Human beings are inherently social by nature, intended to live in relationships and to be a part of society. There is no denying that we all like to go out, socialize and be a part of gatherings; whether official or unofficial. Every year, hundreds of millions of social events are organized right from company team building activities to bachelor parties, from birthday parties to seasonal events, and many other things.
With so many events in our lives, however, comes the frustrations of organizing. Finding the right suppliers, booking the right product, and ensuring everything coming together in a timely fashion takes days of planning and hours of coordination, and sometimes, even the best planning can fall short.
Closing the gap between a customer and the many suppliers they have to deal with to arrange a successful event, by digitalizing and streamlining the entire “management” part of event management” are London, United Kingdom-based Evendo Ltd. Established in 2016, by Founder and CEO Kasper Larsen, and with its revolutionary digital solution to event organizing, this company has since grown to 35 countries, including having registered offices in the United States and Hong Kong.
The organizer of all your events
From Teambuildings to Bachelor Parties to staycations, Evendo is an all-inclusive digital platform that caters to every need. Traditionally all logistics pertaining to an event, would have to be done via emails and phone calls, but with Evendo you can find “anything from activities, experiences, venues, restaurants, bars, musicians, magicians, soft-ice machines and thousands of other event-related products and experiences can be booked directly, without ever having to send a single mail or do a single phone call”, at the click of a button, explains Kasper.
With their motto “events.efficient.easy”, Evendo gives access to experiences, activities, restaurants, venues, and more in almost 1 million locations across the world. It combines the world’s largest bookable inventory helping people transform ordinary events into extraordinary ones. Furthermore, with its intuitive planning tool, the platform allows organizers to easily structure their event and then chose whatever services are required from Evendo’s enormous inventory.
“Once satisfied, all products can be booked across all suppliers with a single click – and payment is easily done to one supplier: Evendo”
With its suite of easy-to-use planning, booking, and execution tools, Evendo has been designed to ensure that all participants of an event have a memorable experience rather than running around micro-managing things. The Evendo planner is as detailed as to keep track on the budget, and even calculate transportation times and distances between locations to ensure that there are absolutely no surprises or loose ends. During the day of the event, “the intuitive “Evendo GO” app guides the participants through a successful event, by keeping track of itinerary, and alerting when it is time to leave a location to make it to the next in time,” explains Kasper. It even holds all the official documentation and paperwork of the event ensuring that all participants can enjoy a stress-free day of social interaction.
Breaking barriers, making opportunities
“We believe our contribution to the industry is a win for suppliers and a win for customers and organizers. We have yet to see a true downside for anybody involved in the ecosystem,” says Kasper. This is because not only has Evendo created a global, innovative and engaging space for event customers, but it also continues to provide growth and development opportunities to all sizes and scales of vendor and hospitality businesses. The suppliers registered on Evendo are authentic, experienced, and trained to cater to all kinds of requirements.
Historically, the event industry has remained a vast myriad of interconnected organizations. Due to this vastness, it has always remained harder to completely automate and integrate this industry, as compared to others. While consumers are open to the convenience of digital event services, a lot of suppliers have not been able to keep up with the changing technological times, noticed Kasper. To address this, Evendo has been creating opportunities for suppliers by helping them create a full-fledged digital infrastructure, right from setting up a website to integrating booking, customer management, and payment tools in it.
“Like Airbnb has managed to turn “ordinary people” into boutique hotel operators, we hope we with Evendo can inspire people to offer exciting, new experiences to people in the same way.”
The complexity of the services and products that contribute to an event are boundless, Kasper and his team of IT specialists left no stone unturned to create an all-around digital event assistant of the highest standards. “A hotel room, for instance, has 365 possible “combinations” throughout a calendar year – as you book it on a daily basis. Event experiences are operating with timeslots and durations. The price might be different depending on the timeslot and/or day of the week. Or season. Or group size,” explains Kasper. A single event on the other hand has many individual parts to it, right from the venue to transportation to catering, which all adds to the complexity of this model.
Despite the great number of permutations and combinations that had to be done to create Evendo, by analyzing all the possible outcomes, mapping the identifiers of which direction things are moving in, and by choosing the appropriate mitigation based on outcome direction, Kasper prevailed and Evendo was born. And, as compared to a hotel’s 365 “combinations” in a calendar year, Evendo was programmed to have upwards of 150,000.
Create, innovate and socialize
Kasper Larsen has been the force behind many successful IT solutions since the early 2000s. A serial entrepreneur, Kasper was the co-founder of a software company named Sitecore, which he took from scratch to a globally market-leading position. Eventually, the company was sold to a Swedish capital fund, as a rare Danish Unicorn. Since then he has been founding and co-founding a series of tech-related companies and came up with the idea for Evendo. “The name Evendo is a combination of EVENT and DO, encouraging people to do social events and improve their social interactions and network,” explains Kasper.
Kasper is well admired and looked up to by the entire business community, owing to his thoughtful and innovative IT solutions. As a well-respected and admired leader, he believes that “if there are problems, you need to be the first to pick them up and solve them – not just leave them there for others to deal with. People need to know you have their backs, and that they can always come to you for solutions.”
“Don’t compromise – especially on the quality of what you do. My mantra is ‘everything worth doing, is worth doing well.”
In recent months, the hospitality and event sector has suffered a significant impact due to Covid-19. Working from home has become the new norm making it harder to bond with colleagues and private social interactions have become limited due to lockdowns and other restrictions. There is little doubt that the pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on the way people interact with each other but “with Evendo, we do our best to make it easy for people to transition back towards a “normality” – and to easily rebuild any lost social relations, by building some new memories in the aftermath of the pandemic,” says Kasper.
Evendo continues to be the driver towards the re-invention of the events market, where the traditional experiences are complemented by distinctive, boutique experiences offered by people with unique passions. Adjusting to the “new normal” of socializing, they continue to innovate and design more solutions to help suppliers, organizers, and participants by creating new and engaging experiences for them. “As an example, we have been working closely with suppliers to develop a large suite of “virtual experiences” – virtual escape rooms, virtual cookery classes, etc. – which allow organizers a soft transition with new memories while still being physically apart,” explains Kasper.
Looking ahead, Kasper remains focused and excited to create more digital social experiences connecting people locally and throughout the world. “There is literally no limit as to the kind of experience which can be interesting to others – but, as things are today, it is next to impossible for the passionate ones to connect with customers who would benefit from their knowledge and passion. We hope we can drive such change – and connect the parties – opening up entirely new genres of experiences for social interactions,” says Kasper.
