It is with great shock I write the following post.
I just finished reading this post at Techcrunch and I can’t really accept the news that Plancast is dying.
I’ve been a fan of Plancast. I think they really nailed an aspects of our industry that most event technology companies or startups missed, .
Well, it looks like it’s a terrible wake up call for all of us event lovers. Running an event startup is not as easy as we may think.
Cool ideas alone are not enough.
How Does Plancast Make Money?
I don’t know.
Mark Hendrickson makes a very in depth analysis of the dynamics of the social event sharing environment. I don’t agree. It’s like saying that since MySpace failed at nailing social networking, then social networking is to blame.
I actually believe sharing events online is the event marketing of the future and Plancast was fulfilling that future.
What is under the eyes of every event startup lover is just a simple, yet tragic, fallacy: where is your business model?
How could Plancast not monetize on 100K registered users and 230K visits a month?
This is where I get really upset. Pretty much because it is a shame to see such great guys to shut down such a great startup.
If you read the comments to the above post you will notice how people like Robert Scoble make very easy to understand how making money was not really considered.
What should have been done differently?
It is for no one to say other than Plancast themselves.
I believe Plancast made a terrific effort in a very new space.
Failing is important for startups and we need to respect that.
One thing I did not like though was the lack of attention for event planning tools.
What about us event organizers?
Everyone that concentrates on attendees-only services misses a big portion of the pie. Just have a look at startups such as Eventbrite, Cvent and amiando. They are primarily organizers’ tools.
What Now?
I suggested back in the days that Google should have bought Plancast. I hope that some bigger tech companies could use their experience.
In the meanwhile I’ll keep an eye on Lanyrd to see how they perform now that they have their biggest competitor out of the way.
A small note from your editor in chief: social event sharing was just born so please don’t tell me the story it’s complicated and not profitable. I don’t buy it.
If you are thinking about starting up with events technology I have two pieces of advice for you:
– Think about how you are going to make money from day one
– Don’t ignore us event planners as attendees are OUR guests!