Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Interview with David Wood, Eventene

For our interview this morning, we talked with David Wood, the Founder and CEO of Eventene (www.eventene.com), an early stage startup, bootstrapped startup developing event management software. David--a veteran of Microsoft, having been the lead developer of Microsoft Exchange--tells us why he started his company.

What does Eventene do?

David Wood: We make event planning software for social organizations. We specialize in events that are planned from 20 people up to 2000 people, we can go higher than that, but that's our sweet spot. We do private events, not public events. We're not trying to be an Eventbrite. It's all about a social organization, like a Boy Scout group, a Girl Scout group, a religious organization like a church, K-12 such as when they do field outings, but also holiday parties and company meetings, sales force organizations. What differentiates us, is we help you plan an event, but also help you assign roles. We allow you to collect RSVPs, but we also allow you to assign roles and responsibilities. So, if you are eating at tables, you can seat them next to each other, ask questions like who would you like to sit next too. We also put a mobile app in all of the people's hands so they know where they need to go, where they are sitting, and those types of things.

How long has the app been available?

David Wood: It's been about a year and a half now, we launched it in 2018. The company is almost three years old.

How are you backed and funded?

David Wood: I've been backing everything myself so far, and we're looking for our first institutional round.

Why would someone use your software versus all those other event planning software products out there?

David Wood: We're going really after two different markets. One is those who are using specialized software, although we're not really going after people to switch their software. For example, if they're using Signupgenius, or Evite, then we're not trying to convert them. We're really going after 70 percent of people who are using just spreadsheets, email, and maybe using some sort of online survey tool. So they've cobbled together three or four of those different tools, and they have to move data in and out of each of those systems. We do it all in an efficient workflow in one single database, and we make the whole process go faster. It's easier to keep the data all in one place.

What were you doing before this startup?

David Wood: I was a developer on Excel at Microsoft in Redmond early in the day, when I first started by career, and then I was the lead developer of Microsoft's Exchange Server, so I've been around productivity software for many years. Then, I did management consulting for awhile, and I started this about three years ago to solve a particular problem I was seeing with my son's Boy Scout troop.

How did you end up here in Los Angeles if you had working up in Redmond for Microsoft?

David Wood: This is the land where I can play tennis year round, outdoors. I like to be here in LA, since I grew up here.

What was the biggest challenge for you as a startup founder?

David Wood: The biggest challenge is scaling, and finding customers who love the product. We've already proven out the model, that people are willing to pay, and customers are very happy, and the churn rate is very low. Finding all those people who have that specific event planning need is a challenge. However, we're meeting that now, hired a marketing agency, and started some new campaigns, and we're learned from that experience where our customers are and where to reach them.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned as a startup entrepreneur, now that you've been at it for a few years?

David Wood: You have to stretch our your expectations. I thought we would immediately bring the product to market, and people would just love and embrace us and we'd grow meteorically, but it's taken a little more time than that. I think we'll still get there, but you have to double or triple your timeline and expectations.

Thanks!

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