days of December but we’re g to warm things up for you because we have an awesome guest for the deliver way um
first and foremost I want to welcome Jennifer Jen brisman who is the founder
of Val digital health and she’s gonna be joining me to talk about some of the things that we love to talk about as
entrepreneurs and corpor entrepreneurs which is about the big pivot and how we do things differently so I wanted to
start out by thanking Jen awesome to have you here thank you so much and uh
appreciate it we’ve we’ve known each other a long time so it’s fun to have to have uh V now V on here I know we did
this a long time ago and we we chatted through many pivots so uh excited to be here today well now I’ve known you for a
while but I don’t know if everybody else here has known you for as long as I have so I’m going to share a little bit of
background about you Jen and you can fact check me as I go along um you are the founder and CEO of VOW digital
Health Val Val a health safety platform created specifically for the event
industry but Val didn’t mysteriously appear in fact you’ve been working in
the event space for more than a couple of decades I mean even though I think you’re about 25 you may have been
working a little bit longer on that and you started with the wedding planner.com you produced some high-profile weddings
and corporate events and during that time as I recall you found yourself
looking for some new tech oriented solutions to to systematize the way that
your clients and collaborators do workflow together and uh and as I understand you built your own technology
out going back almost 15 plus years ago well fast forward 2018 Val was born and
it’s a collaboration tool and I think you’ve described it like slack or Trello but built for the event industry do do I
have that right is that a fair characterization um so we are a productivity tool that yes is
transforming the future of work for all stakeholders across Live Events and experiences so absolutely as we
transform the future of work we you know feel very comfortable being in a in a class of real unicorns that similar to
what J did for software and of course what air table has done for data um and
you know absolutely what figma has done for design so we’ve had a lot of pivots and V is really really excited to be at
the Forefront of bringing all stakeholders together across the live event experience Journey um to
collaborate as you said um to work in real time with all of the the sort of
nuance details that we all tackle um across eventss now when the pandemic hit
as I recall you realized you had the right skill set and team and background to help the event industry bring Live
Events back together but that’s not where you started and now that the pandemic has sort of you know gone into
the to the to the recesses of people’s conversations you’ve had to Pivot the business again and uh you know for those
who don’t know Val you work with organizations like the Navy Seals pelaton the PanAm games and many many
other really high-profile clients and events um but you’re a whole lot more
than that but I I got to start off by congratulating you you’ve done some really awesome stuff but I also as an
event Insider I have to ask you a provocative question you ready here’s my question and kind of get things kicked
off Ticket Master is definitely one of the big players in the event space and I
know that there is a lot of Rumblings in social media people are up upset about
concerts with you know Taylor Swift and others feeling like just the system was archaic it wasn’t working for the
average person is 2024 the year of disruption of Ticket
Master or is a state status quo what do you think um well Ticket Master is a giant
as they should be um and they have a lot of crucial relationships with venues we
we uh we don’t play in the same space uh you know certainly um uh you know take a
lot of signals from them but uh they really are a trusted partner of so many of the venues around the world um and if
we remember uh telich charge and we remember how we all got our tickets years ago from kiosks it’s come so far
so there’s you know there’s certainly a lot of um Titans uh like Ticket Master tub Hub Etc um that are leading the
charge all with kind of different Specialties if you will all making sure that event goers can fill those stadiums
and those stadiums see those button seats and the the concessions and the
merch um and all the point of sale that happens and so um all those ticketing
platforms are at the Forefront of that you first have to buy a ticket before you can walk into that stadium so are
are are you saying no disruption expected in 2022 I I don’t I mean the ticketing platform is that’s like you
know disrupting payments they there’ll always be you know the rails they’ll always be like a hard fast need for it
um and so they’re really really trusted by so many venues so I I don’t know that that’s where disruption will be I think
you know disruption will be on delivering uh a more fruitful and a more robust experience to event goers to
guests to fans to participants um to the people who rise to their feet with the Roar of the crowd and I think it’ll
always be about you know the fans the ticket purchasers and I and I think um that’s where um all these platforms that
touch ticketing and everybody around it um are going to really look to sore um
in the years ahead so I I think we rely titing we need titing platforms to be
there so we can go to these shows um so it’s you know it’s a good
world so live events are are kind of the the uh kind of the heart strings and the
pulse of of the event industry but let me wind back the clock a little bit um
th the first first iteration you you’ve been at this now for more than five years if my math serves me correctly
give or take um what was the first version of Val and I’d love to hear like
where did that inspiration come from does that that business bear resemblance to the business you’re in now tell me a
little bit about that yeah so um you know I think being agile and pivoting is important um
especially with Market timing and conditions uh there’s you know no glory and in being the same exact product for
20 years um I think you have to Pivot with the market and you have to respond to customer demands you also have to be
someone who can ingest um technology whatever is happening in the world that’s making the world go around that’s
