Covid-19 Times: Organizing a first virtual entrepreneurs event at scale
By: Patrick Alex
Tags: Enterpreneurship, Venturecapital, Zoom, Startups, Co Vid

At the beginning of March, just three weeks before our major ecosystem event Experiencia Santiago and our Match VC, where we expected to gather +300 attendees in networking sessions, keynotes and speeddatings, it became apparent that we could not to realize the event as planned.

Although, still hardly present in Latin America, the covid-19 outbreak had already arrived at full scale in Italy and Spain. Travel restrictions by nations in Latin America have been put in place. Our main speaker Juan de Antonio, Founder of Cabify, was meant to fly in from Spain. No chance that this was going to happen.

So, we pivoted, from the initial set-up to a virtual one. At first, we considered preserving the whole event and having panels online. Juan de Antonio would be connected remotely and the panel on “Emprendeder para impactar” with decorated Endeavor entrepreneurs be conducted via Zoom. We were concerned the quality of the event would suffer significantly, making the event similar to a mere online ted talk. When Juan let us know that he will have to focus on the contingencies of his business, the decision was taken for us.

However, during these tough times, we did not want to postpone or cancel the entire event, but preserve the speed-dating sessions between leading VCs and start-ups, as well as a webinar about raising capital internationally during covid.

Smart capital is more needed than ever and we felt that it was an important signaling effect to our Endeavor network and the start-up ecosystem as a whole that we can add truly tangible value through a virtual set-up when in-person interaction is not feasible.

It was an experiment from the get-go, that was for sure.

With less than 3 weeks planning time, we re-invited VC funds, convinced them of the virtual format and even confirmed a few additional ones that previously couldn’t travel to Chile. We arrived at a total of 34 funds confirmed, the largest setup we ever had. From IFC, ACCEL KKR to KasZek and Omidyar’s Flourish, the line-up was definitely something to show for.

Applications from entrepreneurs started to pour in. At the deadline, 1 week before the event, we had received more than 80 applications of top Latinamerican start-ups that could all make the cut. We even had to close the form before the application deadline, out of concern that we were not even capable to screen the high number applications due to the time constraint.

Initially, we did not intend to confirm more than 40 start-ups to facilitate the match-making between funds and entrepreneurs. We decided to increase the number to 60 slots.

This decision in the end would prove challenging, as we spent hours finding a pareto-optimum distribution between the funds and entrepreneurs. We could have left it to 40 slots only, but we felt strongly that we should give as many entrepreneurs as we could handle the chance to join, as this might be their last opportunity for a longer period of time to be able talk to investors directly.

After having finalized the match-making part, the entrepreneurs and VCs had to be informed of their individual agenda on the day.

The plan was the following: Set up zoom links for each fund. Just like a table, the VCs would sit with a qualified Endeavor staff member in one meeting room and the entrepreneurs would take turns between the different meeting rooms, accessible through the various zoom links, switching every 15mins. This would sum up to 230 meetings on April 01st conducted in 2 time-slots, 3 hours in the morning and 3 in the afternoon.

Nobody on our team had used Zoom or any video-chat platform at this scale before. We tried reaching out to the Zoom customer service to get some more intel and possibly a discount for the 20+ licenses we had to acquire, as the basic version wouldn’t suffice for the longer meetings with multiple attendees. As one could expect, the Zoom customer service was entirely collapsed during this time, so we didn’t get a response.

We improvised. Endeavor Argetina kindly borrowed us an additional zoom account we were missing. Two very kind staff members of Endeavor Peru volunteereed to join the calls as we did not have sufficient staff to be on all the calls in parallel. We got everybody on board at our local team as well. From Accounting, Events, Marketing, and the whole Selection & Growth team, everybody was motivated and played a fundamental role in coordinating the calls.

On the event day, did everything really go as planned?

The key bottleneck as we had thought, was getting the entrepreneurs to join at the right time and respect the already tight timeframe. Our ambition was to replicate the in-person dynamic entirely on a virtual format. This is definitely a key learning. We thought that it was sufficient in one email to clarify the whole dynamic to the participating entrepreneurs.

Obviously, not everybody got it. Especially the ones that haven’t participated in speed-datings before. 15mins is a very short time period to talk to anybody, but talking to a VC, you have to make each second count. This applies in the in-person as well as virtual design of speed-dating sessions.

Next time, whether virtual or not, we will definitely provide a webinar beforehand to the entrepreneurs that are less familiar with the format.

Eventually, what did it come down to?

We finalized the day with 230 meetings conducted, all but one VC were able to assist in the scheduled timeframes. All entrepreneurs appeared. In general the timings were respected, but of course a few ran over and some Zoom links didn’t work as planned. But all in all, our first virtual Match VC event went down smoothly, especially considering the short timeframe we had and the limited previous experience.

Would we change a few things? – For sure. Find some key learnings at the bottom.

First feedback gathered from the attending entrepreneurs conveyed a clear message:

More than 90% would participate again in a future virtual Match VC.

Out of a scale from 1–10, with 10 being excellent, 79% rated the event between 8–10, 35% gave it a solid 10. Not one score was lower than 6.

In terms of the quality of the matches, a core bottleneck, and one of the main concerns we had due to the high number of participants, 68% of the entrepreneurs rated at least 3 out of 4 meetings as a great fit. 95% of participants rated a minimum of 50% of the sessions to be of great value.

Data on the VCs satisfaction is still pending, but we have received tremendous feedback telling us that 2 events per year of this kind, would greatly add to their dealflow.

Can we recommend you to take the jump and organize your first virtual event at scale? Absolutely! Go for it! You will have a great experience, learn a lot and be able to add tangible value to your attendees, when it is most needed.

KEY LEARNINGS TO SUCCESSFULLY ORGANIZE A VIRTUAL EVENT

Plan early and ideally start from scratch (not with a previous in-person setup in mind, rethink the interactions and design of the event entirely)

Think carefully about potential bottlenecks, reduce complexity and margin for error

Have a trial run and if needed an introductory webinar to brief participants beforehand – Rather over-inform than risk misinterpretations

Don’t be too ambitious and do not underestimate mission creep – Keep the scale smaller than usual especially when executing a virtual event for the first time

Zoom is a tremendously powerful, check breakout-rooms and waiting rooms! (Zoom is not paying me for this, they don’t need anymore advertising these days)

Happy organising,

Patrick