Member Article

Eventsneaker entrepreneurs off to London following acqui-hire deal

Middlesbrough-based events communication start-up Eventsneaker has been acquired up by a London firm following a chance encounter at an event in the capital.

Entrepreneurs Mark Stephenson and Elliott Perry, who co-founded Eventsneaker, will join two year-old London-headquartered evvnt - a business that pushes event listings and promotions out to a audiences in their millions.

The deal will mean Eventsneaker’s technology, which allows businesses to gauge how communications are affecting sales, will become absorbed by evvnt.

Central London-based evvnt provides a platform for event marketers and promoters to submit their listing through one central point before it is disseminated to millions of other relevant spaces.

Mark and Elliott met representatives from evvnt at an industry dinner while attending Confex - the international trade show for the events industry.

They got on so well that they decided to write-off the second day of the conference and concentrate on developing ideas together.

Within the space of a week Mark and Elliott were offered equity in evvnt as part of an ‘acqui-hire’ agreement, which will see the pair move to London.

Elliott told Bdaily: “Our vision is very much about bringing data driven decisions to event marketers and organisers. These people are posting to social media and working hard to achieve bits of marketing.

“Until Eventsneaker they didn’t really know how their efforts were impacting sales and sign-up. We measure that return on investment.

“The match with evvnt is perfect because they want to be able to plug our tech into their business and demonstrate how directory listings are responsible for sales.”

Elliott, who is currently the overarching CTO for Eventsneaker will move into a technologist role, responsible for evvnt’s development team; while Mark is set to move into a business intelligence role, looking at how the firm can use data for commercial gain.

evvnt employs around 30 people in London, as well as up to 40 people offshore.

Elliott added: “Over the next few months its going to be about taking each other’s technology and ‘smashing’ it together to get them integrated and working as tandem.

“Once it’s working as one whole product I expect myself and Mark will be working across all aspects of the business to grow it.

“Of course, a deal like this presents some difficult decisions, but the risks associated with going it alone are significantly greater than working with someone.

“Moving from a founder to an employee of a business is strange. You’re tied to it, but the benefits of doing this vastly outweigh the downsides.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .