I saved my events startup (so far) after losing 80% ($2M+) of revenue from COVID! - AMA
I saved my events startup (so far) after losing 80% ($2M+) of revenue from COVID! - AMA
The last year and a half have been a roller coaster for any events business. Ask me about moving fast, cost-cutting, finding other revenue sources, what to expect post-pandemic, and much more.
More about Step: https://stepconference.com/ & https://stepfeed.com/
Trending on Indie Hackers
Does the digital event business have any legs to stand on?
seems like digital events were a huuuuge miss in 2020/2021 and not sure they are really even enjoyed
its my guess in-person events will make a big comeback, if they havent already.
In-person events are definitely making a comeback. We plan to host our annual festival in Dubai in February.
When covid hit, we made a fast shift to virtual. I was personally really excited about the potential of virtual events. Since then, we have hosted tens of small and large virtual events. The general sentiment was that people enjoyed them, but not as much as our physical events. I think there are great advantages to virtual events, but they remain highly passive and the biggest challenges remain around networking and meeting people, which is what events are all about. Our solution to that had been to pre-schedule hundreds of meetings for virtual events using a WordPress calendar /scheduling plugin linked to gravity forms.
What did you do to be able to survive throughout this time?
Was it just cutting back on spending/employees? anything specific that you see as a takeaway for surviving the next potential economic downturn?
We did two things simultaneously:
Cut down on spending by assuming the worst-case scenario. In March 2020, we held a team meeting instantly and discussed what might be unfolding with the team and the risk we are facing. We discussed everyone having to sacrifice during this period, starting with myself as CEO, and that this might take a while. After that, we introduced salary cuts across the board. The most important thing here was to treat our people well and be very transparent with them. Everyone, without exception, was incredibly understanding.
Focus on the opportunity: We were lucky that we had just hosted our most significant event before COVID hit. Otherwise, we would have been in deeper trouble. It was still troubling knowing that we were going to lose almost all our revenue for the rest of the year. This was when we worked on pivoting the company to focus on: virtual events, podcasts, and newsletters. The whole team was pumped about the potential of these categories, and within weeks, we were hosting our first virtual event.
The most considerable pain was 2021, when we realized we had to go through another year without our physical events revenue. Somehow, we have managed to go through the year, and we are hoping to emerge much more robust in 2022 with various virtual and physical events, podcasts, and newsletters.
To sum up learnings/takeaways:
I hope this helps:)