2015–16
The idea was born
Event organizers were using spreadsheets to track nearly every operational detail. I spent evenings and weekends exploring ways to turn that fragmented process into one product.
Case study · EventWaves became Planesty
From an idea to a company.
Four years building a software company taught me more than ten clean launches would have.
A problem in the events industry became a product, outside capital, a team, and a real B2B SaaS company — launched in March 2020, just as in-person events stopped.
00
Overview
What was Planesty?
Planesty was a B2B SaaS platform that gave event teams, venues, and suppliers the tools to make smarter, more strategic decisions. It automated the logistical work behind meetings and events — agendas, room assignments, audiovisual needs, food and beverage, presenters, documents, and collaboration.
By 2016 I had spent nine years designing for the web and nearly as long working around event management. The industry still ran critical operations through spreadsheets, emails, paper, and disconnected documents. I couldn't stop thinking about a better way.
The challenge
Event pre-planning and onsite execution wasted enormous amounts of time, resources, and money. The prevailing process was manual, static, difficult to share, and impossible to scale cleanly.
The opportunity
Smarter software could save organizations money while creating a collaborative environment for organizers, venues, and suppliers — one shared source of truth instead of a trail of files.
My role
I founded the company, raised capital, led product design and research, managed the engineering team, helped build partnerships and marketing, formed a board, and learned every part of running a business while continuing to be its sole product designer for much of the journey.
- Role
- Co-founder · Head of Product
- Company
- EventWaves → Planesty
- Team
- I led 6 engineers
- Conversations
- Hundreds of industry chats
- Beta
- 100+ companies
- Launch
- 300+ users
01
Our story
2017
Capital and a team
I raised early capital, hired three engineers, and welcomed Mike Fuller as co-founder. Hundreds of conversations with event organizers, venues, and suppliers gave us a clear problem to pursue.
2018–19
Beta and growth
We raised more seed capital, expanded engineering, invested in trade shows and partnerships, and onboarded more than 100 companies. Frequent focus groups made the product better in public, not in isolation.
MAR 2020
Official launch
After four years, we launched at a major Denver trade show with 300+ users, a ten-person team, and agreements with two global event partners. The energy was through the roof.
2020–21
The market disappeared
At that same launch, we heard the country would likely shut down. Two days later it did. Our product served in-person events, and that industry disappeared overnight. We kept building and supporting clients, but the pause lasted too long for the company to continue.
02
Ideation
There was no Figma when the first ideas arrived. I started in Photoshop, then moved through Sketch and Adobe XD before consolidating the product in Figma. Our original name was EventWaves; in 2019 it became Planesty.
01
Design focus
I designed nights and weekends while working full time. The hardest early design task was not generating ideas — it was deciding what not to build.
Photoshop
Sketch
Adobe XD
Figma
02
Business name
EventWaves made the category obvious and served us well early. We later chose Planesty as the company and product matured.
03
Company formation
A viable product required capital, legal counsel, accounting, company formation, and a team before it required polished screens.
03
Customer empathy
After roughly six months of ideation, we began structured learning with event organizers and hotels. We shared early designs, attended industry events, ran focus groups, and distributed surveys online and in person.
01
Qualitative first
Deep industry relationships gave us unusually direct access to people doing the work. Focus groups and trade-show conversations became our richest source of truth.
02
Quantitative support
Surveys helped identify common patterns and gave us confidence about which of the many possible directions deserved attention.
03
An audience before launch
Research participants became a natural community for beta testing, feedback, and eventual adoption.
04
MVP
With three engineers, two designers (me included), and dedicated growth support, we moved from concepts to a working beta. We onboarded real companies while marketing at trade shows and building industry partnerships.
01
Real workflows
The beta handled the messy operational details people already managed every day rather than asking them to invent a new process.
02
Feedback in the product
Beta customers used the platform for live work, giving the team specific objections, edge cases, and priorities.
03
A distributed team
Our engineers were based in the Czech Republic, which shaped how I communicated decisions and led across disciplines and time zones.
05
Growth
Validation changed the question from “should this exist?” to “can this scale?” We expanded the engineering team to six and accelerated product, marketing, and partnership work.
01
Product
We shipped collaboration features, document workflows, online signatures for operations documents, and sharing tools for outside collaborators.
02
Marketing
Two growth teammates built partnerships and campaigns, but we deliberately prioritized customer success before chasing volume.
03
The balance
We learned to listen closely without outsourcing the roadmap — combining customer evidence with our own product judgment.
06
Launch
Official launch
After four years, we launched at a major Denver trade show with 300+ users, a ten-person team, and agreements with two global event partners. The energy was through the roof.
The market disappeared
At that same launch, we heard the country would likely shut down. Two days later it did. Our product served in-person events, and that industry disappeared overnight. We kept building and supporting clients, but the pause lasted too long for the company to continue.
07
What I keep
I learned more in those years than in any clean, predictable path. The company ended. The experience did not.
- 01
Obsess over the problem
Understand people deeply. Better product decisions follow when the problem, not a favorite solution, stays at the center.
- 02
A vision is a product too
Raising money is a design problem: investors are not buying today's interface; they are buying a credible picture of what could exist.
- 03
Get comfortable being uncomfortable
Stress, ambiguity, legal work, sales, leadership, and failure all became part of the job — and expanded what I knew I could handle.
- 04
Teams need shared ownership
Leading engineers and business partners across countries taught me to translate intent, invite expertise, and make decisions visible.
- 05
Failure can compound into value
The ending was not what we chose. The judgment, craft, empathy, and resilience it built have shaped every product and team since.
- 06
My through-line became clear
Across every hat I wore, product design and healthy team culture remained the work I wanted to keep doing.