really shifting not only hearts and minds but how we work um and so you have to be willing to tear down features in
some case tear down your own product or your own ideas um learn from your customers in the market have an
intuition about where to go and go there um and that’s exactly what we did so the first iteration of vow which was really
born uh in 2019 late 2019 was a centralized Communications Channel um
where event organizers could come together and communicate all stakeholders across all teams involved
in all Live Events um and they could do so always in context and always real time um we sort of began to put the
product in the market in the pandemic hit um and we really spent quite a few months really trying to figure out what
to do um and what how long that time frame was going to be between um you
know the pandemic and what we were all dealing with in real time and grappling with just you know live experiences in
general to you know what’s next and how do we gather safely um just to add just
to clarify like that first version it sounds like it was kind of like supply and demand there’s a lot of suppliers
out there there’s a lot of demand out there how do you bring them together and create kind of a market place of these
type of vendors but during Co there was no Live Events or or limited Live Events
was that was that the the the death of the the first version or was there some
other exogenous fact no not at all um it wasn’t the death of anything it was um
you know a perfect wedge in the market to learn from so the the platform wasn’t a Marketplace the platform was a a
Communications Channel um for all stakeholders and that was in as I mentioned early 20 9 uh late
2019 um and so when we put it in the market we were still Road testing with all event professionals they just were
not um in action at that point and the question was what to do next um so we
spun up a really critical feature um you referenced it at the beginning but it is no more um called digital health and it
helped Co screen large groups at scale so an event organizer could go into the platform create um a a true customized
covid screening experience um that was really the first learnings
that I had of what it meant to not only scale tremendously but have to scale
gather learnings at scale and pivot um so where the pandemic started when we first built the platform was totally
different than where it ended um at the time we built it there weren’t even vaccines um and I remember saying to my
product group um that’s wonderful that we can gather um really covid screening
Tech technology at scale that we can gather results tell people they’re cleared let them enter you know very big
Grand scale events um but people didn’t realize there were vaccines um and sort
of an interesting little fact when I was in college I was Premed and I worked on
the first testing of taxol into MOX phanom Mouse mammer and gland cells so
um had really a Bas base Baseline understanding of things and really saw
that there were going to be vaccines and we the product to be able to covid screen both the vaccines and the test
the important part of which um was really the communication around that so
the communication between uh an event organizer and all the guests that they
were wanting to bring together uh that it was safe uh that their information was Secure and really success around
that covid screening so they could go to that that grand scale event so it gave organizers a really intuitive platform
for us what it gave us was a really a connection point to the guest um and Trust around the guest experience who
was going through this really challenging journey and how do we Delight guests and you know where is the
magic so the the platform has since been deprecated um the learnings have really
been unbelievable um because being able to scale with an industry coming back um
with new ways of doing things and new ways of executing uh both as organizers
and guests new ways of interacting um it gave us a strong wedge in the market to
grab those learning scale and really go okay let’s let’s learn really fast and deploy really fast so now it’s it’s a
pretty big leap to go from the event industry or kind of the wedding space to
Public Health in many ways your your platform in need PE and you didn’t mention this but you know remember
seeing vow was the engine that allowed for kids to get to camp summer camps
needed your platform to be able to make sure that people are vaccinated they had their covid tests you’re a big part of
Public Health enabling things to get back uh to the way they should be that’s
a pretty big shift how how did you find yourself adapting into the world of
Public Health and and health tracking from wedding planning like how did you make that leap yeah so we really weren’t
in public health but what we really were an enabler an enabler of it yes so what
we were really immersed in at the end of the day was our passion for live
Gatherings and live Gatherings are the fabric of our existence and so any
technology that I’ve ever built has been about how do we accelerate um Gatherings
and by accelerating mean how do we Elevate them for event organizers how do we Elevate them for guests and how do we
do it in a way that allows everybody to do more and take time back and and
really be delightful and so that’s really what um any good idea is about
it’s about leading into the market and your customers and learnings and I think that’s what val did really well that’s
what I was really open to and that’s what the product is a reflection of today it’s a reflection of what
customers and guests ask for um as you know as far as sort of Public Health
again I think it’s the ability for Val to ingest any need um that may happen in
the road ahead and react and respond to it for this same community so whether it
is a celebration like a wedding whether it is a grand scale opening night uh
whether it’s a corporate event uh whether it’s a sporting event a VIP experience it’s sort of vows ability to
be a learning machine and really understand what is next ingest that and deploy that so each of these things were
just one learning um and probably if you’re a successful startup where you
where you start doesn’t always mean where you where you end um so I think that’s that’s probably the the sound
