Building a Conference for a Billion Users

We talked to Valeriy Makovetskiy of Everytale about event marketplace and COVID-19.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Valeriy Makovetskiy: Nothing has changed dramatically except for wearing a mask and antiseptic. No one has yet gotten sick in our family. We take tests for COVID-19 on a weekly basis. My daughter’s first grade started as usual.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded Everytale.

Valeriy Makovetskiy: In 2005, I entered the Baltic State Academy with a degree in Transport Management. In 2009 I founded my first company, becoming one of the largest freight forwarders in the Kaliningrad region (Russia). In 2011, I raised $ 2 million in investment and founded the first farm animal transport company in Russia and moved to Moscow. This business was sold in 2013. The same year I went into the IT industry and, with my friends, founded the Nextouch company. In 2020, we are the largest manufacturer of interactive equipment in Russia, and our turnover exceeded $ 15 million. It is a great business; however, it will remain local in any case.

We founded Everytale in February 2019 to create a world-class project. This is a marketplace for large online events, which is in great demand during the COVID era. We have invested over a million dollars in development, launched in August, and showed the first revenue in September. Now we have signed contracts until June 2021, we have opened offices in Russia, Germany, and the USA. By the end of 2020, we will attract the first external financing.

How does Everytale innovate? 

Valeriy Makovetskiy: Worldwide, content creators spend up to $ 50 billion annually on marketing. Everytale studies users’ interests during their participation in conferences, and with each new event on Everytale, we bring the “right” audience to the content creators. In this way, we reduce costs and increase the commercialization of hybrid and online events. In our model, we are similar to YouTube for webinars.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

Valeriy Makovetskiy: We are growing rapidly as we solve the problem of communication at a distance. All of our employees have switched to remote work, and it has have become much easier to hire people from other cities and even countries.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Valeriy Makovetskiy: We made a pivot from the education system to the event industry, but this did not affect us in any way, since we were at the very beginning of the journey.

How do you deal with stress and anxiety? How do you project yourself and Everytale in the future?

Valeriy Makovetskiy: I enjoy working in challenging environments with a lot of stressors. It inspires and energizes me. Over the next three years, we will form a new generation ecosystem for obtaining knowledge based on the individual characteristics of each user.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Valeriy Makovetskiy: Hopin, Runtheworld, Xing, Airmeet, etc. We have a different philosophy. We are moving away from complex individual solutions to standardized and efficient tools.

Your final thoughts?

Valeriy Makovetskiy: During a hurricane, you should build windmills, not walls. Every day brings new opportunities, and it is important to be able to discern them.

Your website?

https://www.everytale.net