Brisbane-based tech start-up, Entegy, is off to a great start in the new decade, as the company’s service has recently expanded into Brazil, Spain, Canada and UAE.
The company’s core platform for event organisations, Entegy Suite, has landed large-scale events such as the 2014 G20 Brisbane summit, and big brands like Eventbrite, Monash University and Queensland Tourism.
The platform helps its clients to organise events and streamline the communications and processes that come with it.
The story of Entegy started in 2014, after its co-founder and director, Graeme Caplen-Black, was invited to pitch on building an app for a Jazz festival.
During this time, Graeme realised that there was a lack of collective solutions to the shared problems between businesses in the event industry, such as ineffective communications, weak engagement and complex logistics. Entegy was born to address these concerns.
Brisbane owned, built and operated, Entegy maintains local connections with a global vision.
The company launched its partner program in 2017, entering the markets in USA, New Zealand, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Germany in its first year.
Speaking of its recent expansion, Graeme is pleased with the fact that Entegy has managed to stick to its mission despite some difficulties along the way.
“We always knew we would have to grow internationally to scale our business and this was part of the strategy from the beginning,” he said.
“Truly expanding internationally as a bootstrapped business took careful planning and execution, which has centred around building a world-class team that believes in our vision for the company.”
Graeme also observed that, for Entegy, landing on an international deal is not the hardest part of breaking into the global market.
“The international market came to us initially, however making the partnerships work and scaling them has been a lot of hard work.
“It has been akin to re-learning our business at times however a great opportunity to truly understand what is required to ‘go global’.”
One of Entegy’s partners is Eventbrite, who now offers the suite across eight countries.
Eventbrite’s Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Services, Phil Silverstone, says that Entegy is “a local partner who understood the unique needs of event organisers”.
Working with the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, Entegy also supported the 2018 Queensland Tourism Awards gala dinner, where an event app is used for the first time during this annual gathering.
Graeme believes that building meaningful connections with partners is critical for Entegy to stay grounded while scaling globally.
“I guess it’s handy that we’re all relationships focused people! We are acutely aware that each partner builds unique bonds with specific team members which is something we encourage.
“Scaling this model has had challenges, specifically change management as we’ve grown the network. However, we have been going from strength to strength so we must be doing something right!”
Entegy is now on track to supporting more than 2,000 events worldwide in 2020, with more than half of them being international. The company is also set to open an office in Amsterdam this year to cater for the global demand.
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