bite which is you know we’re a learning machine um and that’s what we’ve been at every step something You’ I’d stalked
some of your previous interviews and one of the things I heard I thought was really interesting um that you had
mentioned your company was directly responsible for saving over a billion dollars an event Revenue in 15 months
that’s pretty big that that’s really big no contingency model you get a percent
of the revenue from those savings is that no no it’s a source of Pride if you look at all the events that we touched
um and you looked at the estimated projected budgets for all those events um throughout that period of time and
how many butts we put in seats um yeah we’re pretty proud of that number so that number is a reflection of really
the the total aggregate um budget across all those events the the the spend on all the things um that we were able to
protect for um event professionals worldwide so well speaking of numbers so
I’ll throw another number out to you 450 so you had mentioned um somewhere
before that your company is spun up and this is going back a little bit now so I’m going to guess it’s more over 450
prototypes of The Vow platform that’s a lot of prototypes that’s a lot of
itoring first of all how do you do that um how do you keep up with these iterations in and moving so fast and
breaking things um it’s hard to create that many prototypes creating a few is hard how do you uh I don’t think I don’t
think I said that we had 450 prototypes but probably in the lifespan um of our
company we’ve probably had I would say about 30 to 40 prototypes um you know prototypes are pretty easy to spin up
you know you’re you’re creating something that somebody can road test and really get a sense of the experience
again our platforms pwb Toc so they can really get a sense of what is the organizer’s experience on the platform
and then of course an organizer wants to know what the guest experience of the platform is um so yeah I mean you you
first spin up a prototype because you’re you want to show yourself um and you want to be delighted yourself and then
you probably use that tool of course to um kind of spin that up for others so it
could be an investor it could be a potential client I know for us before we
um you know spin out a feature there’s some features that are really small that we ship um they’re very intuitive and
and they might be a couple screens there’s bigger features that we ship that have bigger implication on the platform so we might do you know two to
three prototypes for them but probably over the lifetime of of the company we’ve we’ve probably spun up yeah easily
40 to 45 if not 50 prototypes along the way maybe not 450 but that’s still a lot
of prototyping that’s it takes a lot of effort and just you know for for those
people who are thinking like well it takes a lot of effort to build a single prototype why don’t we just go right in
and execute why why prototype and expect to iterate what what have you found from
your experience of having to do a lot of rapid prototyping um I mean prototyping has
become very easily ve very easy now very accessible um it depends on far you take
I mean it’s just it’s you you know you’re you’re talking about prototyping versus proof of concept like a proof
content might have a back end to it it might be functional it might be live prototype is is you know more of a um
sort of an you know a tool that you use to really like create the look The feel make important decisions about your
community make important decisions about your customers um where you can do it in a low lift way that has kind of less
dollar value behind it you know engineering is is sort of very expensive and it’s a very expensive place to to
make mistakes um but you know prototyping is sort of an easier way to make determinations um
it’s a great way also to interact with customers and you can be a little bit more inspired and dream a little bit
more so uh you know typically a prototype is going to include all the things that you want to build and all
the excitement um and then you usually break that into small parts so um yeah we always find prototyping really really
useful I I think what you’re probably asking about is proof of concept where you’re just making one small kind of
version of that thing or one piece of that thing to really get people to test it because when something looks pretty
um it also has to has to act pretty and more really strong well if you want to get asked out on a second date you got
to look good well speaking of which you know this this metaphor of dating um
we’ve said before that that sometimes you need to make sure that you give a second date to to your ideas that the
first idea is never the best idea that you have to be able to go out and maybe kind of go into a different direction
with it to consider it and give it more possibility how sort of how how do you
give more kind of headro and and a space for those ideas to grow that maybe
weren’t the best at first are there ideas that started for you that maybe were you know not perfect or not great
and they they needed those extra dates or iterations what have you found from the work at Val yeah I mean everybody
iterates on their idea you have to um you know rarely does anything come out
like fully baked ready to go the biggest companies in the world um are iterating they’re sort of changing their
viewpoints they’re evolving their viewpoints with how life changes around us um so that’s just you know that’s
just the day-to-day um that comes back to the team that you have the voices uh
that you listen to on that team um and staying close to customers right like
it’s important to have scale but it’s also important to stay close close to your customers and find that balance so
for us it’s just part of the culture of of how we operate every day how we socialize
information um you know when we build something we might reach out to like the 10 customers that we’ve worked with that
we think are going to be most delighted by that actual feature or that new
release or roll out and we might reach out to them and say hey everything’s on QA do you want to jump in do you want to
test it do you want let us know what we think and they might say hey this this alert wasn’t intuitive or where this
button was or I kept wanting to like click the screen and do something different um so so for us because we’re
