JADE:
Hi, I'm Jade, co-founder and CEO of Epoch. And today we're doing our Invite to Impact interview series where we spotlight leaders in the event marketing space. And today I'm so excited to be joined by Trista. So Trista Myers is the head of events at LiveKit. Before that, she spent 12 years at Salesforce.
She ran four Dreamforces on the core production team and then eight years building the Salesforce Ventures event program from zero to over 35 events per year, with her and just one other person. Trista got her start doing events at AOL in New York, and now she's about a month into LiveKit where she's doing it all over again, building events.
Trista, thank you so much for being here.
TRISTA:
Happy to be here.
JADE:
So, Trista, maybe a good starting point, because you're just a few weeks into LiveKit: for a lot of folks that now are stepping into events and being that event leader within their companies for the first time, what have you seen be successful for you in terms of who you need to talk to, what you need to be looking at as you're starting out?
TRISTA:
As I'm starting out trying to build the program as the first real head of events at LiveKit, luckily, there was an events person there that has been doing some of the field marketing stuff to help get the company off the ground. So coming in for the first time, I had a lot of advice not to come in and just throw ideas out and just start trying to add some structure. Really, a lot of listening to what has been working for them.
And the sales team is also scaling at the same time as the marketing team. So I think a lot of the things that worked before are going to need to be adjusted and made more sophisticated going forward. So my first few weeks, I've just spent sort of looking at what they've done, taking in what people hope for the future, and then trying to make some inroads with the exec team.
I think finance has been my biggest ally and challenge because events are really expensive, and I can understand why in a startup every dollar counts and every dollar spent should equal a dollar made. But we're competing at a very tricky time right now with all these other companies who also have strong events programs or are building strong events programs.
So spending some time with the exec team, kind of explaining to them my approach, what's important to me, where we might have some conflict as we're planning events on what I think is a high quality bar, and where we should lean a little scrappy. So trying to do a lot of evaluation and keep an open mind.
And then the other thing, the team is small and scrappy as they exist. And coming from Salesforce, I'm used to some very defined lanes. So I'm also just trying to make sure that I'm not stepping on toes, and I'm still creating a very collaborative environment because right now everybody wears many hats and everybody kind of pitches in.
JADE:
I feel like it's an exciting place to be, but I guess maybe I'm taking a step back then. Given all your experiences, what are all the types of events that you've led and created?
TRISTA:
I feel lucky to have really tried kind of everything in the portfolio, and maybe field marketing is probably the thing that I have done the least recently, so it's awesome and scary to jump back into that. Starting at AOL, that was very sales and media focused events. It was a lot of ad buyer stuff, but still very sales focused.
A lot of ABM, really on-site curated things for clients, partnered brand experiences, as well as the big stuff: trade shows, internal events. So that's sort of where I got my training, my orientation into events, and I got to hit all different kinds. Then moving to Dreamforce, it was learning how to work in a big conference machine environment where there's tons of parts and tons of people.
So even on a small six-person team, we were managing so many other parts and people.
JADE:
It's just crazy to think Dreamforce in the early days was only six people.
TRISTA:
Yeah, it's changed now. And because Salesforce also has the roadshows, they've come up with a great way to scale and manage that team. But yeah, we were small and scrappy in a Dreamforce way still in those early days. But that was a great learning experience. And a lot of people are like, what do you do after you plan Dreamforce?
Like, what do you graduate to? And it was not really graduating to something bigger, but just using all those skills to go back and start again. So moving over to the Ventures team, where they had started doing some events but really wanted to feel grown up and start presenting themselves to founders in a more sophisticated way.
So slowly built that program. And that was a startup within a big corporate environment. So it wasn't quite as risky. And then now I'm leaning more into field marketing and sales, while also working on user conference stuff and some of the other big things to just fully round out the portfolio.
JADE:
Yeah, it's really fascinating to hear that because you've seen it at such a large scale, which I know we'll get to later as well, how every company now is trying to build their own version of Dreamforce. And then also you had that bespoke, more executive vibe events, which also everyone's doing right now.
So I guess based on your experience, what role can events play, especially when you think about go-to-market and sales?
TRISTA:
I think right now events is in an awesome position and going to be driving a lot of the sales. I think because the market is so competitive right now, whether LiveKit is competing directly with another AI firm or not, we're still competing for a lot of the same buyers. It's like maybe I'm not competing on your voice stack with another AI company, but we are probably competing for that same time for that CIO that we both want in the room who is going to make those buying decisions.
