How it all started

In 2009, I launched OMyConf — an application for making new acquaintances at various meetings. In just a year, it turned into a platform that was converting all the convertible activities into digits — starting from attendees registration and badges printing to the organization of networking, polls and questions to the speakers as well as a mobile application. The service was developing rapidly in Russia. However, when we decided to enter the American market, we ran out of money and did not manage to attract new investments. Only now I realized the strategy was wrong. Like many other startups back then, we thought that at first, the project should be tested and the money raised in Russia, and only after that, it should start conquering the USA. This was a mistake.

Monetization turned out to be our second weak spot. We were just providing our services and receiving money for that. Event organisers paid quite reluctantly, after all, those were additional expenses for the business and the value of mobile access to the event information and all the services for its participants in 2010 were visible only to the most advanced organisers.

I envisioned the platform development differently, for example, by adding recordings of the presentations to create a new income flow for the conferences. Unfortunately, at that time the project was already living its last moments. Thus, I decided to shut it down. Later we managed to attract little angel investments and I started implementing my idea with recordings in a new project.

ConferenceCast.tv was launched in 2013. The investments were raised thanks to business angels and accelerators, then we created the MVP and started getting content rapidly. It turned out that a huge number of conferences were making recordings but did nothing with them. In summer 2014, we were aiming to enter the US market. The crisis happened though and the investor, whose money we were relying on, started having financial issues. The previous investors were not able to help us as well.

I continued seeking investments, minimized all the possible expenses: only one person left in the team, a few others were helping from time to time. In 2015, when the last investment option failed, ConferenseCast was closed. We agreed with the partners upon the partition of intellectual property. I received the rights for the brand; the codes and all the groundwork could be used by all partners and investors (however, no one ever used it).

I went on hiring and started to create a new version of the project. In a year, I found a developer-partner and officially re-launched the startup. In 2017 a new, made from scratch MVP appeared on the market. In summer, the first business angel was found, and along with them a full team: CTO and two developers. From that point, began the new project history that continues up to now.

...

What is the current situation on the event market

...

What is ConferenceCast

We offer a platform for organising conference broadcasting and access to the recordings after the event in the format that is convenient for the clients. For example, all the recordings are organised according to the schedule with “search” and “filter” options available. Every recording has an annotation that allows a viewer to find out the content in just a few seconds and access the most interesting topic. Moreover, there are separate audio-tracks for podcast fans, decrypted recordings (for those who enjoy reading or needs the text version of the presentation), content search, short info about a speaker; it is also possible to add useful materials they were using during presentations.

Our main difference from other hostings (including YouTube) is how we aggregate and provide information. We do it in a way that it is convenient to use. And we are doing all of it instead of event organisers, therefore making their task easier. What is important, we have a cool white label solution that allows organisers to publish content under their label.

Ultimate consumers can watch presentations and whole sessions for free or buy access to some parts (pay-per-access). In future, we would like to end up having a subscription access model. Before the pandemic, the average price to access the whole conference in the USA cost $200–400. Now we expect a small decrease (10–15%) as the demand and organisers costs (in comparison to offline format) become lower. Nevertheless, with our help, organisers will be able to make up 30% plus by selling videos before and after the event. According to our calculations, it is around $100.000 in the USA.

We estimated that before the pandemic only 10% of all the conferences in the USA were recording the videos, and even less were selling them. After the pandemic highest point and before offline events will get their credibility back, we believe 100% of the players left will make recordings.

We are not asking for exclusiveness to publish videos. However, if the partner wants to earn money, it is obvious that the same content should not be available for money and for free at the same time. Our business model — revenue distribution. We take 15% of sales via the white label and 30% of sales from ConferenseCast.tv. While we are building the content library and the portal audience, the main sales source will be conference organisers’ resources. Nevertheless, our goal is to have the biggest amount of sales through our marketplace.

...

Starta Acceleration

In February 2019 the startup got into Starta accelerator. In Russia, we already had an approved business model with around 50 paid conferences from 8 clients, the majority of which were with us for more than 2 seasons. The main goal of the acceleration I envisioned was to get the first clients in the US.

During the acceleration period, we managed to get leads. We had drafts for pilot projects but they didn’t pop-up because of various reasons. For instance, one client wasn’t satisfied with our agent contract. We prepared the documents by ourselves with the help of Russian lawyers who assured us they had already prepared such kinds of contracts for startups before. In the end, we had to remake the contract, and so to say, American lawyers set the price of $7 thousand for this.

While communicating with event organisers, I faced the issue that there was a big percent of those who did not understand what we were doing. But those who understood liked the output. It means that we had an issue with pitching our message and product values and understanding of the real organisers’ problems. After the acceleration program, Starta team helped us by introducing us to the b2b-sales expert. Together we did a great job that helped us to suppress those gaps in presenting our value and to build a wholesome mechanism of cold sales via emails. In particular, he advised:

1. Set up an email chain from 3–4 contacts with conference organisers where we will show the value of our product, show successful case-studies and get acquainted with the product closer;

2. Add LinkedIn active outreach to the email, create content and interesting posts in LinkedIn: inform about the market trends, useful tools and enclose the value of the product;

3. Get connected with a few new contacts inside the organisation alternately. For example, to start with the marketing department managers, then move to the conference producers and, if this doesn’t work, go to the next contact within the company;

4. Form individual scripts to make offers more precise and in different verticals. For example, form 3–4 client target groups and write an individual script of the email-chain, where it is told how we have already helped to solve problem A of company B precisely in their industry;

5. If we fail to establish the contact, we can try to contact the companies or conferences in 3–4 months. It is possible that their priorities will change by that time and the solution will be more relevant.

Right now we are on the fundraising stage. Due to the obvious reasons our attractiveness to the investors has increased. We are negotiating with investors from the USA and Russia. By the way, the money from Russian private investors is not as toxic as it is believed to be.