dealing with kind of like all the subtle Nuance of how this very vast ecosystem comes together through very consistent
and repetitive workflows um we really jam with a lot of iteration and we try
to do it with each other but we also try to do it with our customers so you know
somewhere in between like proof of concept like something we’ve deployed um and something we’ve ideated around like
a prototype in that middle as we get close to releasing something we might let our some of our customers come into
a a QA environment and test some things out and and really bring to light maybe a couple last minute things that that we
hadn’t really thought about and it also allows us to build really fast um as opposed to getting like really really
stuck in a in a paper process we try to ship three to four days I love something that that you had said I I’ll read a
quote from you every people always like oh did I say this um well your quoted is saying this and it’s a nice build on
what you had said just before this is what we’re building are we crazy that’s what we will tell our customers and get
them involved and help us adapt our business model is it is it fair game to
put a kind of a crazy idea or something that maybe is really risky in front of customers early on um or you wait till
you’ve built it enough that you feel like well they’re not going to think it’s crazy or really outlandish how risky do you go when you put something
new in front of a customer yeah it’s a great question actually I I I can relate
this back um to the co screening platform that we had at the time that we
ideated around it there was nothing in the market so there was nothing in the market that I could really point to with
my engineers and my product team and say this is the likeness of what we want to
build there was no B2B to see platform and in some cases we’re kind of like B to B to B to see because we deal with
groups and those groups deal with the guests so there there was no platform in the market that I could point to and say
let’s build this and there was also no no knowledge people in covid were
building the plane as we flew it so we knew if we were going to come forward we had to be smart and we had to be trusted
um so that’s probably where we built the most prototypes first very strongly to
show ourselves what we were building like we all didn’t know we all didn’t understand we all didn’t have reference
points so we first really had to align everybody around a very strong Vision which whether you’re apple or um you are
a social media platform you have to align everybody around a vision everybody has to like feel it in their
bones really really quickly and and very clearly why they’re building it and then
I went to our customer cust so all the customers that we pitched back in late
2019 and you know explained to them you know the vow is centralizing interactions across all stakeholders now
we were spinning up this feature that was going to create the opportunity for everybody to gather again at scale and
our customers came in they came in Fast and they were very helpful um event
organizers we we all kind of have the same things in our bones we all work the
same way we all think the same way we all react you know to to customers needs
the same way we all anticipate the guest needs in the same way and we all have the same value system around the guest
experience so for me it was very very easy to get in front of a number of
organizers around a very clear Vision that they could understand to get crucial Insight that I needed fast to
build fast and deploy fast because we did want to bring events back at scale so yeah that was probably um you know
when you talk about ideas that’s really where that ability to iterate on ideas and move fast came from it was a very
big risk um but it was a risk that was worth taking um there was no downside to
being wrong because all events um were they were cancelled they were cancelled
and there were so many platforms that were also doing a beautiful job of help
in event events live experiences that would have other been wise been live be
virtual so there was so much talent and so much time and so much thought and ideation going into there and I knew
that there would be enough players I knew that there would be a really Gap big gap in the market as live
experiences wanted to come back awesome I’m gonna just remind our our folks who
are listening live feel free to to put into LinkedIn live you could put your
questions in I know there are a that have come directly already so feel free to bring those in and invite those
questions to to come on in I still have a couple more questions before we turn over to our audience for some of their
direct questions Jen so one of the ones that that I always like to ask is if you
were to give advice to you back in 2018 what are some of the deliberate
practices some of the things that you you’ve learned along the way that it would have been so helpful if I had
known this four or five years ago what advice would you give to you and things
that you’d give to any other kind of startup entrepreneur that’s on this journey yeah I mean look people have
said it before it’s really really hard it’s hard to to build something from nothing um and it’s hard to put time
behind it and money behind it um you have to inspire you have to hire um you
have to know like what’s most important versus a fire that you want to put out um but it just takes a phenomenal amount
of discipline um and real fortitude because you know there’s there’s so much
that you uh I don’t want to say sacrifice but you trade off in life as well so it’s hard uh it it does require
a tremendous amount of discipline um and a lot of tradeoffs in life to really go
ahead and you know move your goals along and I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily for startups but I think that is for um
getting anything off the ground uh in general um corporate entrepreneurs anybody who’s project leading I mean
people have to Pivot regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or you are an entrepreneur running a project
you’re going to have stalled projects uh what would you say to people who are facing those those those obstacles those
blockades and they know they have to Pivot but it’s so hard to move away from your first love you know like we fall in