So I think we are going to see event-led growth become a real thing. And not just sales growth, not just product growth, but I think ELG is going to become a more common term and a bigger thing for the industry, which I think is great for events and marketing.
JADE:
I love that. I've never heard of ELG, but I agree, it's the strongest channel right now. And especially because, to your point, you were at AOL as your starting point in New York. Does it feel different now when you think about your AOL events days to now, seeing what's happening in the market?
TRISTA:
It feels different in some ways. And some of those tricks and skills that we had in those early days are useful again to me. We would go to a client's office and we would build an iPad bar because our thing was showing content on many channels. But it was pretty scrappy. It was a beautiful bar, but I had to be there with an Allen wrench, and I'm building it on the client site.
And we're preparing a really cool meal that's specific to that client, creating an experience. So in some ways I'm going to draw on that experience at LiveKit to come in and do some really customized stuff for prospects and customers. What's different is I feel like working at AOL was dealing with a lot of media buyers, which are, I think, a little bit easier, honestly, than tech buyers.
JADE:
Okay. Why is that? I'm so curious.
TRISTA:
I feel like media people are also marketing people and advertising people, and so they already get what you're trying to do. They get events. They know big brand moments. They already understand when you want a shared brand experience, sort of what that means.
And I think going into the developer audience or the C-suite, CTO, CIO, they want to come. They're also being overloaded with events, and they may not see the event tied to the product as closely as if you were a media buyer coming to an event, experiencing a marketing team for the first time.
JADE:
True. They're like, why am I here? But I'm here. And then you're like, okay, we all know what we're trying to do here. Get with the program. I get that.
And kind of in the same vein of that, when you think about getting the right folks in the room, to your point, so many people are targeting the same type of audience right now. How do you think about selecting the right lists of people to invite, and who needs to be in the room?
TRISTA:
Yeah, when we are thinking about who we should have in the room at our events right now, we're being pretty careful and strategic, at least at LiveKit. Top of funnel is very important. But also we're starting to see some sales success, a lot of it from events. And so really looking at the sales pipeline. Okay, where are deals stuck? Who needs help? Who needs more leads? Sort of that whole thing and thinking about who should be in the room.
I've done events, I'm sure we all have, where you're a couple weeks out and you're like, okay, something didn't work. The event is not filling up. Call your friends. Call your network. And we've all had events where, yes, we filled the room, and maybe we kind of scraped the bottom of the barrel to make that happen.
And even the events people don't like when that happens. Yes, we filled the room. Yes, you made the event worth it in some way, but then it's still not going to be successful in the eyes of sales or the leadership or whatever the metric is. So we are trying to put a lot of thought into what the event type is, who should be in the room, and why they should be in the room.
And if we're asking that time of them, which is very competitive right now, we should have a really good reason for it, I guess.
JADE:
Do you have any advice or things to avoid to prevent that from happening, where you're a few weeks out and you're like, oh God, we're not getting the right people to register?
TRISTA:
I think it is staying on top of whoever is sending those invites, whether it's reps or investors or whoever. I think it is a little bit of just a babysitting situation. I feel like most events people have been in that situation. Whoever your stakeholder is that's helping send those invites, that is probably not their core job.
When I'm at Ventures, it's the investors. Now, at LiveKit, it's mostly the sales team.
It's not their job always to get the people to the event, necessarily in their main scope. And so you're sort of asking them to do a side job for the success of your event. So I think also just making sure that everybody kind of has skin in the game, and that circles back to attribution or what the success is.
Are we all sharing the success at the end, or is it sort of just the events person left there with the bag being like, was this successful or not? And if we thought it was, did the sales team, did the investors or the execs follow up in a way that made the event useful?
JADE:
Are you literally equipping them with what to say in the invite?
TRISTA:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like trying to be as prescriptive as possible for them. Like, here's the invite copy. Here's the list. If you copy me, I can then do the follow-up.
JADE:
I'll do the chasing.
TRISTA:
Yeah. But I do see that a lot of the more personal invites and outreach are just so much more successful than me sending a list, “You're invited to this” sort of thing. We have to do that sometimes. That's the name of the game.
But the personal connection to whoever's sending the invite and wanting that person to be there, we always see more success when that individual is followed up with. Even if I'm not doing a follow-up, if your salesperson invited you and then two days before follows up to make sure you're going to be there, then there's a little pressure there, a good pressure to make sure we're filling that room.
JADE:
I love that extra touch, to your point, of following up to make sure you actually go as well, even though you just registered.
