Cem Kocu

I trained as an architect. I spent five years at Deutsche Bank, then a decade running Demomedia, a digital design and build consultancy that built online event registration systems for corporate banks. The ambition was always to turn the service into a product. In 2013 I did, with a simple idea: the software behind corporate events could be as considered as the events themselves.

Thirteen years on, Eventogy runs conferences and events for some of the most demanding firms in the world, and we have never taken a penny of outside investment. That matters more than it sounds. Bootstrapping in a category where competitors have raised hundreds of millions forces a discipline that money cannot buy. Every feature has to earn its place, and every client has to be kept rather than just won. It is a slower way to build a company and, I would argue, a better one.

I still believe enterprise software does not have to be ugly. Simplicity, security and beauty are product decisions we make every week, not a tagline.

And I believe the next decade of this category belongs to governance. In banking and legal, an event is not finished when it ends. It is finished when it can be accounted for. We are building Eventogy into the governance infrastructure for that world, the same way we have always built: customer funded and design led.

Here I write about bootstrapping, building enterprise software with a small team, and where event technology goes next.