Host a Virtual Meeting or Event Using Video Technology with Pedro Góes of InEvent

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Pedro Góes 0:00
Now if you tell people like, I, we cater for anyone, like any customer can come here from any location from any budget from many requirements, and we say yes to everything. I don’t think you are going to be the best at something, you know doing that.

Alexander Ferguson 0:21
Welcome to UpTech Report. This is our applied tech series. UpTech Report is sponsored by TeraLeap. Learn how to leverage the power of video at teraleap.io. Today, I’m excited to be joined by my guest, Pedro Goes, who is based in Atlanta, Georgia. He’s the CEO at Inevent. Welcome, Pedro. Good to have you on.

Pedro Góes 0:37
That’s good to be here. No, thanks. Thanks. I like seeing I’m very excited to be here on this. On this session today,

Alexander Ferguson 0:43
Yeah. Now Inevent is a virtual and hybrid event platform for event professionals. And definitely going virtual and events is a big topic. And there’s many ways approaches how we understand. Let’s just start off what is the problem that you see from your perspective, and our setup to solve?

Pedro Góes 1:01
We’re here to deliver a great video for customers. So we work with marketing and event managers to move it to deploy software across the globe. And there are so many challenges that we help with because today, most of the video solutions is quite limited in terms of layout customization, having control over defeat and interacting with all the solutions, and availability and region allocation. So there are so many things that are still available for intervention improve. And our mission is to build the best subscription for events and media events, mostly. So that’s what we do on a daily basis. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 1:39
Video events and a mentality that now you started 2018 Is that correct? So yeah,

Pedro Góes 1:45
the 2018 Yeah, first year actually was 2019. And we have been growing since then.

Alexander Ferguson 1:51
Okay, well, your pre COVID Being able to, there was a little bit but how we understand them. And what’s your background? Is this your first startup?

Pedro Góes 2:03
Yeah, no, no. So before, so we’re three co founders, me veniam. Marissa, we have been working together now for nine years, seems like a lifetime, but nine years working together, and we start our first company college. It was a company also focused on events, we were doing more like the agency biz, you know, building events and trade shows and all this kind of stuff. And we did that from 2012 to 2018. And then we decided to shoot both. Yeah, all right. Yeah, we were three, but we had like, 20 employees at that time, you know, in our company. And we were software engineers, you know, like, we are computer engineers, and also mechanical engineer. So we decided to Let’s shift our focus in Google, you know, fully software, you know, remote, all those things. And we decided to build first like, this platform, that’s basically the event. Oh, s for AV professionals. And, you know, if you’re running an event on the cloud, and you need help linking the events, the perfect solution for video, and also registration, all those systems all together.

Alexander Ferguson 3:11
You’re definitely looking at from the the software engineers, the technical side, have that your three of you the cofounders How did you guys already meet like prior to that first venture? Do you guys just find you’re good complement to each other in your skill sets?

Pedro Góes 3:28
Yeah, Emily, I mean, I started with, you know, I had the idea. And I was like, man, we should go and find, you know, people and sell the software, everything. So the thing is, I started meeting with a lot of people in college, you know, like many years ago, and I, some people joined the project, we actually had our own time, we had eight or nine partners on the event. So we had no C level designers C level, like we had everything on this company. And Marissa and Vinny are the ones that really saw the vision and grew within event. So we have been able to divide our test, mostly marischal takes, you know, tech side, many takes the sales side, I take strategy, fundraising, all those things in the middle, too. And we work really well together. Yeah,

Alexander Ferguson 4:13
yeah. And you get you went through Y Combinator. Is that right? Yeah.