And I guess now with you stepping into an AI-first company, AI-native company, there's a lot of opportunity, and I'm sure within the whole company they're talking about leveraging more AI. So for you, what are you excited to see more AI within events, or how are you already using it?
TRISTA:
I think we're going to see AI come into events and be really helpful with many things. I think the biggest lift for me has been content, and I didn't start as a content creator in my life. I've been in places like working on Dreamforce, where there's a whole content team. I'm not touching any sessions on stage.
They don't want me to. And then at Ventures, you're sort of doing a little bit of everything and starting to get into that content. In my early days, I would lean on my head of marketing because I felt like they really knew the portfolio, they knew those company stories, and I was very nervous, actually, to take on a content role. Like, that is not my job. I'm the events person. I don't know the companies as well as you.
And then over time, I feel like if you stay somewhere long enough, you just sort of naturally learn it anyway. And then learning the AI companies actually was beneficial because it seemed more tangible to me than some of our early investments like financial services, B2B, backend infrastructure for banking.
That does not bring me any personal joy or usefulness. But so many of these AI tools are B2B and B2C, so then being able to interact with them helps me build the content better.
And then on the event side, being able to just talk to Claude or talk to OpenAI and build a speaker dashboard. These are all my speakers. Now I need to put them together. What is the through line here? What is the through line for this person, and how am I putting that together?
Okay, I have these ideas for the content. Now I need to make an abstract, speaker brief. So some of that admin stuff around the content. And then if I don't know the company that well, I can feel like an expert very quickly. Like, okay, I don't know what X company does and if it would make sense to pair them on stage with this other company.
I can quickly get up to speed on that now with AI, so much faster and in a useful way to my team that I'm not bothering them for that sort of thing. And what I'm hoping to see soon is renderings. Renderings have always been such a pain.
JADE:
Oh, like space renderings.
TRISTA:
Space renderings. Or I have an idea to build a room that looks like this with this kind of activation. And I feel like the AI is almost there, that just a regular planner can do that without CAD skills, without design skills. Right now, I feel like it's still a little rusty, and I'm like, no, not like that.
And it's like, well, maybe we'll put a hat on this person. You're like, no, fewer hats. And it doesn't always work. But I feel like we're getting there. And I think I'm excited for that, that I can start to do some of my own visualizations that look sophisticated and not look like I just put it into Claude and it popped out some visual of some sort.
I would like to have more control over my renderings and be able to explain something to someone really visually. Right now, I lean on my agencies a lot for that.
JADE:
Definitely. I'm hearing folks using AI across, it sounds like even for you, end to end, from ideation to execution and after. And actually thinking a little bit about post-event, all the metrics that I'm sure you're really used to looking at, but across the venture side. But now the sales side is so different.
Are there metrics that matter more to you versus just attendance and registration numbers?
TRISTA:
Things that matter to me, I think registration, attendance, that's all really important. And then of course, the sales pipeline, the sales goals are really important. But when I'm on site, I'm also looking for a lot of other cues. Like, okay, in this session, a bunch of people picked up their phone, and now they're not actually listening to the person on stage.
And I notice that, okay, either this block of content was too long or the speaker didn't hit the mark. Right? If they picked up their phone, that tells me something for next time. Okay, this content didn't hit maybe, or people leave early. Or if someone stayed all the way to the end, that tells me something.
Did someone go to a booth and not just grab the swag and walk away? Did they stay and really have a thorough conversation? Sometimes that doesn't always end up on paper in the numbers, but they're cues, I think, for the go-to-market team. Sort of little things, micro things that work or don't work that you can improve upon in the future, that mean things about the more human experience of events.
JADE:
So Trista, because you've worked with so many event marketers, and yourself coming up in all these different organizations, different types of events, what characteristics or skill sets do you find set really great event marketers apart from the rest?
TRISTA:
I think what sets people apart, and I feel like this answer may surprise people, I feel like one of the most important things is that you are just really willing to roll up your sleeves. You are kind of a workhorse, and I don't say that to mean we want to run events people into the ground. I mean, we've got a tricky job as it is.
But I love looking at people who have come from the agency side because someone from the agency side knows that no matter what, it's sort of like all hands on deck. Something hits the fan at 11 p.m. That whole agency, everyone on that team is showing up to mop the floor, scrape the thing, clean the whatever. That's really hard to teach.
I feel like there are a lot of events things that I can teach people, but resourcefulness, like, hey, the truck is stuck in traffic. We need all these items. Who is the person that's just going to be like, okay, I've got it. I've got the list. I'm already out the door. I'm figuring this out.
