YC-Backed Eventjoy Is A One-Stop Shop For Organizing Events

Y Combinator-backed Eventjoy, a service that makes it easier to organize events using online and mobile tools, is officially making its debut today, offering support for online ticketing, event websites, mobile event apps, Twitter walls, and more. The company, previously known as EXMO, had in the past been more focused on its mobile application for event organizers, but is now working to offer a complete solution that can handle everything from accepting payments to polling users after the event has wrapped.

The Tampa Bay area company, founded by Todd Goldberg and Karl White, first emerged from a Startup Weekend event, and later found some initial traction within that organization. During its private beta period, Eventjoy (then known as EXMO), was used by 14 Startup Weekend events, and dozens of other small-scale events like Barcamp, hackathons, food and wine conferences, and more. By its October 2013 exit from beta, EXMO had run 100 events to date with thousands of total attendees.

Today, co-founder Goldberg tells us that Eventjoy has over 700 organizers using its platform for all kinds of events and festivals, including things like several TEDx events, and “4 Years from Now,” an entrepreneurial-focused event taking place during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Now as Eventjoy, the service is expanding its feature set to offer a wider variety of services to organizers, who can pick and choose the ones they need.

To get started, organizers sign up and enter in the details about their event, ticket price and availability on the Eventjoy website. In an online dashboard, they can customize the schedule, speakers, exhibitors, sponsors, entertainment, and venue details. After customization is complete, organizers then launch the website and can make use of a suite of promotional tools, for things like email campaigns (coming soon), widgets to embed on websites, flyer mailings, and social media communications. Organizers can also direct attendees to download the mobile app (iOS or Android) related to the event.

During the event, the attendees can use the app to access all event info, connect with other attendees, and provide feedback about the event and its sessions. Organizers, meanwhile, can send instant communications to the attendees. These social and engagement features have always been what made Eventjoy stand out against the competition, whose event apps would often be no more than a mobilized version of a paper guide.

Another unique feature Eventjoy offers is a colorful “activity wall” which runs on external monitors with information about the event, including social media content (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, Vine, etc.), event content (speakers, sessions, announcements), and polls. These walls can also help to engage attendees who hadn’t yet download the mobile app itself, the company points out.

wall

When the event wraps, organizers can access analytics about the sessions, speakers and who’s engaged with the event’s sponsors.

“The analytics right now are based on app engagement,” explains Goldberg. “That’s based on where the downloads are coming from, [attendees’] engagement with sponsors, who were the most engaged sponsors, the breakdown of Android vs. iOS as well as real-time usage.”

Currently, Eventjoy charges $1 per ticket plus 2% of the ticket price, but is free for events that are free, as it only charges for processing ticket sales. The company understands that, initially, event organizers may continue to use other ticketing and registration platforms, but is betting on the power of its connected platform to eventually change that.

“They can come onto our platform and use us even if they are using some other registration platform, and it’s all completely free,” says Goldberg. “We think the value for them is not only having a better event experience now, but for their next event, they’ll want to run everything through one platform to streamline communications, promotions, and engagement.”

Eventjoy competes with a number of existing event organization, registration and ticketing services as well as mobile applications, including DoubleDutch, Guidebook, Quickmobile, Bloodhound, Bizzabo, Cvent, Eventbrite, and others.