A nearly two-year-old San Diego startup is building on the expertise of veterans of the ACTIVE Network and attempting to revitalize the event-marketing industry. Events.com has raised $20 million and recruited over 50 people, many after Active Network left for Dallas. Times of San Diego spoke with CEO Gregg Parise about the company’s plans to disrupt the industry — now dominated by ACTIVE, Cvent and Eventbrite — and eventually become a destination site for events.
Why did you start Events.com?
We saw a tremendous hole and a tremendous opportunity in the industry. We saw an industry dominated by three large incumbents, each focusing and specializing on a certain vertical, and all of them created between 1999 and 2006. The tenants of technology, the rules of social media, the ability to architect things are very different today than they were back then. There is real inefficiency in the marketplace.
How is Events.com an improvement over other online event systems?
Their platforms are old. They were built in the pre-social era. Those companies are very transaction based. We really consider Events.com to be a lifestyle brand and a lifestyle company. We provide the technology that enables both the event organizer and the event participant to engage in the experiences they love. From the enterprise side, we provide an entire robust, enterprise-grade suite of solutions. What differentiates us is the ability to provide the organizer with engagement tools for their participants. We’re absolutely mobile first; none of the incumbents are.
How does your business model work?
The business model is a processing fee paid for by the event participant. It’s kind of like the old Ticketmaster model. And every time somebody signs up we want to have social relevance. We would like every registration to turn into 1.5 registrations.
Do you handle all types of events, or is there a specialty?
Our DNA, given the fact that we are here in San Diego and we have a lot of ex-ACTIVE individuals, including our founder, is in endurance and participatory sports. We have a very good presence in the experiential race world. We will be making a very concerted and conscious effort to move into the corporate space. And we’ll also be addressing the festival food and wine space.
What’s the long-term future for Events.com?
Something that we think about all the time is 94 percent of registrations in North American still occur offline. That’s a crazy number. I challenge my team all the time to figure out some of those places where our solution solves a need. It’s a tremendous opportunity. Ultimately we’re going to be engaging a consumer who cares about what it is they’re doing. We want to be at the center of the event ecosystem.
Times of San Diego, a startup itself, regularly writes about startups in technology, biotech and other sectors of local business. If you are a startup in the San Diego area and want to tell your story, please contact news@timesofsandiego.com.