love with their ideas and obviously you able to move away and pivot what would you tell people who are struggling to
make those pivots because they love their ideas so much I mean ultimately you’re building for someone right like
you’re not building really for yourself unless you’re building an internal tool for your own organization you’re building a product for somebody so you
have to love that somebody you have to love that ecosystem more than you’ve
love your your own ideas or um your own designs or your own own product yourself
you you have to love the people for whom you’re building and if they’re your North Star once you build one thing for
them and you’re in agreement or contractor you’ve sold them for one thing you can unlock the potential in
different you know business lines and business opportunities as you go and that’s the beauty of it is that once
they trust your company’s value system one of our core value system is trust um
trust that not only are we going to deliver the product they want trust in our business practices um along data
privacy and security on platform off platform so once a a company trust you
they trust what you’re about they trust your vision that relationship becomes deeper and so it’s more possible to grow
as a company because you can unlock more uh opportunities for them to grow in their use of your product and unlock
more financial opportunities as a result so I think to answer your question you have to remember who you’re building for
and that is you know way more important than the product you’re building so if you have to shift or pivot or tear ideas
down or you know refactor databases you gota you got to do what you got to do to
always um deliver the best product for that audience I I I love the the the
message and also the principle of this because it’s it’s so simple but people skip it all the time where they’re
designing products and services they build it and they fall in love with what they’ve built but they forget at the end
of the day somebody else has got to use it so if you don’t really keep that person in mind or if you don’t directly
interact with them as you’re talking about your interaction with the customers it’s kind of just sort of screaming in the wind No One’s Gonna
Hear It No One’s Gonna care so um I I I love that advice and and you’ve talked
about interacting with your users do you have like your your your favorites out
there like the the people that you go back to time and time again to get advice who are those people that that
advise you and and kind of Coach you along to help you kind of stay on the uh
you know on The Virtuous path of product development uh my team’s pretty good at that um so we we do that on a daily
basis um a lot of the you know evolution of the idea might come from me having done the job for 20 years and building
for an ecosystem that I not only love but I understand intuitively all sides of the market um but my team’s really
really good at that I think if I’m sort of stuck on a bigger kind of road map question um you know my
co-founders um and so we also have advisors and and we have investors so we
have people that have like a different wheelhouse of experience that depending on what we’re what we’re tackling or
what I’m struggling with that I can tap into and lean on um but with dayto day
you know my my team’s a phenomenal sounding board at just making sure we’re keeping uh in in the the right direction
um and also fellow Founders um you know it’s interesting when you talk about products and products not always living
up to their potential you know technology um can be it’s a beast um and
it’s not always easy to move a big ship um so a lot of times the the failures we
see and the products we love um are not intended to frustrate us but sometimes
those building it like can’t move faster you know a a startup you know with you
know a quarter of a million users is different than one with 250 million users and and how the speed at which you
can actually evolve that platform and deploy is is sometimes actually harder
um so that’s what makes this point in the journey fun as you go along sometimes you you you have a little more
drag and you tend to move slower so so for us you know speed is vital we lean
on our own team we lean on our customers and if it’s you know on on the business side we we we have advisers and
investors that that we tap as well as fellow Founders awesome I’m going to pause for a moment because we have a
couple of questions a number of questions that have actually been thrown out so you’re ready for some questions the audience um before we do a quick
commercial timeout um we’re gonna drop right into the into the chat the pivot
plan because if you want to be successful like Jen or any person who gets stuck or stalls on their project
you need a plan and we’ve put together a multi-step process I found to be successful we pressure test this with
customers to know what works so we’re going to drop in there you know my gift to you a a pivot plan to any of the
folks who are listening or watching on replay because everybody needs a plan um so that’s our little quick commercial
time out to the questions now so some questions for you Jen how do you know
what ideas to take forward and how do you know when to give up on an idea it’s a great question um um it
depends on what stage you know the idea is if it’s like the big big thing and the big big Vision um again I come back
to you know is it you know satisfying your community um or is it a new point
of view that needs more time to marinate with any Community you know is it is it
such a big idea that like it’s going to take a critical mass to really determine
um what’s going on so I think data is vital um capturing data any way you
possibly can and synthesizing and systematizing that data so you can grab real learnings from it so I think that’s
that’s vital um when you are testing ideas and another question that came in
is um when you think about the advances in artificial intelligence chat GPT does
that impact the work that you’re doing is it an opportunity or it is a threat
what do you what do you say to that question yeah I mean I I I think like any tool whether it’s crypto whether
it’s AI I think everything can be an asset it can also be a weapon no different than your voice um which we’re
seeing every day these days um or your choices um in this particular case I
