COVID
After the success of the late-2019 Zagreb conference , we took a week off and then got right back to work building out the Dublin event which was harder and more expensive than any we’d done in the past. Again, as with past conferences, we didn’t care if it made money because that simply wasn’t one of our metrics for success.
It was a really stressful time though and I remember not having a solid night of sleep from that point until mid-2020. Although COVID wasn’t even in the back of my mind, there were so many other things that could’ve gone wrong, but we worked hard and things were going in the right direction.
Then, on February 12, the unimaginable happened, one of the world’s largest trade shows — Mobile World Congress, was canceled. Nothing like this had ever happened before — ever. At that moment things went from stressful to insane 🤯. I began to think this might be an issue, but we’re happening in two months — surely it’ll clear and we’ll be good. Like most people at the time, I had no idea what was going on and could not even begin to fathom what was about to happen.
We kept working, but as days went on companies started calling, worried, asking, “is there going to be an event?” Some canceled contracts, some stopped payments. On the flipside our vendors had no sympathy for us, pay or we’ll cancel your contracts: venues, hotels, everything, we had to keep paying. Money kept going out but stopped coming in. Luckily, we had a buffer from 2019, so we thought we were safe.
On March 23rd, the government of Ireland issued a stay at home order and closed all events. That was it. The floodgates opened and everyone started calling, everyone wanted their money back, but at the same time we couldn’t get refunds from anyone and spent most of it on our vendors. Plus, we still had our standard monthly costs to cover; payroll, office and the like. The bank account dried up by the end of April and we didn’t have money to survive until our flagship event, which usually takes place in the summer so we certainly didn’t have the money to return to everyone.
It felt like failure all over again.
2020
This was an insane year around the world for a lot of people, including for my team and I. I had no idea what to do, so I just did what I always do in that type of situation — figure out how to survive the day and hope I can keep doing that long enough to keep things afloat and not fail. For the Dublin event, we called all our sponsors and were able to work out a few deals for a virtual event — well before virtual events were a normal occurrence amid the pandemic. We did the event at a loss (clearly not a new concept for us), but it would have been an even larger loss if we bailed and had to file for bankruptcy.
At this point, having got out of the Dublin event, beat but not dead, we looked as to what next? Croatia still wasn’t closed so we thought maybe we can do our summer event, “the pandemic will pass by the summer” I said. We started working and for a few weeks things seemed OK, sponsors were signing, tickets were selling, but it was short-lived. About 5 weeks in, Croatia closed events as well. I thought, “what now? We still haven’t paid the debt from Dublin, let alone paid for the upcoming one in Split, Croatia?”
We postponed the Split event till autumn and while sponsors were willing to be patient, no new ones would sign. We somehow had to survive the summer, even though we were in the red and still had no idea how to make payroll for the next couple of months.
Luckily, with the experience and moderate success of our virtual event in Dublin, the team came up with the idea of a series of new virtual events which would have only 15 sponsors. We came to refer to these events as“life savers” because what we brought in was just enough to cover the payroll for those couple of months in order to survive. We called, prayed, asked, begged, did everything possible — and sold them all. We weren’t greedy, just doing what we needed to survive.
Summer passed quickly and it was almost time for our (now postponed) autumn conference. Luckily, with our own growing experience and the industry experience of other event curators, we were able to have the summer and winter Shift events in hybrid form. Although they were scaled down because of safety, people loved them 🙌
It was a huge relief when I finally saw the numbers coming in after the summer. We not only survived, but thrived, recouping all we’d lost and then some! A couple of days after the summer event I had my first whole night of sleep in a long time.
Off to the Next One
Recently I met a new acquaintance that was quite successful. The conversation meandered as it does when meeting someone new but at one point he clearly became interested in Shift as a business, not just as a conference. We talked about unit economics and the like, the “advantage” we’ll have on the market conference post-COVID as many events ceased to exist and it turns out he was actually interested in becoming an investor in Shift.
I talked to the team, we ran some numbers and on paper it seemed very possible. I had just come off the emotional rollercoaster of potential failure due to circumstances beyond my control and all of a sudden we’re talking about expanding? It was an insane feeling, but again, that’s how it is when you run your own company, things change from good to bad and right back to good in an instant.
In any case, we set up a meeting in his hometown, about a 4 hour drive from mine, to go over some ideas. I was there for two days going through everything — an updated team, target audiences, geographical expansion and more. We literally had an executable and actionable plan to “take over the world” 🚀.
The Message
Back to the flywheel: at this point, everyone knows me as the events guy, or if they knew about me through Codeanywhere it was at least the developers guy. So it was developers either way, the event or the startup.
Throughout the year I had been talking to one of the founders of Infobip, coincidently the biggest competitor to Twilio from earlier in my story, for quite some time. It was nothing serious but we would talk about developers, markets, hiring, more developers and so on 😊.
Rewinding back to my trip with this new potential investor, on the second day I got a message from one of the Infobip founders; “look at this!” in reference to a developer conference being held by another tech company. “Those guys have a cool developer conference, we need to do something like this!”. Knowing everything about the conference (as developer conferences by large tech companies had been the blueprint for Shift’s pivot to begin with) and being on an emotional high from the last couple days of meetings, I jokingly wrote“listen, just buy Shift and we’ll do it for you.” I hit send, put my phone on the nightstand to take a shower before dinner, fully expecting a reply along the lines of “haha”.
When I came out of the shower and picked up my phone, there was reply, it read:
“Good idea, come to our office tomorrow.”
Fail, Fail, Succeed
Shift ultimately succeeded that year, as a team, as a company and as a series of events. Although we didn’t reach our growth target, we still grew — not a small feat in 2020. Best of all though, the energy and morale was there to take on 2021.
In a year when your competitors go bankrupt, and you not only manage to survive but to thrive is something that amazes me even now, and it’s really a testament to the power of not giving up. Instead, we kept pushing and reinventing ourselves until we made it work, until we succeeded. Not only succeeded but got both investment and acquisition offers.
As I reflect back on the tenth anniversary (!) of Shift and the acquisition offer as well as taking a look at all the hard work and our difficult times — I truly believe we were one of those overnight success stories 10 years in the making. Shiftis my TechCrunch to Arrington’s EDGE.IO, as I started with one thing that led to something else entirely. Although the road was rough, the prize at the end was so much sweeter because of it.
In my new role at Infobip as their Chief Developer Experience Officer, I won’t be as hands-on with the conference itself. Nonetheless, the evolution and growth of Shift is far from over. It’s in great hands with my team — with plans of exponential growth and internal expansion! This team that has come together over the last decade with me is now the driving force behind Shift gGoing forward — and with that, I truly can’t wait to see what’s in store for the next Infobip Shift.
Endnote: You’ll find very few names in this story. The reason being that there were truly a lot of people involved throughout this journey. So, if I started naming names, I’d most certainly unintentionally leave someone out. It’s to that end that I decided to skip names for the most part.
But of course, that does not make their contributions any less meaningful and as such I’d like to take this moment to recognise all the people that were an integral part of the process, from friends, sponsors, speakers and volunteers to the outsourced production and design team, all the way to people that worked directly and indirectly with me throughout all companies over the years — not just Shift. It all led to this point. Thank you.
