Social distancing may slow the spread of COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. After months stuck inside with little to no company, many of us are desperate for events. We miss everything from concerts to lectures to trade shows. And with more than 26 million professionals in the events industry worldwide, events miss people just as much.
Founded by University of Central Florida alum Spencer Elliot (class of 2012), ViewStub helps people and events find each other in the age of social distancing. The ViewStub platform supports online registration, promotion and streaming of both in-person and online events. Organizers can upload or stream their events from the ViewStub site or use the white label offering to plug ViewStub’s registration, streaming and affiliate link capabilities onto existing websites, CRMs or email platforms. Any size and any type of event is welcome, from workshops and seminars to sporting events and concerts.
“ViewStub is a new way for events to bring global audiences to in-person events, eliminate the geographical restrictions, use 360-video to make a more immersive environment,” Elliot says, “and create new revenue streams through ticket sales, pay-per-view, and selling merchandise.”
The idea for ViewStub sparked when Elliot was at UCF, where he spent a lot of time exploring the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), which has programming like Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars to help students learn about entrepreneurship, connect with mentors, and start their own businesses. When Elliot was at school, CEL turned one of its rooms into a virtual reality (VR) lab. It was there that he grew excited about the idea of starting a company revolving around interactive, immersive events.
When creating the platform, Elliot and his team were sensitive to the needs of event organizers.
“It’s a one stop shop, in the browser, no downloads, really seamless so that it can be used by a 6th grader or someone who is 60 plus,” he says. And, while most other platforms ask event organizers to pay upfront by the gigabyte or the hour of anticipated content, ViewStub operates a revenue share.
“There’s a lot of financial risk upfront for events,” Elliot says. “You have to pay the vendors, set everything up, and then you’re hoping, praying, that you’re going to make enough money to cover your expenses… With ViewStub, you can come in, get started, use all our features, and we get paid only if you’re successful.”
After graduating, Elliot worked for a few startups before earning a Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurship from the University of Florida. He then put aside his entrepreneurial dreams to start a family. When his daughter was two, Elliot found himself frustrated and bored with his corporate job. One day, as he sat at his desk struggling to work, he watched a livestream of a bear eating fish in Alaska. He realized he wanted to go to Alaska — or the beach, or a music festival, or an entrepreneurship conference, or really anywhere that wasn’t work — but with a young daughter at home, traveling to events wasn’t feasible. He started to think: what if he could record live events and participate in them later, in an immersive VR experience like he dreamed of while at UCF?
And so the seeds of ViewStub were planted, though it took several iterations, changes in partners, and pivots before the idea evolved from an immersive VR-event company into the business that Elliot runs today. Over the years it took to refine the business model, Elliot turned back to UCF for support, relying on the CEL and Blackstone LaunchPad to connect with mentors and access additional support. Cameron Ford, the Director of CEL and Blackstone LaunchPad, was impressed by Elliot’s persistence in finding help.
“Spencer is one of the most resourceful and coachable LaunchPad clients we’ve seen,” Ford says. “He’s engaged with our coaches, and almost every other startup resource in town…including being in a university-supported community accelerator, I-Corp (NSF funded lean startup program), our UCF Business Incubation Program, as well as several appointments at the LaunchPad.”
Given how much he’s relied on UCF’s resources, it’s perhaps not surprising that Elliot thinks any UCF student with an itch for entrepreneurship should pursue it.
“Do it!” he says with a grin, before adding some more concrete advice. “Start by understanding the problem you’re trying to solve and do a lot of customer discovery. Only move forward once you identify the problem and the solution. It can be overwhelming, but think about building a business like you’re eating an elephant: you have to go one small bite at a time.”
To tackle the elephant, Elliot recommends UCF students get involved with LaunchPad for coaching and mentorship, attend the CEO nights, explore clubs on campus and look into programs like UpStarts Student Venture Accelerator, I-Corps bootcamp and Starter Studio. Students can also participate in the school’s business model competitions, which can lead not only to connections with notable alumni and investors but also to investments by the university itself.
“If you follow those steps, you’ll be done with ideation and have an MVP (minimum viable product), and then you can into fundraising.”
He pauses to consider his advice before laughing: “We didn’t go in this order, which is how I know that’s what other people should do.”
Elliot continues to stay in touch with UCF and CEL, turning to the school for talent recruitment through the Coding Bootcamp, the College of Business MBA program and the Department of Computer Science. Next up is partnering with UCF’s Rosen School of Hospitality to find students interested in the events industry.
The newest UCF alum to join the team is Blaire Martin (class of 2011), who worked at CEL after graduating and met Elliot when he came back to explore its resources. Martin is leading ViewStub’s ongoing fund-raising efforts – the company recently raised $250,000 from SeedFundersOrlando, and is looking to raise $800,000 this round. The investment was propelled by ViewStub’s recent growth in response to the rising demand for online events triggered by COVID-19 social-distancing requirements. The number of new users nearly tripled in March, and engagement has steadily increased since.
“COVID-19 has shifted online events from a nice to have to a need to have,” he says.