think you know for us um we do have certain viewpoints about how we are and and we be leaning into AI for the best
of our customers um you know for for I think most products you have to have a
strong business stance so like your Tech has to support talent and it has to
essentially save people money save people time help them do their work better and bring Delight to whatever
customer base they’re working with so like whether you’re in cpg or beauty or whether you’re in SAS it doesn’t matter
um and and everybody will be utilizing AI to to different extents um so for us
you know we have strong viewpoints on it and and how we’re uh probably in Q2 next year I’m going to roll out some proof of
Concepts to really test that at large you know with other customers but your your your product just needs to be
strong from a business perspective AI like any other technology should just
make it that much better um wherever it can so that’s kind of how our an enabler
not the thing but it’s an enabler for us it’s an enabler not the thing correct correct for many people it is and for
most companies and I think um you know used really the right way for your
customers um you know obviously it’s it’s wonderful and so another question you
know kind of acknowledging them remiss and not asking you what does your business do today you’ve made all these
pivots if you were to give kind of like the the elevator pitch to The lay person of what does Val do now from where it
all the all the way traveled from yeah vow is the Premier guest management
technology for live experiences and events and and we’re really the only one we are a true B2 Bea VIP platform that
is bringing together all stakeholders across all live experiences and events to work together in real time um always
in context and always in one place so we really eliminate um an event organizer
having to move uh group and guest data uh between anywhere from usually like
six to 12 tools so we we do it all in one place and we do it from a place of trust um and we do it from a place of
Trust on platform but also trust off platform um with 247 guest support uh
via SMS and email and that is where you know for us AI will come in um so that
guests always have an event assistant in their pocket um and they can always get the help that they need on demand no
matter where they’re going in the world so um V started as a product for um the
very very vast massive uh event ecosystem it is still a product for that
Val value system has always been about trust um and it’s value system is still
in fact that um and everything that we do um falls out from that and I you know
as a you know simple guy on this one it sounds like it’s not just for the individual I buy a ticket to go to uh
see YouTu at MetLife Stadium here in New Jersey that’s you know you go through through Ticket Master you get your
ticket you’re all set it sounds like this is more for the bigger groups I am
KPMG or or you know or Amazon and I’ve
got yes we are tell me tell me more for those big groups of people yeah so um
event organizers the biggest brands the biggest groups in the world um they need to gather people at scale whether one
time a year or whether four times a month uh they need to gather Folks at scale and they’re managing guessing
groups so it could be an event organizer in-house at a a corporate B brand at a social brand um it could be a Broadway
opening night it could be a Gayla or a fundraiser um it could be an upfront um
it could be a summit uh an association event a government event a lobbying event um they need to gather groups at
scale and they need to handle all of the functions for those guest and groups that they would normally Shuffle between
multiple tools to manage those guest and group they can do it Under One Roof inside bow um so an event organizer gets
to come on in um and it creates a guest experience app in real time on mobile
and uh Native mobile as well as web and it goes ahead and it’s able to share that app experience with its groups and
guests um and the connected tissue in between so that uh organizers can do you
know literally 20 times more than they used to with Val and without they can
double full time everything they can save time they can save money they can save opcs um and they can ultimately
like do more um across not just themselves as their team event organizations are really interesting uh
especially cross private Live Events they’re like these organizations that get stood up and they get teared down
even if you’re a company you know IBM doing events quarterly doing events
monthly doing events weekly um an event is a unique experience for one moment a
time so there’s a lot of e and flow in in the labor and the resources they need
so on vow we really crystallize everything they need Under One Roof both for themselves as a B2B tool and also as
a B2B C tool so we give them uh a connective tissue to the groups in the guest um and ultimately help them gather
learnings um and then go to the next even even better and faster so that’s what we’re doing awesome I love it very
exciting and I I love that your your core customer never changed even the business as the business pivoted so very
very good affirmation on that there one more question um when you think about
your kind of most uh prestigious or kind of most interesting events that you’ve
hosted that you can share what’s one that stands out or two that stands out of this was amazing like it you know we
made this totally transformative because of of what we did and uh they were a
great event what would you kind of hone in on is uh one that stands out for
you um I mean they all stand out for different reasons I think you know last
year and and earlier in the year we did a lot within for Broadway um Broadway
was really hit hard by the pandemic it was yeah yeah so moving past um you know
covid into guest experience management and sort of watching them come back to life um was really exciting so any small
and in some cases big roles that we played in that um was just really super special um for us you know it’s Broadway
is um decades old and it’s a live experience it’s not something you watch
on your TV and yes you know we’ve we’ve all watched um you know Productions of
it um you know Hamilton Hamilton Etc but you know not the same not the same it’s
not it’s not the same um the actors are extraordinary and the you you you feel
