As of March 2020, nearly US$1.2 billion physical events got cancelled due to the COVID-19, according to data by Predict HQ –and the number keeps on rising. With this being the new normal, many companies are now shifting towards organising their events virtually.
“With remote working becoming the new normal during this pandemic, everyday professionals are being approached to become speakers, moderators, or organisers of virtual events,” says Emma Hawker, CEO at Altafy.
Started in 2018 by an ex-events director, Altafy is a platform that makes the lives of event organisers easier by helping them filter and pick out the right speakers for their events –making the process as simple as shopping from Zara. Its goal is to solve the pain points of finding the right speakers for events, which will either make or break the event.
“Soon after I left my company, I decided that I wanted to help other organisers like myself. More so because it’s just very time consuming and laborious to find the right speakers or a good mix of speakers for events. Sometimes you miss really great ones because you didn’t know they existed out there,” she says in an interview with e27.
“So it was really about helping both sides and that was the inspiration, helping organisers find the right people and helping the speakers get their message out there,” she continues.
How it works
Altafy works as a yearly subscription model where organisers are charged a one-time yearly fee of US$1,800 to use the service. It provides organisers with a holistic search platform where they can filter out speakers based on location, experience, or years of speaking.
The platform also has an integrated chat functionality –similar to LinkedIn– to help organisers message speakers to find out more about them.
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Hawker describes the website as not just a search tool but as a productivity tool to keep track of the entire speaker scouting process. For example, apart from keeping track of all of the events that the organiser is running, it also enables them to see which speakers were shortlisted, pending and confirmed at any point in time.
“Essentially, it keeps track of everything that’s going on with your speakers at once, because that … can be very time consuming and is usually kept as data on Excel by teams,” she explains.
While the platform charges organisers with a flat fee, the platform is free to use for speakers. But this is not to say that all speakers on the website are paid speakers; some are also opinion leaders in their industry who are happy to speak free of cost.
Both aspiring and seasoned speakers can sign up on Altafy for free, and immediately start building their profiles, which showcase their speaking topics, showreels, photos, and other relevant information.
“Unlike any other platform, it is free for speakers to sign up. The way we see it, every business professional or leader has knowledge and expertise to share, and audiences want to hear from their industry peers who are living and breathing the same challenges and opportunities as them. We warmly invite industry practitioners to join us and share their experiences with a wider audience,” Hawker adds.
Future roadmap
In its initial stages, COVID-19 affected the events industry as physical gatherings became prohibited. While some thought it wouldn’t last for long, as time passed, everyone started hopping on board on the new virtual-only trends.
“Overall, there was an obvious dip in clients who usually do face-to-face physical events. But then we had more clients who have never been organisers of events themselves. For instance, it can be any company nowadays; they don’t even necessarily have to have an events team,” Hawker asserts. “But as I mentioned, with everything being online, it’s much easier nowadays.”
This has led Altafy to cater to a much larger audience.
Having been bootstrapped, the startup is now in the process of raising its seed funding round to focus on growing its sales and marketing team, along with onboarding a new CFO.
“We plan to some regional sales representatives along with expanding our marketing team. We also aim to onboard a new CFO that can help with the operational sides of the business,” Hawker says.
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Altafy also plans on launching an app version for its platform to further grow its visibility.
Lessons learnt
At the end of the interview, Hawker shares one of the most important lessons that she learnt as a startup founder: Not to be afraid to look vulnerable while asking for help.
“A lot of the time we can be a little bit apprehensive of asking for help, for fear that it makes us look like we don’t know what we’re doing or look weak. But actually what it is, is really, again, getting all of those inputs and the support that we need. Because being an entrepreneur, you have to be able to lean on other people and get support where you can,” she closes.
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Image Credit: Altafy
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