EventVue
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
EventVue, founded in Boulder in 2007 by Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser as a TechStars 2007 company, was a private social network for conference attendees: it helped people discover and connect with fellow attendees before, during and after events. The team later pivoted to a Discover widget meant to drive ticket sales and then to real-time event conversations. In February 2010, after a relaunch failed to gain traction, the founders shut the company down and published a widely cited post-mortem.
02 / EventVue FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
The shutdown came down to lack of product-market fit: organizers viewed EventVue as a vitamin, not a painkiller — a nice-to-have that neither raised ticket revenue nor cut costs, so almost nobody paid for it. Mistakes compounded: building a sales effort too early on a weak product, chasing enterprise deals with a small non-recurring price, and never making the product self-serve. The EventVue Discover widget pivot backfired when attendees saw few acquaintances and bought fewer tickets.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser found EventVue in Boulder and join the inaugural TechStars Boulder 2007 class, launching the private social network for conference attendees.
- Closure announced
In February 2010 the founders announce the shutdown after a relaunch fails to gain traction, publishing a detailed post-mortem of their strategic and cultural mistakes.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Private social network to improve conference networking
- 02
Organizers liked it as a nice-to-have but would not pay for it
- 03
Discover widget pivot backfires; ticket sales drop
- 04
Relaunch stalls; shutdown announced February 2010