History

How Zvents Started

by Ethan Stock, CEO & Founder

The seed of the idea that became Zvents was planted in early 2003 when I started dating my girlfriend. Andrea introduced me to vintage dancing -- waltzes and polkas and swing and one-steps - and that fall, she took me to Gaskell's, one of the biggest local dances, held every other month at the Scottish Rite Center in Oakland.

Gaskell's is a formal dress dance, held in a hall that wouldn't have been out of place in the movie Amadeus. Hundreds of dancers attend, in costumes ranging from the 17th through the 22nd century. It's worth the price of admission just for the spectacle -- but lessons, live music, and snacks are all included. When she took me there for the first time, my instantaneous thought as we walked in the door was;

"This has been going on six miles from my house in Berkeley for the entire decade that I've lived in the Bay Area... and I never knew. What *else* is going on behind closed doors that I'd love to discover?"

And at that moment, the central concept of Zvents was born.

In January and February of 2005, it all started coming together. I had wrapped up a big project for NetService Ventures and the partners were supportive of me testing the waters with a prototype experiment around local event search that *might* become a startup.

I ran into Tyler, who I had met on a "rim to rim to rim" hike of the Grand Canyon earlier in the year, at a party, and found out that he was quitting his job. An excited conversation about all the emerging technologies that we were both obsessed with ensued --- now generally referred to as "Web 2.0" but in those days, before the bubble buzz, before the acquisition of Flickr, and before the coining of the term "AJAX," it was rare to meet someone who was up on all the latest coolness. I offered Tyler a job building the prototype -- crappy pay, no guarantees of anything, and maybe it'd turn into an actual startup.

Tyler accepted. We started talking vaguely, waving our hands, and attempting to nail down what, exactly, we were going to build. And then, in a wild white boarding and brainstorming session on March 17th, 2005 we came up with the key UI concept that became Zvents.

It was the coolest idea ever.

As Tyler got to work, it emerged that he's a technical genius, and his talent and incredible work ethic created an initial product that worked. That product has grown, with the effort of an increasing and wonderful team, into the Zvents you see today. Edison's dictum about innovation -- 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration -- is as true today as it ever was, and while this post has focused on that initial 1%, the rest of the story will be told through the work of our Zvents team, with me cheerleading and running to stay ahead of the parade.

And that's how Zvents was founded.

Oh... and about that name... I can't remember exactly how I came up with it. I wrote to Tyler at the time, "until we come up with something catchier, that's what we're calling this puppy."