Growing Quickly, EventMobi Ranks Among Canada’s Top Employers

January 14, 2016

UPDATE: EventMobi won the Employer of the Year Award for 2015

EventMobi is your rare, happy startup story.

What started out in 2009 as an event app to replace paper show guides, the company has transitioned into helping event planners and serving event attendees with thousands of clients around the world.

The event app is integrated with many sides of event planning including marketing the event, selling tickets, building live games, and gathering feedback.

“It is truly a remarkable experience now compared to how events were managed and experienced event just a few years ago,” says CEO Bob Vaez.

In addition to scaling a company that has grown two times for four years in a row, EventMobi is being recognized as one of the best Canadian technology employers.

The goal, says Vaez, was to build a company that him and his fellow founders would want to work at as employees.

“We’ve already proved that we can revolutionize how event planners run their events and how attendees experience it, and now we’re able to show that we’ve built an awesome culture alongside it,” he said.

Vaez was working as a full-time engineer in Silicon Valley and a part time MBA student when he began working on EventMobi as a side project in 2009.

After four other previous startup failures, the idea of improving the event experience with an app was validated right on the brink of what Vaez calls the “mobile revolution.”

“I used to attend quite a few trade shows and really loved being at these events but it was a pain carrying around bulky show guides, tote bags full of useless paper, and the inability to view my schedule on my phone,” he said.

The team is currently over 80 employees across Toronto and Berlin, has a broad client base from Nike to Marriott and TD Bank. EventMobi has won several industry awards including “Innovator of the Year” in 2014 and “Reader’s Choice Best Event App” last year by Meetings & Incentive Travel Magazine. Now the company is up for Employer of the Year in the Canadian Startup Awards.

But the team plans to expand into an entire collection of event technology tools that integrate registration, event websites, e-mail marketing, as well as on-site engagement tools such as live polling and networking.

Essentially, they aim to be an all-in-one mobile event platform.

“We want to be the platform of choice for any event planner the moment they are thinking about their next event,” said Vaez.
EventMobi are finalists as part of the Canadian Startup Awards. Voting closes on January 17, and the winners will be announced on the 18th.