Friday's news that D.C.-based event tech startup nvite has been acquired by San Francisco's Eventbrite might have seemed out of the blue. How did the six-person nvite come on the radar of the possible IPO candidate Eventbrite?
But nvite CEO and co-founder Martin Ringlein tells DC Inno that it's not so surprising after all. The two companies have had a pretty healthy working relationship since nvite's product launched, Ringlein said this weekend.
"I see a lot of value in the scale that Eventbrite has," Ringlein said. "They have so many customers and so many events, and it seems like a strong opportunity to take the things that make nvite really special and make them more formally a part of the Eventbrite ecosystem. It seemed like a good win-win."
April 1 this year marked exactly three years since the two teams met for the first time. Ringlein said Eventbrite reached out to him and his six-person team pretty much right when nvite's product prototype launched in 2014. They wanted to meet on April Fool's Day.
"We thought this has got to be a joke because we had just launched the prototype, but we were also about to raised that million dollar round so we had some good traction," Ringlein said. "It was just kind of friendly and sort of informal."
Three years ago today ... we started a conversation with just a prototype and a hell of a lot of passion and potential. pic.twitter.com/gvYNwsYvO0
— Martin Ringlein (@smarty) April 1, 2017
What came from that meeting was a three-year working relationship. At the time, nvite was simply an event management tool. It didn't sell tickets, like Eventbrite did, and the execs at the San Francisco startup gave Ringlein tips for running and scaling the business: "They shared some insights into things that they think are problematic with new startups coming into the space," Ringlein said. "I remember they specifically mentioned that fraud is a big thing they have to deal with at Eventbrite. That was never a feature I had to think of, and it turns out fraud is a big issue when you take credit card payments."
The relationship kept going like this for a few years. If one of the groups was in the other's hometown, they would try to sync up. They would give each other feedback and acted as a support for each other in a growing event tech space.
Eventually, as nvite continued to scale, it looked to Eventbrite as it developed a revenue model. "At some point we had to start making actual money and we thought 'Who makes money in this space?' Eventbrite makes billions of dollars in ticket sales every year," Ringlein said. "So we started doing ticket sales. That's when we started to think of Eventbrite more as a competitor." Nvite even started working with Eventbrite's API to make it easier for customers who wanted to make the switch from the San Francisco company. A few months ago, the two companies formed an exclusive partnership with one another.
"Eventbrite's platform is much more robust—especially for the professional level event organizer. We at a minimum had to do what they do, but better, and then we have to do things that they're not doing, which is exhausting for a six-person team," Ringlein said.
"We had this A-ha! moment when we were working with their API: What if we built tools where Eventbrite organizers didn't have to leave Eventbrite and could use nvite tools?"
Instead of focusing on making themselves accessible to those throwing the event, nvite focused on its customer's customers: how does the platform work for those who are trying to attend the event? How can we make it intuitive for them? That's where nvite differed from Eventbrite and Ringlein said that decision made them appealing to Eventbrite.
nvite is only where it's at because of D.C. I don't think it could've launched anywhere else.
"We always thought of it as let's build for the customer's customer, which sounds a bit counterintuitive and kinda crazy, but all in all, that's the path that nvite took and it's what made it unique and special," Ringlein said.
Ringlein couldn't talk much on the deal details and future planning when we talked Sunday—at least, not until Eventbrite releases an official announcement. But the entire six-person nvite team is now based in San Francisco, and as it stands, the nvite product will remain a standalone entity.
"Being closer to that (Eventbrite) team, more integrated with team, it's easier—especially when we think about the combination of sales efforts and integration efforts," Ringlein said.
While nvite has made the move to San Francisco permanently, Ringlein said he couldn't have launched the company anywhere else but Washington, D.C.
"nvite is only where it's at because of D.C. I don't think it could've launched anywhere else," Ringlein said.
"All the efforts in Crystal City at the same exact time that we're raising money. That's pure coincidence. Shana Glenzer and Michael Chasen launching SocialRadar and deciding to use nvite to launch all of those launch events is perfectly coincidental. The world couldn't have come together at a better time."
Image courtesy of nvite