when you walk out of the theater is is really just magical um so you know for
us you know being touching all live experiences um and some that aren’t even
events um but just really live experience in life is is pretty magical so um every day that we get to do that
is super exhilarating awesome well you did well with the questions I’ve got one
more round for you you ready for a little bit of gamification so the name of this game Jen is called I do or I
don’t a little bit of play on the the idea of a vow your name is your company is vow so we have some vows for you to
make um so what I’m goingon to do is I’m going to uh present a statement to you
and I’m gonna ask you to tell us if you do or you do not agree with the
statement and I’d love you you can elaborate a little bit on it um I’ve got you know quite a few that are queued up
for you you ready sure let’s do it all right well let’s get some some vows going um my first vow is corporate event
planners will host more hybrid events in 2024 than they did in
2023 do you do or don’t agree with that I don’t they’re not seeing the ROI um I
think having a virtual extension will always be vital um and virtual is going
to evolve in the years ahead massively um but I think that uh the majority will
be IRL all right next one AI is going to
revolutionize the corporate event planning industry one day I I think it’s revolutionizing
everything now I mean anybody who says it’s it’s not is is probably not in
technology um no I mean it’s it’s revolutionizing everything now and and we’re just really as a as a Humanity
being able to all equally understand its power um and its prevalence is is really
strong so it’s doing it every single day now so yeah all right here’s one that’s
kind of near and dear to Your Heart Live Events are 100% fully back yeah you
agree or not agree yeah I do they’re they are back
Market yeah I mean they’re back with avengeance I mean most of the market statistics show the ecosystem um growing
at a ker of about 8.63% and growing to about 2.2 trillion in 2030 um you know
we see those numbers across our customers um they’re coming back bigger
and stronger um the budgets are tougher um and that’s really where Val comes in because it allows them to do more with
less um especially across their teams um so yeah I mean for sure has and I’ll
just kind of an adjacency has the the covid effect impacted the way
people budget plan or think about events or did people just kind of kind of snap
right back into place from 2019 what do you think I would imagine all different things I think that people play such a
high value on the smell of the sweat and the handshake um and the hug they they play maybe not all the sweat I I could
not all um but the opportunity and and really you know Rising on the feet and
the Roar of the crowd I mean we see that we see that across the numbers that all of the major uh ticketing platforms are
reporting in terms of purchases we see that of course across you know Taylor Swift um you know live experiences have
now really skyrocketed just in terms of their level of importance um they’re
edging as much older as they are younger um meaning to you know the younger set
and it’s you know kind of like a write of Passage to go to multiple con uh concerts if you’re 11 if you’re 12 years
old whether you’re going with your family or going you know three moms and three girls so I think it’s become a
right of passage so it’s it’s about more entrance in the space as well so there’s more people in the space buying tickets
than ever before and really you know we have things like afterpay and um you know stage payment PL so that you know
just like I think Expedia does it as well so you can really afford those tickets and have Laya away we used to
call it Laya away when I was younger and have lay away for those tickets um so you can have that experience so I think
um it’s not just that events are back it’s not just that we value them the way that we did before I I I think they’ve
like really like hearts and minds are just like fixing on live experiences and
and and rightfully so should be so this next question could be somewhat duplicative but I’m gonna ask anyway are
Live Events are they in more generationally skewed younger people are
are more like to not go to Live Events than people in let’s say our generation agree I mean I
think they’re skewing younger every day I think really yeah especially at the mainstream stadiums I think more um more
kids if you will are going to live experiences all the time um they’re
hosting them they’re going to them um there’s other you know small platforms
uh that you know kind of gamify like their Gatherings as well so no I I think
you know everything’s a live Gathering you know whether you’re in college and you’re you know using platforms to meet
up with 30 40 friends to go to a bar um or whether you’re you know a student
traveling in another country I I think that events are skewing both o older and
younger I think you know older folks are coming out in droves and and we see that we saw that but I also think that um I I
don’t know what the numbers are quite frankly but I would imagine um the way we see it is that younger folks are
coming out in in droves and really impressing upon to their parents like I don’t want a birthday party I want to
take four friends to this concert um and I think like I said it’s become a right of passage for the younger set that
really wants to get out there and be and see their favorite artist or see their favorite show or um you know have a
gathering at a local restaurant with 20 friends on a Saturday night so so we’re seeing it all the time I got a few more
vows for you a little bit of a different direction um big company pivots like for
example Twitter shifting away from being a podcasting platform way back when when
it was called Odio to become Twitter those types of pivots are extremely rare
do you agree or not agree with that proposition um I think most companies
have pivoted or I guess I would say iterated um a lot of them started with
the same user base but they evolved into being a better product I don’t I admittedly don’t know like the entire
history of of Twitter and a and fair enough um but I think most great
products have evolved uh many have gone into other Market um segments um you
