I was highly impressed by the keynote delivered by Reggie Aggarwal, the Founder and CEO of Cvent, at the Event Tech Live in London on 13th of November. It was a great inspiration to meet Reggie Aggarwal and hear first-hand how from being in debts he grew his company to $1.5B in only few years.
In case you missed Even Tech Live or want to recap the lessons, here I summarise some of his key points. Founded in 1999 and trading now on the stock exchange, Cvent went through ups and downs, as most entrepreneurs familiar with. From lawyer to entrepreneur, Reggie Aggarwal shared with us the main lessons he learned on the way.
Lessons for entrepreneurs
Find a pain point and create an aspirin – many entrepreneurs today make the mistake of creating a vitamin, which means creating a product that is “nice to have”. When starting new business entrepreneurs should find out the pain point and create an aspiring for it, something that the customer needs and cannot “live” without.
Entrepreneurship vs. Intrapreneurship – not everyone should be an entrepreneur. One of the main reasons for it that it can take up to a decade to build a successful company and you shouldn’t do it just for the money and be patient. On the other hand, there are many opportunities for intrapreneurship – acting like an entrepreneur within the organisation you work in.
Build a solid foundation – only recently Cvent is getting momentum in the UK market and there is a reason for that. For 8,5 years Cvent has concentrated on their domestic US market before going global. As an entrepreneur, you should scale the business only after you have built a solid foundation within your close environment.
Last but not least, don’t forget where you come from – when you start out small, don’t forget your origins, the difficulties and the people who contributed to your success and went with you through ups and downs. Act like a start-up and build an entrepreneurial culture.
Future of events
Before concluding, he also shared what he thinks the future of the events industry is.
Social event discovery – people will discover events through personal connections on social media, based on the event content.
Single sign-on – not only your event registration will be online, but at the same time you will be able to check-in into the hotel, avoid registration queues, wirelessly print out your event badge, exchange seamless business cards and get on-demand keynote speeches. Last but not least, we will experience more augmented reality and wearable technology.
To conclude, technology enhances event experience, not replaces it. This keynote for example, by no chance can be transferred into real time experience via this blog and YouTube, no matter how detailed or with how many pictures I can support it. I still hope that I could fulfil this gap to some extent, inform you and hopefully inspire you.
What other lessons, based on your own experience, can you share with event entrepreneurs?
All photos © The MICE Blog
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