Those skills are just so valuable when you're on events, and especially in a scrappy team, I think are really hard to teach. You kind of just have to find the people who are just willing to do whatever it takes to get it done, and in a creative way.
And sometimes that creativity means visual, creative things that make things beautiful. And sometimes creative problem solving is just like, oh, we needed catering. The catering fell through. And so now I'm going to call so-and-so who is friends with so-and-so, and we are going to figure it out.
So that's kind of what I often look for, and I think is hard to interview for as well. So early in my days at AOL, they would have everyone sort of come through an apprentice program, and so they didn't sign you full time in the beginning because events is such a hard job. If you couldn't take it for the first few months, then they knew this type of corporate event is not for you.
It doesn't mean you're not an events person. There's so many different ways you can get involved in events, but I think really seeing some proof from people, and I really like that model. I love an internship. If you want to help me out at an event, I will take volunteers.
And if you're great, maybe I'll keep you. But I think seeing someone in an office, working on an event spreadsheet, and then seeing someone on site are two incredibly different things.
JADE:
Absolutely. It made me think of so many people we've worked with. I'm like, that is so true. I love that, just having them come in and see what they do when a problem happens in real time. And I know in our earlier questions as well, or our prep, we talked a lot about how it's so competitive now for events and capturing attention of similar personas.
Everyone wants the next Dreamforce, the next roadshow to be the best thing. So among that, what have you seen be successful to set yourselves apart or really target the audience and get them to come?
TRISTA:
Things are very competitive these days, and so to get people to break through that noise, it is hard. In the early days, Salesforce set the bar for what a beautiful, immersive conference experience can be. That's not as hard anymore. Everyone's seen it. They've tested it.
The event agencies now are ramped. They're out there. They can make anything happen that you can imagine. So to me, it is starting to get out-of-the-box thinking. If all of the startups that I'm competing with can do that same thing with an event agency, then it's going to take some real out-of-the-box thinking, like hospitality in different places. I'm thinking people are spending a lot of time at airports.
People spend a lot of time on the road right now. These buyers, these folks are being inundated. So how do we make their life a little bit easier in a way that leaves a LiveKit memory with them? How are we providing hospitality in an unexpected space that makes them feel like if they were in a pinch, they could call us?
One of LiveKit's advantages is that we have such a deep stack and so many offerings, and we do want people to call us if they really need help. Maybe that's how they find us the first time. Maybe that's how they find us after they've had some issues.
But I really want them leaving my event experiences feeling like this is a friendly face I could call in a crisis. And sometimes that's not just spending some time with a sales rep at a booth on the show floor. I feel like the joke now is that everyone's been invited to a Michelin dinner, and what is fancier than a Michelin dinner?
Whatever that thing is, that's what we need to figure out, because we've all got the same restaurants. We all can invite people to visit the same thing. So my team is really pushing ourselves to think, where do we find these people outside the show floor, outside those dinners, that makes their life better and conveys our message?
JADE:
Have you seen any great examples out there that kind of pierce through the noise of all of the Michelin-star dinners, or other ideas that you're excited to start testing out?
TRISTA:
We have some ideas. I'm not going to share them.
JADE:
We’ll share it when it goes live.
TRISTA:
Yeah, yeah. Because I do think it's so competitive. I really think some of these ideas are the edge. I think there are some companies doing a great job. Anthropic, obviously they've got a big events motion going, and what they're producing is very beautiful and hospitality forward.
So I think they are sort of setting a new bar, a new wave of how you can be successful with attracting people. They also have a product that everyone's excited to use and everyone needs or wants to use, so that helps. Not all of us are competing on that same exact level. I'm excited to see what all of us, all of these new heads of events across all these startups, can come up with.
Because even though we're competing against each other, I'm still rooting for that head of events to do something awesome or come up with something creative that will change the industry or move the bar.
JADE:
People, to your point, just keep leveling up each other. And as soon as someone sees someone do something, it's a rat race to get that experience. I remember, like US Open, FIFA World Cup finals. Everyone was there.
TRISTA:
Yeah, yeah. The money isn't the issue now, which is a tricky thing. A lot of people have the budget now, where I feel like even back when Salesforce was starting, people were still like, how do I justify such a large budget or such a beautiful event? And now it seems like that has been proven.
People want to be in beautiful spaces. If your space is not beautiful, they've got 20 others that are. It's tough out there.