Pedro Góes 4:17
2018 Yeah, it was a great experience. You know, Y Combinator, it’s quite large program these days, you know, like, on when I was on the program, we had like 300 companies or so. So the, the markets have grown a lot, you know, since the first patch that they had, which is quite good, because that has enabled many opportunities for a lot of companies like today if you think about like events, a very niche company now like we create video for events, you know, like to combination of things, and is a big market, like we deploy software for the top like we have customers in the Fortune 50 companies using our solution. So it’s a it’s a software tool that’s nice, but at the same time, it’s highly demanded from customers. on companies that do see the requirement for hybrid and remote work, so it’s very cool how the market expansion allow us in ours to be because before the pandemic, when before, you know, SAS was not that big, we probably not have space to grow and be like a company that we are today. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 5:20
Because yeah, your team was what, like 150 people now or something like that?

Pedro Góes 5:24
Yeah, 100 130 people 35, something like that. Yeah,

Alexander Ferguson 5:28
a lot grew last year with this growth in demand and request for going all virtual.

Pedro Góes 5:34
Exactly. I mean, I mean, the pandemic was a really good trigger for us, like allows us to quickly move to a state of customers are really looking forward to that and everything. But I think like moving forward, is all about making sure customers are getting value from the solution. And we are subscription first company, I tell that because there are a lot of other companies that deploy software for one time events that are softer for, you know, in person events, only their software for hire event, in event doesn’t cater for everyone. We are specifically focused on pharmaceutical education, tech, and financial companies and also associations. So there are a lot of segments that we don’t cover. And we right now we don’t have any, is not on our pipeline to start covering other segments, because we’re really focused on delivering the best experience for our customer database that we have right now. So it’s a space where we can see a lot of growth, but it needs to be with the right, you know, requirements, they need to be eligible to use our software, otherwise, they are not as successful as they should. And they don’t really mean you their contracts, you know, success is not delivered. So doesn’t work. Well, yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 6:40
When I first kind of look at your website and start to look at things I see event marketing, and I think a larger concept. And there are companies out there that look at the overall marketing events, but you are really your core is the video element. Is that right?

Pedro Góes 6:55
That’s correct. And the video is a key piece of the software. So you got to be using video as something that you see, like, I’m going to use video throughout the year, it’s something that I know I’m going to use, it doesn’t mean that every event needs to be on video, like you can have any personal event and you can have small events or gatherings or anything but you need to see video as a part a key part of our strategy throughout the year. In this makes sense for you. Otherwise, the universe solution not be the best fit overall, because there are other solutions that couldn’t deliver more on other spaces or other features now than we do. Yeah. Yeah,

Alexander Ferguson 7:31
I feel like you started also focused on a lot of features for disability as well.

Pedro Góes 7:38
Yeah, no, we are very positive company. Like we have people in 27 countries and you know, I’m also a foreigner find that founders, so I know how be inclusive, you know, something that he resonates really, really well to me and you know, I really see the value of this. So I see included as a personal experience and also I see the value of this because there are so many perspectives that we only understand because there’s people from so many different locations and events. So we decided to be inclusive, in a way embrace it and we started to you know, make this is something that motivates us because we are helping so many people in so many different places because of that. And you know being inclusive means also you know, to having software that helps people with disabilities to do that. So that’s just one part of inclusive, like that’s not everything is a combination of multiple things but we do have like sign language on the platform, we do have the option to navigate using the keyboard only if you wish and we have you know use apps that are able to use VoiceOver so all those tools are built in on the software solution so disabilities are you know you can handle and use offer. The best The goal is to be inclusive Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 9:02
This the space of of marketing is there are other options out there and there’s actually ones that have been around for a while how do you view the space though you’re not really see competition not worried about it like are you just have a different angle?

Pedro Góes 9:16
Yeah, I think the the space is quite interesting. You know, there are 300 providers in this space you know and everything so I tell people is the only way the only path forward is being you know, is creating your niche and having differentiation on your product. You cannot cater to everyone. Now if you tell people like i We cater for anyone like any customer can come here from any location and from any budget from any requirement and we say yes to everything. I don’t think you are going to be the best at something you know doing that. If you really want to say I’m the best in the world that is like having the best Lord or doing that segment on the on my industry. You need to know exactly more if that thing that you do well You cannot say just Yes. And then if you do something out of, you know, as a consultancy to deliver the best experience on this specific feature. So we decided to focus on video we decided to focus on on five specific industries, and we have been working with them to deliver the best experience. That’s our vision on how to be the best one. Yeah, that’s for sure. And for for them.

