The Story Behind Evento: A Solo Female Founder's Mission to Make Social Events Easy

My name is Brianna. I love my dog Milou, my incredibly brilliant husband, the beach, and really good design. I’m also the creator of Evento. I thought I’d write this blog post to share my story and why I decided to create this app. Hope you enjoy!

As a teenager, I was the weird nerd kid with no friends, studied in the school bus, at lunch, and after school, and had little interest in changing. I was never invited to a single party and had very little interest in social gatherings at all - I had nothing in common with my classmates. The most important thing to me was getting into Berkeley, the school of my dreams. I was an animal rights activist, a social rights activist, and a future human rights lawyer. When I finally got into Berkeley, I met so many other kids like me - the weirdos, the outcasts, and the brilliant nerds who never fit in. My mindset completely changed, and for the first time in my life, I made lifelong friends. I went to parties, joined clubs, and created study groups in all of my classes. I became a social butterfly in a matter of months.

Discovering the Power of Facebook Events

In college, everyone made Facebook events pages to invite everyone to their parties. You'd check out who was going, friend the cute boys you met at the party, and posted pictures for all to see. My first party ever was on Facebook events. It was New Years Eve, and I had just finished my first semester of junior year. I was home for winter break and I thought it would be cool to host a New Years party. I created a Facebook events party page and sent it out to about 20 of my close friends. The party was in Malibu and somehow the event page leaked and over 100 people started packing into my parents' house. It was incredible - I felt popular for the first time in my life. Everyone loved me and named it the best party they had ever been to. Unfortunately, my parents weren't so happy about it, so they confiscated my car for a year. But it was totally worth it. I was hooked.

Creating Unforgettable Experiences

I spent all of college studying because I still wanted to be a lawyer. But by second semester of senior year, I knew what I was doing and school was a breeze. So that was when I threw the first lingerie party at Berkeley. I thought it would be fun to throw a Valentines Day party, but with a twist. I invited every single person I knew, told them to wear lingerie, and created a night no one would ever forget. I didn't just throw a party, I created an experience that would make my guests feel special, help them get laid (obviously), and keep everyone at the party engaged. I made incredible cocktails with candy hearts and dry ice, led a spin the bottle game with over 25 people, had everyone write anonymous compliments that I read aloud at the end of the party, and forced everyone to mingle with people they didn't know. The party was such a hit that we threw another lingerie party for St. Patrick's Day with double the people, and a graduation party with triple the amount of people. So many people came up to me and thanked me for helping them get out of their shells, feel sexy for the first time in their lives, and made them feel truly free.

Since then, I've hosted so many incredible events with the shared ethos of bringing people together in a really unique way so they're not just attending a party, but a really special event centered around connection. Something they would remember for the rest of their lives.

The Need for a New Events Platform

Introducing Evento: Bringing People Together

Evento is the first user-friendly social events app. That means you can create minimalistic event invites with ease, manage your events in one place, follow and be followed, and so much more.

Unlike other platforms like Partiful, Eventbrite, Paperless Post, Evite, etc., Evento is a social network. Like Facebook events, you can follow people you've met at events as well as the brands and hosts that throw them, and soon you'll be able to DM anyone on the platform. The event pages are elegant, minimalistic, and straightforward. No frills & so easy that even my parents can use it.

Evento is for literally anyone - from brands hosting public events like pop-ups or influencer events to individuals who host dinner parties and charity events. Evento has a gallery and a wall for your guests to interact with. Gone are the days when you have to message all of your guests individually to collect photos from the night before. Gone are the days when tracking RSVPs and sending updates was a full time job. No more tacky digital evites that scream boomer. No more upcharges just to send out 12 invites (can you believe that Paperless Post actually tries to charge folks $1.50 per invite? Flabbergasted.)

We’ve got a robust roadmap filled with advanced security settings, DMs, event stories, event discovery, and extended events settings. We’re pushing code every single day, so you’ll find little easter eggs if you use the app a lot!

My Mission & Values

My personal mission is to make organizing social events simple and stress-free for everyone through an intuitive, user-friendly app & to bring people together through those events. I hope that Evento makes it possible for more folks to feel empowered to organize their own events, because life should be lived to the fullest. People should spend more time socializing and way less time planning.

Currently, Evento is entirely bootstrapped and independent. That means we have received $0 in VC funding, so I personally have full control over the roadmap and can make sure that the decisions we make prioritize user feedback over profitability. Of course, we'll need to make money at some point, but for the love of God, insofar as I run this company, I refuse to put ads on the platform like Eventbrite/Evite/Paperless Post do. As a brand person, ads are a personal affront to everything I value.My aim is also to make Evento as transparent as possible - that means sharing our tech stack, our security best practices (we do not want anyone's info to get leaked, wouldn't that be awful?), and exactly who the hell is building this thing. Evento is not a big corporation, it's a startup run by me!

The Joys & Challenges of Founding Evento

Running my own startup has to be the most rewarding experience I've embarked on to date. There are certainly highs and lows on the daily, but the most important lesson I've learned is to never doubt myself and to certainly never give up.I hope Evento helps make your life fuller and I so hope that my platform helps you grow your business or your friend group. If you haven't already, sign up for free on Evento and let me know what you think. Email me bhd@seven.sx with feedback or questions. I've got an open door.

xoxo Brianna