This series is dedicated to learning from event experts on various topics. We cover event technology, meeting design, and much, more more! Today, we are pleased to interview ALON ALROY, Co-Founder | CMO & BizDev at Bizzabo

First of all, please tell our readers about Bizzabo – what is the company all about?
Bizzabo revolutionizes the event experience by socializing conferences for both attendees and organizers. Bizzabo delivers increased potential to network, communicate ideas and receive valuable feedback. By integrating social media to construct highly-interactive event communities, we help organizers, sponsors and exhibitors to engage directly with guests and seek out meaningful new business opportunities. Organizers use Bizzabo to mobilize their event information, increase discoverability and word of mouth. The platform has been incorporated into thousands of events worldwide.

What were the 3 keys to getting the company off the ground – where did you invest your time?
There’s a great deal that goes into getting a company off the ground, but three main areas we’ve invested the most time and energy in and have given us the most success are our team, solving a pain point and continually innovating our product and design.

Putting together a great team was one of the most important factors when beginning Bizzabo. Our team is our heart and soul, the people we work with are our ideasmiths, our motiviation, and our culture. Bizzabo began when our three founders experienced a pain in the market, attending conferences and events is hard work and networking with strangers can be even harder. We are consistently addressing this problem by finding more ways to make life a little bit smoother, easier and more efficient. Finally, our time has been spent in creating, and re-creating, a user-friendly product with a great design. We are always taking feedback from our users and organizers and constantly iterating to achieve the best product possible for everyone.

What kind of clients do you serve?
Socializing events is our vision and this vision serves a wide array of clients. Our work is just as important for small events and big time conferences. Whether it is a small corporate gathering or an international expo with thousands of people, the heart and soul of events and conferences is networking. Knowing who is going, who is there and who to spend your time with is key. Organizers always want to provide the best experience for their attendees and Bizzabo allows them to do that, no matter the size of the event.

How do you use events to expand the reach of your brand?
Each and every event using Bizzabo has social media integration, so our brand has been able to grow through organic word of mouth and sharing on social networks.  Networking communities on Bizzabo, no matter the size of the event, not only help organizers in promoting the event but help cultivate our brand recognition as more and more users join the community can create social buzz.

What is your latest and greatest feature that you don’t want people to miss?
Our new conference polling feature is a direct line for attendees to share their experiences using live opinion polls, total experience surveys or competitions. These new insights give participants a real feeling of contributing to the conference and allows organizers to increase engagement and audience connection as well gain valuable feedback directly from attendees. In short, we’re putting one more layer of ‘social’ into what should be a very social experience.

Until today, event planners had to pay for a dedicated polling system in addition to an event app and a networking platform. Bizzabo’s integrated system reduces costs, saves setup time and makes the attendee experience more seamless.

Finally, what is your favorite app?
There are tons of great apps out there – we love Pocket for keeping track of interesting articles we want to read on the go, and Hootsuite for staying on top of our social media engagement, but, honestly, if we were to tell you our favorite app was anything but Bizzabo, we’d be just plain lying 😉