Forbes 30 under 30: Oana Manolache — Founder & CEO of Introvoke
By: Oana Manolache
Tags: Technology, Live Streaming, Entrepreneurship, Forbes 30 Under 30, Women In Tech

The Entrepreneurial Genes.

She established a live streaming platform that she is expanding globally and she wants to then get more involved in social impact initiatives.

She left Romania after high school to get her Business & Marketing Bachelor Degree at Coventry University in England that she graduated with First Class with Honors, and now she lives in Boston. Oana Manolache (29 years old) believes she inherited the entrepreneurial genes from her parents.

“I think I was born with entrepreneurial genes, my parents also being entrepreneurs in Romania. I saw how much work is necessary to build something from scratch, but also the satisfaction that comes with the successful impact that your business can bring on the society and internally to the employee culture.(…) I always wanted to build a company that brings a positive change to people’s lives, to our customers, but also to our internal teams. We received a message from a user in Africa who thanked us for enabling him to access real time information from events and he therefore managed to accelerate his success in building a company in the US. Moments like these remind us why we built Introvoke”, says Oana Manolache.

The young entrepreneur is the founder and CEO of Introvoke, a global live streaming platform, which became very attractive especially in the current environment. As a matter of fact, the live streaming industry is estimated to value $125 billion by 2025 according to statistics.

“I started Introvoke due to a personal frustration that I validated with other entrepreneurs. I was invited to various events in New York and San Francisco and, although the information would have been so beneficial for my business, I could not afford to spend the time to travel. I started contacting these organizations and I learned that they were already looking for live streaming solutions, but no platform was solving their problem. Facebook, Instagram Live are mainly social media platform, not built specifically for live events, and other platforms were way too expensive and difficult to use, requiring live streaming technical experience. Therefore we soft launched Introvoke in May 2019. At the launch we had over 150 entrepreneurs, investors and experts, including a pitch competition that was live streamed on Introvoke”, says Oana Manolache.

Introvoke has 2 main audiences: any organization that is organizing events or sessions, as well as viewers who are looking for live professional content. Over 35 organizations are currently hosting hundreds of live events on introvoke with over 10,000 users attending these events.

“The traction came organically, but we are estimating a high exponential growth the moment our marketing campaign launches this spring. We built everything with deep feedback from our current customers. We launched the subscription model in March, but we decided to offer our plans for free until 1st May in order to help organizations go live quickly with their events and engage with their customers during this challenging time. We however have our hosts committed for the Elite subscriptions on the longer term.”, says Oana Manolache.

The entrepreneur is planning for Introvoke to become the world’s main digital venue for any live or virtual event. She is also mentioning an exit strategy in the next 5–7 years depending on the company’s expansion, taking into consideration examples such as the acquisition of Twitch by Amazon “We have a few companies in mind that could be the ideal buyers of the Introvoke platform in the future”.

“After the exit I will start another company with a social impact, maybe even non-profit. At a global level, 13% of people are undernourished, out of which 3 million children are dying of hunger. It’s a major difficult problem that has no solution so far.”, adds Oana Manolache.

**Article translated from the original Forbes Romania article.