Photo Credit: livertoon for Adobe Stock
Sixteen months ago the "end-to-end" event-tech provider Stova debuted its rebranding, effectively reducing the size of its name by 85 percent from the somewhat less wieldy MeetingPlay + Aventri + Eventcore. The new blended identity was emblematic of the consolidation happening in the industry — and it likewise highlighted the associated challenge of leaving behind the names of well-known brands that had independently cultivated followings among meeting professionals.
Stova has been relatively quiet since then, as the company forged its new identity and continued to service a wide variety of clients and event types. Former CEO Eric Lochner and former chief innovation officer (and MeetingPlay founder) Joe Schwinger each spoke about flexibility and scalability as company strengths, being able to service so many different client types with the breadth of tools in the new ecosystem. Then, as often happens following mergers, leaders departed. Last fall, Schwinger stepped away from the company to rejoin his former employer, Marriott International. About a month ago, after guiding the company through the integration and rebranding, Lochner left to pursue other opportunities.
Stova CEO Kirk ZiehmAs Stova begins its next phase — and is readying several product announcements — I sat down with the company's new CEO, Kirk Ziehm. Ziehm most recently served as CEO of the retail collaboration platform Movista. Whereas Lochner, Ziehm's predecessor, was still getting up to speed with the event-technology sector when he joined the company, Ziehm had joined Stova's board last year and is excitedly returning to work in meetings tech. He was vice president of professional services for Cvent from 2017 to 2018, and previously had held the posts of senior vice president of services and vice president of sales and marketing operations for Lanyon when that company was acquired by Cvent. (Interestingly, Ziehm has a history of helping to steer companies through acquisitions: He was an exec with a company
that was acquired by Oracle, and more recently served as COO of a company that
was acquired by Global Payments.)
"I was just thrilled for the opportunity to get back into this space," Ziehm said of his return to meetings tech. "There's such a desire among the people you work with, and a passion around the industry, to drive incredible experiences for all stakeholders involved in events. I'm really excited to be back."
Highlights from our interview follow, edited for length and clarity.
Now that the Stova brand has been established, what comes next?
I think what's come together is a really amazing combination. We can do literally just about any type of event, from the biggest of the big conferences down to simple internal meetings of five to 10 people. Being able to deliver across the whole gamut is, I think, really unique, and something we need to protect and continue to be great at.
Keeping this ability to scale as a key focus, do you see any untapped markets you'd like Stova to grow into?
There's a tremendous amount of data that flows through a system like ours. Helping our clients turn that data into insights, that help deliver great experiences and help drive their business forward, I think that's something we'll consistently be pushing the envelope for. And of course everybody's talking about AI; when it comes to data and events, I think there's opportunity to use that to further deepen the relationships that companies have with their clients — and we see ourselves enabling that for our customers.
Your former employer in this space, Cvent, is another company that touts its broad range of tools. How will Stova differentiate itself?
The way to compete with Cvent, or with anybody, is to look at the specific needs of each and every customer opportunity that you have. We need to make sure we're creating a compelling value proposition for each one. You just need to listen to the customer and address their needs first — and we think we're pretty good listeners.
What are you hearing? How are things changing, and does Stova need to move in a certain direction to meet customer needs?
There are a few major points. One big one is systems connectivity. I think the events industry has made a lot of progress, but there's a lot more progress to be made. The ability of an event leader to tie together key decision-making systems in their enterprise — be it with marketing automation, customer relationship management, anything with these tremendous stores of information — it's really important we help our customers to tie those processes together.
And then once we connect the systems, the key is providing people with insights, not just data. And then the other piece is the temporal factor: We need to provide those insights at the moment of relevance, so it's actionable and effective.
You have a history of helping to lead companies through mergers and acquisitions. Is there more M&A on Stova’s horizon?
I've done a lot of M&A. I've been very involved, and I've led transactions many times. And I always ask a twofold question: Can you build it, or do you really want to go out and buy it? And that decision is super important, because the road is littered with unsuccessful M&A.
Granted, but there's still a lot of consolidation talk specifically in the event-tech space and I feel like your experience in this respect is particularly important.
I agree. We are always going to look at opportunities. And we want to grow this business, and if M&A can help us advance our cause and benefit our customers, then absolutely, we'll be looking at that.