Alexander Ferguson 10:26
Lessons learned so far, because we do have other SAS founders and stuff who listened to the series of going after the markets that you have, is it would you call enterprise as well, enterprise space? Or are you sir looking to serve midmarket as well, or?

Pedro Góes 10:42
Yeah, so we offered the solution to all customers, their hosts either internal events, so they can be training, workshops, learning and development, all those use cases are very useful, and really benefit a lot from an event. And the second use case is external event. So if you’re going to host you know, to serve a customer conference, or if you’re hosting webinars for clients, or if you’re hosting, if you’re an agency producing multiple events throughout the year, you benefit from an event subscription on the platform. So that’s the first thing. They focus on those use cases, we have been able to create a very good portfolio of use cases, you know, so we can show to all the customers look, that’s how our customers in our Commedia be successful read their use case, and also going to be able to be successful just like them. So that’s how we really approach the problem overall, you

Alexander Ferguson 11:32
know, this future of event marketing, or rather, you being able to have events, with video, you bring it to an online virtual, what do you see the future? Like, if you had to predict five, five years out from now? What is it going to look like? And be like, what would you say?

Pedro Góes 11:51
Yeah, I think the the main difference, the main difference from where we are today in the future is going to be like the overall improvement in video quality and video experience and video. imperious strategy and you know, display, because right now you go into like a two hour webinar session, and you have to listen to everything, there’s so many things that you can do on video to improve that like, but meta tags, you know, translation, multiple languages support on accessibility. And other things is toward this video, use this video as content throughout the year, use more analytics to be able to know where people are able to engage more, and improve their learning process, you know, integration with CEU credits, you know, MC CLE, credits, all these crises those professional associations are using, we can definitely use more of that. So there are so many things where video can be integrated in other applications for professional use, they were not doing it. So they the vision for the future is how do we take video as a standard, you know, delivery tool, and we use this to be more connected? Because right now, video is just you know, like, a pipeline, you know, we’re just looking at the pipeline. I mean, just having Oh, that’s nice to the camera. It’s, it’s a good primer, you know, so we are not getting the final application so well, because there’s not so many connected software to video. And that’s the thing that we are mostly working on, that could be improved a lot for the future, the integration of of the solutions with video,

Alexander Ferguson 13:19
integration integrations of the usage of video. I’m curious, also for the concept of going back in person, I mean, you’re you you’re fairly heavily invested in and yes, virtual but what if a lot more events, people go back? I think people want to go back. What does that look like, though?

Pedro Góes 13:37
So the main thing that we see is that what we learned from the pandemic is that people were in the office, and then they’re working from home. And now they don’t want to go back to the office. You know, like a lot of people, you know, the great resignation going on, like people saying, like, I have to go back to the office, now I’m going to quit, and I’m going to find another job. So we learned two things. The first one is that video is great for content, you know, like, if you’re getting an in person session, and you tell like, I’m going to go to this event, because I’m going to have in person sessions about like, sessions. And there’s not going to be a discussion is more like listening to a speaker or something. Video, it’s much better than that for your learning process. You can track you can pause, you can read the transcription, you can use this recording later. For a reference, it’s so much better this in most events 90% of the event is content, right? Like 10% is your social gathering. So all we tell people is if you’re going to have a social gathering event, like you’re going to summit or your internal summit or the year with a company with your members or anything doing person, you know, go there have a training, you know, like I know go to a resort or something do it in person don’t do this on video is not compatible. But if you’re going to deliver content, which is mostly what people are doing these days, his content, his information is learning dirt virtually, because it’s much better for people to learn. And we have ratios that show that it’s six percent better learning experience on video work on home on their own time, instead of having this in person where they don’t enable really to take notes and everything is not so easy. So there is a shift of, you know, what’s the best application like in person is really good for gatherings based for social events or, you know, like resorts you should do that a person should try out for this. But the content doing virtually is much easier. It’s much more affordable and works much

Alexander Ferguson 15:28
better. Yeah. What can you share about your roadmap, anything you’re excited about coming up and can share here?

