Why I Started Eventible

Eventible founder Ankush Gupta talks about the birth of his company and how it can become an indispensable tool in the arsenal of those wishing to achieve faster personal and professional growth.

It was only when I was on my way to attend Dreamforce in the USA in 2015 for the first time that I realized that I had no clue if the event would work for me on a professional level. At this point, I had already paid a lot for my travel, accommodation, conference tickets, etc., but had nothing beyond the marketing materials made available by the event organizers to tell me if the investment was going to be worth it.

Now, it’s a different story that it was, in fact, worth my time and money, but it got me thinking – what if there was a better way to discover the best events in the world? What would that look like? How could the process of discovery be made more transparent for the potential attendees? These thoughts came to a head during the pandemic when I began to search for good virtual events to attend but found no definite way to put together a shortlist. Additionally, getting peer opinions and conducting research was becoming too time consuming.

All these factors ultimately triggered the birth of Eventible – a platform that lets event attendees contribute their reviews for the benefit of their peers, provides recommendations on what events to attend based on attendee preferences, and uses a unique scoring algorithm to ensure that the most loved events get pushed to the top of their respective category.

Adding Value Across The Events Eco-System

At the heart of it, our primary goal at Eventible is to help attendees find the best events for their needs by creating an efficient mechanism that lets them see what the top events are, attend them, and reap the learning and networking benefits. Attendees can choose to sign up for Eventible’s category-specific newsletters to have easier access to the information on the upcoming and top-rated events that they can then attend. In return, they can review the events they attend thereby helping create a repository of peer-based reviews for others who might be interested.

But Eventible isn’t just for attendees. Our platform also caters towards event organizers, speakers, and sponsors by taking their inputs in order to encourage greater transparency within the events space. So, event sponsors can use our rich data and subsequent research reports to make the process of picking the events to attend more data driven. Not only will this help in greater efficiency, but also help sponsors divert their dollars to the events that have the best chance of bringing a higher ROI.

At the same time, we, at Eventible, hope that event organizers will become our partners in this endeavour since the level of transparency we are aiming to bring to the entire process is a positive thing. Just like the change that swept through the software and SaaS industry when platforms like G2, Capterra, GetApp, etc. began inviting reviews from their users, we, at Eventible, believe that the data we collect will help event organizers in crafting better experiences and going the extra mile in order to delight their audiences across all formats.

The Eventible Scoring Algorithm

What gives Eventible an added edge is our unique scoring system that takes the attendee reviews on our website into account. But how would this work, given that no two attendees will have had the same event experience? Simple, by focusing on the features that all these events have in common.

So, the review form asks the attendees to focus on these common parameters which helps the algorithm calculate an Eventible score per event that, in turn, lets future attendees make a more informed decision regarding the correct event for them. The algorithm takes the available information and calculates an average score per reviewer that is based on factors like the attendee’s likelihood of recommending the event, their overall event experience, as well as their specific online or in-person experiences. The Eventible score for the event as a whole, thus, is a weighted average of these reviewer scores. Reviews that contain more information about an event are weighted more heavily than those that provide little information.

Our platform also allows for a certain amount of customization in the kind of reviews that one can see. What this effectively means is that an attendee, speaker, or sponsor can pivot the data around to only see the reviews provided by their peers. So, attendees can make informed choices, speakers considering speaking opportunities at events can see what their peers have had to say about past editions of that particular event, and sponsors can read what other sponsors have said about ROI and brand goals being met when it comes to specific events.

Change For The Better

The past year has seen the events industry undergo tremendous change. While there has been great innovation with most events making full use of the virtual space, there have also been certain bumps along the way as organizers, speakers, and attendees have tried to overcome the issue of networking. To give birth to a platform like Eventible during such a period of flux has been a challenge by itself since I was forced to take into account the realities of what is now the world’s “new normal”.

As we navigate this period of uncertainty and tremendous change, it is my hope that attendees, speakers, sponsors, and organizers will be open to sharing their inputs in one common space that will, in turn, encourage greater transparency in the events industry. And it is this process of mutual benefit that will help make Eventible an indispensable tool in the arsenal of every person wishing to achieve faster personal and professional growth.