More than two years into the pandemic, there is certainly no shortage of virtual event platforms — from legacy players like Cvent to new 3D metaverse platforms to the upgraded Zoom Events — and new startups are still carving out their piece of the market.
One such platform is UK-based Tevent, which has raised $2 million in seed funding in the past few months. Although there is currently a lot of competition in the virtual events space, Tevent’s mission is distinct: to enable any organization, society, association, etc. to create engaging virtual events, regardless of the size of their team — or their budget.
Ahmed Amer, co-founder and CEO of Tevent, describes himself as entrepreneurial, though he wasn’t necessarily planning to start a business when the pandemic hit. However, like many others at that time, he saw a growing need that he wanted to address.
“The reason that I started Tevent isn't because I just wanted to start any business,” he says. “It's because there was no one doing what I thought needed to be created. It’s been very interesting ride, being an entrepreneur, but it's not one that I would’ve seen myself on if you would’ve asked me five years ago.”
Amer was teaching physics and running comedy events in London’s West End prior to the pandemic, which taught him skills that came in handy when it came to building Tevent. “As you can imagine, as soon as the pandemic hit, those things all evaporated,” he says. Dissatisfied with the way the pandemic events landscape was shaping up and the inability to connect with others online in a meaningful way, Amer teamed up with Rolls-Royce design engineer Alex Dobson (now Tevent’s CPO) to create a new platform.
Although virtual platforms have innovated and introduced many new features since 2020 to enable better virtual interactions, virtual events, for the most part, are “still very much the realm of big corporations who can afford to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a single event,” notes Amer.
“The time and money and effort that it takes to set these events up with these bigger platforms can often be a barrier for any organizer who wants to run an engaging webinar, workshop, etc., so that's why we started this company. We're currently going for the sections of the event world that don’t have the time, money, or technical expertise that it requires to make a big event good and engaging. The barriers are still very high to create a good virtual event.”
Tevent’s fundamental mission is to democratize virtual events — Amer likens the current state of virtual events to the internet before YouTube. “Before YouTube existed, you basically had to be a professional broadcaster to be able to share videos with anyone on the internet The way that we're different in the market is that we want to make it viable for anyone to be able to create a really engaging, fulfilling, rewarding, connected event without having to spend more time or resources than they have.”
He continues, “The benefits of virtual events are huge, but the barriers to most people getting good virtual events going is the issue in the market — it's stopping that market from growing and being available for everyone. I think we essentially need a YouTube for virtual events, where absolutely everyone can make a virtual event good.”
Part of realizing Amer’s vision is providing as much functionality as possible for free — Tevent currently offers all of its features even on its free tier. Amer notes that while this may not always be the case, the company is aiming to keep it that way. “The reason we can offer all of our features for free is that fundamentally, the biggest source of cost is the usage,” he says.
Users who are planning for more attendees than are included with the free plan can upgrade their Space — which are essentially community or group pages on Tevent where events live — to accommodate more users, but other features such as adding organizers and hosting video on demand (for up to six months) are included at no cost to the event planner or organization. In addition, Tevent does not currently take any commission on ticket sales on the platform.
“Billing people for every little thing that they might want to use adds up, and the cost of that event can quickly become a barrier, even at low levels of usage,” says Amer. “If people can see the benefits for a low cost, and that's still profitable for us, then maybe in the future when we allow these companies to use virtual events to grow and reach a bigger audience — which is the point — they'll be able to have more usage, and the market will grow through volume rather than high prices".
Another goal of Tevent’s is to boost event discoverability by allowing people to find other events happening on the platform, a functionality that is currently in the pipeline, and which may include personalized recommendations based on events people have previously attended.
While many in the event industry are still debating the value of in-person versus virtual events, Amer does not see them as competing formats — rather, just like the advent of the television greatly enhanced the value of sports instead of taking away from the in-person experience, both in-person and virtual events can and will complement each other.
“People will fly across the country or the world to go to physical sporting events, and that has come from the publicity, the ability to watch football games from anywhere,” he says. “I don't think it's fair or even useful to compare event formats as if you need to choose There is much potential in the virtual event space to do things that we could never do with physical events, but that doesn’t diminish the value of in-person. The ability for anyone to be able to host engaging virtual events could be a very radical and beneficial change for a lot of people in the future.”