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Source: Facebook
Around the year 2000, database developer Bryan Caplovitz was looking for a way to establish himself as a tech consulting expert. The method he chose was public speaking.
His search, of course, occurred during a more primitive phase of the Internet, predating its ascent to a mainstream utility complete with millions of websites and search engines to help users navigate them. Thus, to be booked at events, Caplovitz had a few unwieldy media to choose from: mail, phone calls, email, and blanket online job boards. But even more difficult was figuring out where to start – a problem he realized meeting planners faced as well.
“The web was beginning to gain popularity around this time. Monster.com was founded just a couple years earlier, as was Google,” Caplovitz said. “I thought Monster was a great model for finding jobs, but they did not list jobs for speakers. Their ‘resume’ data did not fit the ‘one-sheet’ requirements meeting planners wanted. And they did not have a way to post what are essentially 1-2 hour ‘jobs.’”
Caplovitz decided to take the initiative, and by 2001, he had devised a potential solution: SpeakerMatch, a speaker directory and job board specifically designed to help speakers and meeting planners discover and communicate with each other.
The premise of SpeakerMatch is simple. Meeting planners post jobs for speakers, and speakers (primarily those new to the game) present their qualifications in a public profile, which includes information about the content and angle of their speeches, availability, and pricing, and/or offer their services via seminars. Speakers are notified as jobs are posted, and meeting planners can contact them directly.
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Founder Bryan Caplovitz speaks at the Austin Chapter of the Holistic Chamber of Commerce. Source: Facebook
However, the company’s early-aughts inception – freshly following the collapse of the dot-com bubble – has generated a substantially different origin story from today’s proliferative tech startups.
“When I was starting this up, I had not even heard of venture capital, or even the term ‘funding’ in that sense. I started up before the startup craze,” Caplovitz said. “My out-of-pocket expenses to launch this business were negligible – business cards, some flyers, the domain name, and Web hosting...I don’t think my expenses were more than $1,000 for the first year in business but my goal was always to create an income stream. That income stream has grown far more than what I imagined.”
What’s more, unlike many contemporary startups, SpeakerMatch’s core functions, staff, and revenue model haven’t changed much since it was founded. While the company routinely makes efforts to adapt to technological evolution through data-mining tools, payment and collection systems, and communications systems, it still consists of two employees: Caplovitz and senior vice president Paul Ellul. SpeakerMatch also continues to generate funds from subscription services for speakers – the method it’s employed since day one.
“If I would have taken today’s startup route, we most likely could not have weathered the economic downturn,” Caplovitz said.
As SpeakerMatch progresses, Caplovitz intends to maintain the same strategy: a clear, unflinching user focus, with a steady diet of technological improvements. “I’ve always been a techie at heart,” he reflected, “and I do my best to keep us at the cutting edge.”
