So, you are in a new city for a conference. You have time between panel discussions and team dinners to explore. But…how do you start exploring?
Conference attendees can easily get lost in an internet search rabbit hole looking for things to do just outside the conference doors. And local business owners don’t have an easy way to get in front of new arrivals coming into town.
That creates a unique opportunity for event and conference organizers, says North Carolina entrepreneur Marc Eder.
Alongside his co-founder Mykhailo (Misha) Shvets, Eder is building DayOf to make events and conferences more impactful.
DayOf Opportunities
DayOf works as a distribution channel for event and conference travel. The marketplace is filled with curated local experiences that can be embedded directly into an official event workflow (think event apps or websites, for example).
For event attendees, DayOf is a way to discover and book local dining, activities, and experiences that fit around their schedule. For sponsors and exhibitors, it can open up new opportunities for sales and recruiting events.
But it also gives cities actionable economic impact reporting, helping them better drive revenue-generating sponsorship opportunities.
Currently, Convention and Visitors Bureaus provide recommendations through event organizers to sponsors and exhibitors. But the reality, Eder explained, is that this process manual and rely on PDFs or Google Sheets. DayOf replaces that with a dynamic, bookable marketplace, capturing high-intent demand and tracking actual conversions and revenue at the event and transaction level.
For recent attendees of the North Carolina entrepreneurial conference Venture Connect, DayOf provided dining, activities, and experiences that fit their individual schedule, including exclusive offers just for attendees.
In its early stages, DayOf has piloted with North Carolina’s Venture Connect (something the team only had ten days to pull off) and an event in Vancouver. Some of the biggest lessons learned early on, Eder said, included figuring out the interest on both sides of the marketplace.
“In some ways, the supplier pitch is very easy. “Did you know that thousands of people will be near you on these specific days 2 months from now, and they don’t know you exist? Would you like them to? If so, join our platform.” Fundamentally, DayOf unlocks a new category of customers for local businesses. Today they rely on passive foot traffic. With DayOf, they can take action,” Eder added.
Meet The Team
While the team is looking to raise a pre-seed, DayOf is bootstrapped to date. The team has brought in money to fund DayOf through AI consulting.
Eder earned his PhD in computer vision from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He was most recently the Senior Director of AI at Yembo, a San Diego-based AI company.
Shvets, who also earned his PhD from UNC Chapel Hill, worked at the same lab with Eder and have known each other since 20167.
“When I was exploring my own startup endeavors…I asked him if he was interested in working on this with me. We worked together really well when we were doing research, so it seemed a natural fit,” he told Hypepotamus.
On top of being a startup founder, Eder is a Naval Officer in the US Navy Reserve. It is a role that he said allows him to bring his technical skill set into national service.
“It definitely requires a balancing act as a startup founder to also have leadership responsibilities in the Navy Reserve and balance that with my family. I think I found a healthy balance, and it’s offered some incredible learning experiences both for personal growth, for growth as a leader, and also just exposure to a lot of great opportunities and great people.”
