants can browse all the programming, a video player, a registration system, the ability to create a conference mobile app and more. Góes said the goal was to build something that was “really flexible,” allowing organizers to run everything from within InEvent while also allowing them to incorporate outside tools, whether that’s video platforms like Zoom or CRM software like Salesforce, Marketo and HubSpot.

InEvent’s founders are from Brazil, but the startup is headquartered in Atlanta and has employees in 13 countries. It says it’s been used by more than 500 customers for global events, including DowDupont, Coca-Cola and Santander.

With the new funding, Góes told me the startup will be able to expand the team (he was proud to note the team’s diversity — 50% of its managers are women, and 50% of its managers come from a Latinx background). It also will continue to develop the product, for example by improving the video player and adding more marketing automation.

And when the pandemic ends and large-scale, in-person conferences become possible again, Góes predicts there will still be plenty of appetite for what InEvent can do, because more events will bring online and in-person elements together.

“We have different clients where we have a website, we have a mobile app, but we also have hardware [to] connect with in-person,” he said. After all, if you’re at a sprawling conference like CES, it might still be convenient to chat with another attendee through the mobile app, rather than traveling two miles to see them face-to-face. “For us, what we are building, the technology for virtual and in-person, is the same thing.”

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Hubilo raises $4.5 million, led by Lightspeed, to focus on virtual events

Earlier this year, the founders of event analytics platform Hubilo pivoted to become a virtual events platform to survive the impact of COVID-19. Today, the startup announced it has raised a $4.5 million seed round, led by Lightspeed, and says it expects to exceed $10 million bookings run rate and host more than one million attendees over the next few months.

The round also included angel investors Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham; former LinkedIn India CEO Nishant Rao; Slideshare co-founder Jonathan Boutelle; and Helpshift CEO Abinash Tripathy.

Hubilo’s clients have included the United Nations, Roche, Fortune, GITEX, IPI Singapore, Tech In Asia, Infocomm Asia and Clarion Events. The startup is headquartered in San Francisco, but about 12% of its sales are currently from Southeast Asia, and it plans to further scale in the region. It will also focus on markets in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Vaibhav Jain, Hubilo’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that many of its customers before the pandemic were enterprises and governments that used its platform to help organize large events. Those were also the first to stop hosting in-person events.

In February, “we knew that most, if not all, physical events were getting postponed or cancelled globally. To counter the drop in demand for offline events, we agreed to extend the contracts by six more months at no cost,” Jain said. “However, this was not enough to retain our clients and most of them either cancelled the contracts or put the contract on hold indefinitely.”

As a result, Hubilo’s revenue dropped to zero in February. With about 30 employees and reserves for only three months, Jain said the company had to choose between shutting down or finding an alternative model. Hubilo’s team created an MVP (minimum viable product) virtual event platform in less than a month and started by convincing a client to use it for free. That first virtual event was hosted in March and “since then, we’ve never looked back,” said Jain.

This means Hubilo is now competing with other virtual event platforms, like Cvent and Hopin (which was used to host TechCrunch Disrupt). Jain said his company differentiates by giving organizers more chances to rebrand their virtual spaces; focusing on sponsorship opportunities that include contests, event feeds and virtual lounges to increase attendee engagement; and providing data analytic features that include integration with Salesforce, Marketo and HubSpot.

With so many events going virtual that “Zoom fatigue” and “webinar fatigue” have now become catchphrases, event organizers have to not only convince people to buy tickets, but also keep them engaged during an event.

Hubilo “gamifies” the experience of attending a virtual event with features like its Leaderboard. This enables organizers to assign points for things like watching a session, visiting a virtual booth or messaging someone. Then they can give prizes to the attendees with the most points. Jain said the Leaderboard is Hubilo’s most used feature.

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Virtual events startup Run The World just nabbed $10.8 million from a16z and Founders Fund

Run The World, a year-old startup that’s based in Mountain View, Calif., and has small teams both in China and Taiwan, just nabbed $10.8 million in Series A funding co-led by earlier backer Andreessen Horowitz and new backer Founders Fund.

It’s easy to understand the firms’ interest in the company, whose platform features every functionality that a conference organizer might need in a time of a pandemic and even afterward, given that many outfits are rethinking more permanently how to produce events that include far-flung participants. Think video conferencing, ticketing, interactivity and networking.

We’d written about the startup a few months ago as it was launching with $4.3 million in seed funding led by Andreessen partner Connie Chan, who was joined by a slew of other seed-stage backers, including Pear Ventures, GSR Ventures and Unanimous Capital. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the current climate, Run The World has received a fair amount of traction since, according to co-founder and CEO Xiaoyin Qu, who’d previously led products for both Facebook and Instagram.

“Since we launched in February — and waived all set-up fees for events impacted by the coronavirus — we are receiving hundreds of inbound event requests each day,” Qu says. More specifically, she says the startup has doubled the size of its core team to 30 employees and enabled organizers from a wide variety of countries to oversee more than 2,000 events at this point.

Qu says that a lot of event planners who’ve used Zoom to run webinars are now choosing Run The World instead because of its focus on engagement and social features. For example, attendees to an event on the platform are invited to create a video profile akin to an Instagram Story that can help inform other attendees about who they are. It also organizes related “cocktail parties,” where it can match attendees for several minutes at a time, and attendees can choose who they want to follow up with afterward.

That heavy focus on social networking isn’t accidental. Qu met her co-founder, Xuan Jiang, at Facebook, where Jiang was a technical lead for Facebook events, ads and stories.

Of course, Run The World — which takes 25% of ticket sales in exchange for everything from the templates used, to ticket sales, to payment processing and streaming and so forth — still has very stiff competition in Zoom. The nine-year-old company has seen adoption by consumers soar since February, with 300 million daily meeting participants using the service as of April’s end.

Not only is it hard to overcome that kind of network effect, but Run The World is hardly alone in trying to steer event organizers its way. Earlier this week, for example, Bevy, an events software business co-founded by the founder of the events series Startup Grind, announced it has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Accel. Other young online events platforms to similarly raise venture backing in recent months include London-based Hopin (whose recent round was also led by Accel, interestingly) and Paris-based Eventmaker.

Still, the fresh funding should help. While Run The World has grown “entirely organically through word of mouth” to date, says Qu, the startup plans to grow its team and will presumably start spending at least a bit on marketing.

It could well get a boost on this last front by its social media-savvy investors.

In addition to a16z and Founders Fund, numerous other backers in its Series A include Will Smith’s Dreamers VC and Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Capital.

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