73% of event planners believe hybrid events will continue to be more common in the feature even as we return to in-person activity. However, 88% still valued the face-to-face aspect of in-person conferences and meetings. 50% believe that all events will have a virtual aspect in the future. Glisser is a hybrid virtual and in-person events platform that’s focused on driving audience engagement. While most platforms have focused on broadcast capabilities for their virtual users, Glisser offers a host of features like live two-way sharing, voting, and gamification elements that are able to be customizable for specific use cases. For in-person attendees, Glisser is integrated with popular CRMs so that event organizers can track, measure, and understand the activity of their live audiences in the same way that they would for a virtual user. The core platform is embeddable onto any website, can be branded, and has handled events at scale with up to 450K simultaneous users. In aggregate, Glisser has handled over 5K events comprising 2.5M attendees.
London TechWatch caught up with Glisser CEO Michael Piddock to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $5.9M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Downing Ventures and Gresham House; a follow-on investment round.
Tell us about your product or service.
Glisser provides the leading hybrid meetings and events platform focused on audience engagement. The Glisser platform creates customized experiences that use participation to activate audiences and generate vast amounts of engagement data across thousands of events.
What inspired the start of Glisser?
I created the company when I realized that live events and conferences were a really powerful marketing channel, but one that was data-poor. My view was that by creating interesting and valuable ways for audiences to interact at these meetings, it would both improve their experience, and provide a measurable set of analytics by which to measure the success of the event.
Jump forward to 2020, and this concept applies in exactly the same way to virtual and hybrid meetings and events: engaged audiences have a better experience, stay longer, and create more successful (trackable) results.
How is it different?
Glisser is one of the only events platform companies that offer conference organizers both virtual and in-person events simultaneously.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
According to Verified Market Research, the Global Events Industry Market size was valued at USD 886.99 Billion in 2020 and is projected to reach USD 2,194.40 Billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 13.48% from 2021 to 2028.
What’s your business model?
SaaS events platform.
What are your post-COVID office plans??
We’ve gone completely virtual. It helps us retain the best talent and we can channel the money we spent on offices into better more productive face to face meetings with the whole team, where we get real value from being together.
What was the funding process like?
This round was relatively easy as this was an internal round from existing investors who are already invested in what we’re doing.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Virtual events were a hot sector in 2020 and 2021, but now there’s a lot of competition, so the fundraising story is different. We expect some consolidation and the best providers to stand the test of time, as the lockdown-enforced spike in the market matures into something more permanent, where virtual meetings are a strategic or an environmentally driven decision, rather than a sticky plaster because we can’t meet face to face.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
In the post-Covid world, the average employee has 7 video calls per day. Glisser has created a platform that helps differentiate events from feeling like the same thing and prevents “Zoom” burnout. Glisser’s business model is NOT about growing users on a generic platform and owning the data but enabling customers to stand out and be successful. Glisser is a fully customizable, secure, and scalable platform that fully integrates with a customer’s brand.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We recently launched our Glisser Elements SDK, which enables our clients to embed interactive meeting components in their own websites and other digital environments. That means a big focus for us is to consult with our existing clients, helping them understand how this can align with their strategic plans for virtual and hybrid meetings in the medium and long term, and ultimately to assist them in migrating across to this unique proposition.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
I don’t think there is a standard one-size-fits-all suggestion for all companies in so many sectors – some of which have benefited during the pandemic and others that have felt the crunch. As ever, an absolute focus on customers seems to be the best way to navigate the storm. If you have happy customers, you have a business!
I don’t think there is a standard one-size-fits-all suggestion for all companies in so many sectors – some of which have benefited during the pandemic and others that have felt the crunch. As ever, an absolute focus on customers seems to be the best way to navigate the storm. If you have happy customers, you have a business!
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
I think the focus needs to be on responding to the evolving market and ensuring our platform continues to meet customer needs. Hybrid working generally, and as a result hybrid meetings, is really starting to pick up momentum, but it comes with its own technical and logistical challenges. Will hybrid be here to stay? We cannot be sure, but the increased digitization of all meetings seems to be well set now, and the focus on virtual for environmental reasons (rather than the pandemic) is starting to dominate thinking. We want to be ready for that.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
In 2019 I left London for the countryside after living here for 20 years, and one of the biggest things I miss is urban walking. I’ve got the South Downs to enjoy now, but there’s still something interesting about discovering a hidden gem of a building, a quiet park, or a backstreet route through the City.