know many have bought smaller platforms to ingest you know other users and other
Tech and other viewpoints and other teams so you know all right next one this one might
be this this one is a is is a bit controversial maybe a little bit controversial pivoting is acknowledging
failure do you agree or not agree with that no I mean you know we every like
you nine out of 10 fail right the thing you deploy is the thing that that succeeds so I don’t know what failure is
it’s kind of like The Cutting Room floor like all the extra footage that you have in you know on The Cutting Room floor is
is not failure um and it usually surfaces like in different ways when you’re looking for something special it
could be um you know something about PR something about marketing um you you have to have a cutting room floor to
build something great um as you go you want The Cutting Room floor to get
smaller as it’s expected it shouldn’t be filled with all to have waste um but
yeah I mean just like as you start you have a lot of cutting room floor and then you know as you go um you learn to
be a little bit more shrewd and and rehearsed it at how you edit um but you
just think of it as edits not really you know as failures it’s whether it’s you think about yourself thinking about the
product like you’re just in you you know you’re editing yourself you’re editing your product um you’re editing your
thesis or your Viewpoint I think the important part is just to know what you’re building and who you’re building
for like if you’re not super clear on those things everything else in the middle um will fall apart but you know
that’s why people look for product Market fit um or Community Market fit is
sometimes they roll something out and they think that they’re building it you know for for one group of users or One
customer a customer profile only to find out wow um and we found that too that
that different customers related um to the to the product in different ways so
um I think of it as maybe editing and not failing last question so Last Vow for
you um I believe that running a startup Venture is the best thing that you can
do and your personal and your professional profal life agree or not agree yeah absolutely agree everyone
should do it at some point why tell me why why if you’re trying to sell somebody who’s like I don’t I think it’s
just about being an entrepreneur I think I think being a non-te CEO is a little
bit different um you know now in ver Tech but there were a lot of learnings along the way it’s it’s easier to build
technology now believe it or not than even just three years ago there’s a lot more tools there’s a lot more platforms
um a lot more low code opportunities people to build it for you you know here near shore farshore I mean there’s
there’s a lot of different ways you can execute um but but yeah I think everybody um should do it it’s an
exciting place to be you you learn a lot you give a lot and the startup ecosystem is is pretty
extraordinary um it’s really a very very highly collaborative
ecosystem um so I think part of the reason people can move fast is if they lean into all the other stakeholders in
that startup ecosystem um all the different groups um that are available
for support um for resources and opportunities so I think you know that
it’s exhilarating um but you know it’s it’s best if you know what you’re building and and and you have a path to
to scale and financial success but I think everybody um should try it awesome
I’ve got one last question for you um you know I always like to say that
Innovation is about seeing what everyone else is seeing but thinking what no one else has thought before um what is
nobody thinking right now that you think um is going to be kind of the The Secret
Sauce the the magical potion that will really Drive success for startups and
entrepreneurs like you and I uh in 2024 what’s the trend or the thing that that
we need to to to see that no one else is seeing and thinking what no one else is thinking what do you think wow if I had
that I would play this I know it doesn’t have to be right with the power of the
crystal ball you know we won’t be able to go we could go back in time and adjudicate this but what do you think is
what do you think is the you know kind of one of the big things that that you would want to latch on to if you were to advise somebody this is the next big
thing other than Plastics what do you think’s the next big thing in 2024 little reference to The Graduate for us
Old-Timers yeah I I don’t know if I know what the the next big thing that we’re
going to um that we’re going to see in 2024 hopefully you know peace and and
Market stabilize um that’s what one would hope for um agree on that yeah I I
do think um that we’re going to see two things I think a lot of um companies
closing next year um and I think we’re going to see a lot of large technology
companies buying a lot of small smartups that had like what I would call like Sharpshooter um Solutions like solutions
that would take those companies a long time to build but were really specific and really needed by a particular
ecosystem but just weren’t wide enough to to gain speed so I mean I could I could sort of lend that lens I don’t I
don’t think that’s going to change anyone’s World um it’s certainly not um so I don’t know if I have like a a
really sexy exciting answer um but I I do think we’re going to see a lot of that we’re going to see a lot of of of
uh startups even pretty Advanced ones with all your pivots I figured you
might be a pretty good prognosticator but I’ll take that I I’ll take what you’re laying down I’ll pick that up um
Jen I want we’re prepared for everything yeah listen you can’t have an answer for everything army knife we’ve got the
backpack ready to go I want first of all big thank you for taking the time to share some of your insights your
experience and the ofen stuff stuff you’ve been doing it Val big congratulations and thank you for for
joining us on this last episode of the year for Del for uh the deliberate way
so thank you and we wish you a lot of great luck thank you so much okay well
thank you and we’ll uh see you guys all in 2024 with our next slate of guests
for the deliberate way we have some great ones coming up so tune in in 2024
if we don’t see you before then happy holidays peace happiness and health and prosperity to everyone so take care
everyone and thanks again Jen