Pedro Góes 15:38
Yeah, I mean, we working so many integrations we have, we have a very new exciting products on the video side that we’re going to deploy soon. One thing that we also very excited to work on is the video quality, because most video players today are not really full HD, they’re very low quality when we are having the conversation, right. And then we have to either use better hardware. So that’s an improvement that we are seeing the industry and also have better pipeline compression algorithm. So we can actually deliver 1000 ADP video, you know. So that’s something that for me, it’s very exciting, because I’m really a fan of like when the look in the camera is like great. DSLRs are like full HD video capabilities, and 4k. So we’re not yet on this stage where we see 4k and Full HD as a standard on life conferencing today, we see these only on pre recorded formats, and then they have to be uploaded. But that should be a standard coming from live conferencing, we’re able to do that in the future. So that’s going to be very exciting. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 16:43
How far away? Are we are that?

Pedro Góes 16:46
I think, yeah, I think is a combination of internet connection these days is mostly like latency around, you know, like 5g is going to help all out on that. So that’s one thing. The second thing is harder, no harder. The standard harder that we see on computers these days is not able to deliver 1000 AP, people have to have dedicated cameras, people have dedicated hardware and know how to connect those in the computer to deliver great video. So we are probably one or two years away from actually having these to be more common. But now that everyone is working from home, that is going to be a big incentive for people to start getting better video. And yeah, I got I got my camera like because of the pandemic because I felt like I want to be part of this new, you know, exciting age. So it’s cool.

Alexander Ferguson 17:37
I do you like events? Is it just something that you you enjoy? And that’s why you got into all this are you do you just see the business opportunity. And

Pedro Góes 17:47
so I’m a person that when we started the business, we knew no one we we had zero business experience, like we were like, just just know how to build apps. And we just went in to meet with people. And we saw events as a great tool for that, you know, if you know no one and you want to get started, you go to an event, like a business networking event or get invited to something and you start talking to people and is awesome, because that’s how you like if you know nothing, if it’s zero, like you’re just starting today, you can get started with one client, two clients, and you can meet people and community sites there. And then of course, you can use multiple other assets, you know, Internet, and, you know, guidance and education and everything to improve what you’re going to do. But the first few clients that we ever got came from events. And that’s something that we’re really proud of, to have enabled this for ourselves and also to other customers. They’re doing that on no daily use of the platform. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 18:48
We also have a lot of business leaders who listen to our series. And if you had to think of the last constructive feedback someone gave you on how to improve, someone tells you hey, you should really work on this, that you’d be willing to share of something that you’re working as a business leader, to be able to get better and be able to grow the business more and you’ll lead your people and they think come to mind of you can share.

