An Interview with Eran Ben-Shushan, Bizzabo Co-founder and CEO: ‘We are on a Mission to Bring People Together and to Make Events More Rewarding for Everyone Involved’

“Our success is determined by the success of the events we power, and this approach has proven to be positive so far.”

Cloud computing continues to change the way businesses conduct operations. Internet marketing has greatly been impacted by this trend. This is because of the numerous benefits that cloud computing offers such as transforming the way marketers interact with customers. Cloud computing has also made the storage as well as the distribution of data easier. But why exactly should you consider this option in your marketing strategies?

Bizzabo is an award-winning holistic event cloud and the world’s fastest growing event technology company, providing marketers with a modern suite of tools to create impactful and rewarding professional events. The company offers registration and ticketing, event marketing tools, event website builder, agenda management, networking and event apps, contact management, polls and surveys, and sponsorship opportunities. It offers services for corporations, publishers, marketing agencies, third-party planners, independent planners, and associations.

Bizzabo was incorporated in 2011 and is headquartered in New York.

Eran Ben-Shushan, Bizzabo CEO/Co-founder, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Why was the company set up? How did you select the vertical and decide to be a part of the global platform?

In 2011, my co-founders and I were working on a separate startup idea and as part of our work, we attended numerous professional events in the hopes of networking and educating ourselves more on the industry we were looking at.

It was through those experiences that we realized just how fragmented, non-efficient, non-personalized and non-measurable the event industry is. There were not many technological solutions available to help event organizers optimize their events and we felt that we could (and should) fix those problems with the right technology. We jumped at it and created an event networking application aimed at improving the on-site experience for event attendees, exhibitors and sponsors.

Fast forward two years, although our mobile event application received great traction within the market, we constantly surveyed and listened to our customers and at some point, we realized there was much more that could be done to harness the power of technology at events. We decided to go after a much bigger vision – to create the world’s first all-in-one event success software.

We aimed to create a holistic platform for event professionals to use throughout their event lifecycle, from the pre-show promotion to post-event analytics. Today, Bizzabo enables event organizers and marketers to optimize the entire event planning journey. Through Bizzabo, they can better understand data, surface insights, illustrate ROI and determine what steps should be taken to achieve their business goals. This is the success element that we saw as an opportunity.

What is your company’s vision statement? And to what extent are you successful in achieving the same?

Our vision is to unleash the power of professional events to create impactful and rewarding experiences.

We work closely with our customers in creating successful events. This includes listening to feedback before improving our product features, as well as providing a dedicated team to share resources, tools and advice for our customers to use when planning their events. Bizzabo adopts a customer-centric approach in our methods to not only provide the industry with an event software that people love but to also go beyond that in acting as an extension of their event planning team.

With a clear vision leading our strategies, we have been fortunate enough to grow alongside many of our customers over the years. We have seen their events improve revenue, attendance, engagement, satisfaction and retention. This ranges from smaller in-house events to larger conferences like Consensus by Coindesk or INBOUND by Hubspot. Our success is determined by the success of the events we power, and this approach has proven to be positive so far.

What are some factors that have been/are the biggest asset to your organization?

In Bizzabo, we place a huge emphasis on our people and vision. In the growing stages, it’s imperative to bring in exceptional talent that also aligns with the company culture that you want to build. We have a talent-driven strategy behind our recruiting efforts. Although we have numerous open positions in the office, we never sacrifice quality over quantity when it comes to hiring. Each hire we’ve brought into the team has been meticulously interviewed and assessed to ensure that our open positions are filled with problem solvers, task drivers and initiators. In addition to having a team of capable individuals, a well-rounded team acts as a catalyst to push each individual to be better at what they do.

After recruiting top talent, we place a huge emphasis on welfare and workplace transparency to ensure everyone can perform their best on a daily basis. When it comes to company culture, we have numerous initiatives, such as quarterly company bonding activities, monthly team bonding activities and an environment that encourages employees to create their own cultural contributions. We also incorporate an open office setup and weekly all-hands meetings with open channels for feedback. On the leadership the team, we constantly strive to explain the rationale behind our decisions and strategies to paint a clearer picture of the company’s strategy as a whole.

Additionally, having two offices, in New York City and Tel Aviv, we pride ourselves on having a global company culture. Through constant meetings and interactions between people of different backgrounds, we have adapted Bizzabo’s global company culture by localizing it in every office to ensure everyone is as comfortable as they can be without diminishing the overall company culture we hope to achieve.

Finally, we believe our customers and the relationships we build with them are the backbone of our organization. Thanks to our customer-centric mindset, we are almost religious when it comes to developing our products together with our customers, by carefully listening to their feedback, suggestions and goals (it’s even part of our core values, in this case – We Are Humble). This two-way conversation helps us better assist our customers, while also helping us create the best product and technology in the market.

Eran Ben-Shushan: A Brief Background

Eran, Co-founder, is the Chief Executive Officer of Bizzabo. He has led Bizzabo in winning the People’s Choice Award at the Event Tech Awards for three years in a row. Prior to founding Bizzabo, Eran was an event marketer and served as the CEO of the Rosh-Pina Media Convention. He also was a team leader and systems engineer at Elbit Systems. Ben-Shushan graduated cum laude from The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, where he studied Business and participated in the prestigious Zell Entrepreneurship Program, often considered the Y Combinator of Israel.

“I could truly write pages on how valuable their customer support team is. I sing Bizzabo’s praises any chance I get.” - Molly Reid - Director of Events, Teach For America