Learn how to validate your startup idea by pre-selling it, for only $80 (includes a free 1-hour consultancy call).

EventVue

Built online communities for conferences
Startup Cemetery

Don't be the average security professional that spends 4,300 hours annually to maintain compliance. Simplify your audits and reduce your workload with G2's 5-star rated compliance automation platform.

Get started →
GENERAL INFORMATION
Category:
Finances
Country:
United States
Started:
2007
BUSINESS FAILURE
Outcome:
Shut Down
Cause:
Lack of PMF
Closed:
2010
FOUNDERS & EMPLOYEES
Number of Founders:
2
Name of Founders:
Josh Fraser, Rob Johnson
Number of Employees:
1-10
FUNDING
Number of Funding Rounds:
2
Total Funding Amount:
$455K
Number of Investors:
9

Don't be the average security professional that spends 4,300 hours annually to maintain compliance. Simplify your audits and reduce your workload with G2's 5-star rated compliance automation platform.

Get started →

What was EventVue?

EventVue was as a social private network whose aim was to assist online communities to have a better conference networking experience. This platform helped attendees connect from different parts even before they met at the conference. The platform sought to make social connections easier for people who frequently traveled to attend conferences around the world but end up not knowing or not interacting with their fellow attendees before and after they got to the event. The startup later pivoted to become an event discovery platform.

Why did EventVue fail and shut down?

EventVue shutdown in February 2010, due to the fact that it lacked product-market fit and failed to test early on their assumptions about the usefulness of the product from their target customers view.

EventVue co-founder Josh Fraser wrote in a postmortem that EventVue was a Vitamin instead of a painkiller, the platform was ‘nice to have’ but not necessarily needed by conference organizers. Despite the fact that organizers thought it was a good platform for connectivity and interaction, they weren’t particularly interested in paying for it since it didn’t bring them any additional revenue, cut any of their expenses or make their business any better. Being able to sell more tickets was the primary focus of conference organizers and their product wasn’t addressing that need.

Discovering this, EventVue decided to take a different approach by introducing the EventVue Discover widget which automatically notified people about who else would be attending the conference in hope that this would increase ticket sales for the event. However, this feature backfired at them and sales actually dropped. It seemed that most attendees used the widget to check if friends and acquaintances would attend and when they learned that no one they knew didn’t sign up they refrained from purchasing conference tickets.

Go on Reading

The All-In-One Newsletter for Startup Founders

90% of startups fail. Learn how not to with our weekly guides and stories. Join +40,000 other startup founders!

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.