Pedro Góes 19:13
Yeah, one thing that I’ve heard recently is like how we shift the focus from now, there is one point that you know, the company’s doing well and everything and really, we are able to focus more on how can we make all their successful as I got, like, because we started the company had, you know, nothing and then I was able to build something and you know, improve myself and did something successful to me, right. So now I’m thinking like, there’s plenty of time, plenty of, you know, resources for me to leave like five lifetimes. So now it’s time for me to think about how can I enable this for other people, you know, it shifts away from you and starts to be about the others because You are ready, like, self sufficient in a way, like you already had all the resources that you need and to die. So how can we make sure that I’m also building this environment where other people can also build something like that for them? You know? So is that on benefits? Is that on education? Is that on? Ease of us is that on being more inclusive? And, and and saying, like, I’m going to recruit people from this location, because I think it’s important for us to make an impact there. It’s, it’s how can you really, you know, but others as more important than you. And that’s, it’s very exciting, you know, because you actually say, like, look, I’m able to actually, you know, shift away from like, it’s not just me anymore, you know, I actually have to take care of others, and they’re more important, that’s my work, you know, my work is actually to help them thrive. And, you know, change, it changed my perspective of a lot of things since that started. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 21:01
Yeah, that’s it, that’s a powerful mind shift, I can imagine, as an individual start to recognize that those around you also is is how you manage your time and the way you are spending it. Are you married kids or family or just yourself? You’re just running this by yourself?

Pedro Góes 21:20
Yeah, just being a friend. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 21:22
I love it. It’s also imagine that you pouring your energy into this. But it’s like, what that long term long term is, if you had to just think about what I a word of wisdom that kind of guides you in your mentality, as an entrepreneur, as a leader, you kind of look to maybe it’s a quote, or something from a book, or someone says something, someone said to you, any words of wisdom that come at that time, do you

Pedro Góes 21:49
think the main thing that we see is like it’s, it’s assess, like, what’s really important for you. Like, when I was young money was really important for me, I was like, I have no weekends, you know, I’m just working 24/7, you know, like, doesn’t matter, we have to work, like, we just need to build more software and, you know, be like the next unicorn or something like that, that’s the only thing that matters is getting to be a billionaire, and everything. And, you know, these are things that you pursue, but you see that they are going to take a lot of time. And meanwhile, there are a lot of things that you need to care for, you know, like your family, you know, like, you need to visit your family to visit grandparents, parents, you know, they, you know, they’re really important for, for you. And in there, no, family is not going to be around for you know, especially as you’re growing. The same thing happens with people around you, you know, like, you need to be able to think, How can I make sure that it also something that on this journey, I’m bringing people together with me and not just, you know, using them as assets, you know, like the newly need to be part of who also wants to bring to be a partner Monday with us, you know, so you can work on those things. And that really makes a difference, because money in the end is just an asset. If you don’t know how to use it, that is just going to be sitting on the bank. And there is a certain threshold, like after I know, a couple million, it makes no difference if you have five or 100. Like it’s it’s mostly the same thing, you know.

Alexander Ferguson 23:22
So just a question for fun. I would like to ask as, as a software developer, and as you built apps, are there any favorite small apps that that you found helpful useful in your life, maybe personal or for business, not big ones, like just just simple ones that come to mind,

Pedro Góes 23:37
mostly exercise apps, their apps to a lot of financial apps, VPNs, you know, this kind of stuff. But I don’t have a lot of apps that I use. They’re outside of the after normal scope. Like it’s just very, very standard things,

Alexander Ferguson 23:59
workout apps, and finance apps, and you’re good leading lights, and VPN, that’s right to connect. I love it. Well, this this has been fascinating to hear kind of your own personal mentality of how you you have your mind has been shifting as you’ve been growing in this, this business and the company, but also for the space where you see Event Marketing going, and the exciting journey that you’re that you’ve been on with your with your friends with your co founders. With this whole business growing. We’re excited to see where you head neck for those that wants to learn more, you can head over to inevent.com, that’s inevent.com. And you’ll be able to look so you can schedule a call with them and learn more. Thank you so much Pedro for being on with us. It was great chatting with you. I

Pedro Góes 24:44
I think it was great. And if you have if any and if you want to use innovate in your company, please reach out to our team. We’ll be happy to talk to you and you know, see if we’re a good fit. Yeah.

Alexander Ferguson 24:55
Awesome. Awesome. We’ll see you on the next episode of UpTech Report. Have you seen company using AI machine learning or other technology to transform the way we live work and do business go to UpTechreport.com and let us know