JADE:
So you're like, good luck out there, guys. And I guess, yeah, last two questions for you because now you are stepping into a role. To your point, someone has done a few events at LiveKit already and you're inheriting it. So kind of tying it back to our first question of what would you do when you're new?
How would you then look at the calendar ahead and plan it out? How far ahead are you planning? How do you strategize where to go, what to do?
TRISTA:
So thinking about strategy long term, I am starting to plan about six months out. So first half of next year. And because we reach so many audiences, it is also seeing, okay, this is the trade show level. This is where we're going. Sort of mapping it for the whole year for the whole company, but at all the different levels.
So we've got the trade show level, then we've got the high-touch sales events, then we've got our user conference layered in there somewhere. And how do we make sure that nothing in February or March is cannibalizing the efforts for the user conference? And how do we make sure after the user conference, all those sales motions are starting the flywheel to come back around to the user conference?
And the calendar also has a lot of white space, because while we are trying to be strategic and as the sales team ramps, I'm like, okay, what regions do you need us to be in? What quarters do we want to go, maybe spend more, go bigger? Which ones should we scale back? How are we using an event in January if the user conference is in March?
How do all these things come together? My hope is that at the end of this coming year, we will start to see the flywheel begin to turn. They've started a great sales motion. Now the sales team is ramped and they're asking for lots of events. But we can't just start doing everything everywhere that everyone wants to do, because not everyone knows the center where me and the events team are . So leaving lots of white space for things to come up.
I feel like we could all be blindsided tomorrow by a new AI conference that I've never heard of, that all of a sudden I need to be at, that is the same time as something else. And trying to make sure that I'm touching each part of the business. So the community, the developers, that lane is getting lots of support and lots of event-led growth. And sales and executive, are we starting to get the executives on stage places so that we can have some executive-led sales things from just people hearing them speak?
But it's a little daunting and exciting because I know how to do that, and it's fun to do it. With a growing go-to-market team, we have a very creative team, and every call, even with the sales team, is, we have an event idea for this. We have an idea for that. Awesome. And I love that. And it's really just taking that all in.
Can this idea be packaged up with this idea so that three ideas now become one event, or do we need to spread them out? And how do you make sure you're not just taking ideas and being like, cool, great idea, put that in the pocket, and that person doesn't feel heard necessarily? And it's sort of like, okay, here's why I think that's great. Here's why maybe that's not going to work.
We're going to plan about six months out now. A year feels too far for someone so new and for a program that's so new. And every day we're just sort of penciling new things in and figuring out how to put the puzzle together.
JADE:
Yeah. And I guess the last question for you then, because there's so much changing in the event space, given our entire conversation. I think there's so many new roles in events too, where you're seeing companies are investing $400,000 to $500,000 on a new head of events. So it's getting heavily invested.
And there's so many trends that are changing. Are there ones that you're excited to see or have been noticing a lot within the space?
TRISTA:
I have been noticing in this new phase of the events world, and I think it's awesome to just see events really being recognized in this moment and seeing those big comp packages tied to events people, because it is a really hard job. We're not saving lives, but the job is stressful. And I've had execs who tell me, I don't know how you do this. I lose sleep at night.
And you're just like, yeah, I'm having event nightmares too. But this is my job. I'm used to them. So I think it's awesome. A year ago, we did not see this many events positions open.
JADE:
Just like, all of a sudden, it's all bubbling up.
TRISTA:
As I said earlier, I think it's great we're all being pushed to be creative and compete against someone you probably worked with at your last company and who had similar great event ideas. And now we're all leading these event programs. So I think I'm just really excited for events people to be recognized in this. And my ELG, make fetch happen here.
I just think people are really starting to see that events are going to move the needle and that the sales teams are starting to rely on events more, and that the bar is high. Those comp packages are because this person is trying to be really strategic and really leading a lot of sales goals.
So I'm excited to see that and curious to see if that maintains. Is this events bubble going to burst at some point? We can't all just keep spending money on the same events and competing for the same thing. Are those out-of-the-box ideas going to keep us winning, or are people just going to get burnt out?
Thinking about even some of my execs and how often they're on the road attending other people's events or speaking at events, that's exhausting. So I'm curious to see if we can maintain the pace, or is less more? Is that going to be the move? You're just sort of not asking as much from people.
So time will tell. But I'm very excited for events in the industry in this moment to be recognized and celebrated.
JADE:
Trista, thank you so much for being here, being part of our inaugural interview series, From Invite to Impact.
TRISTA:
Thank you for having me. This has been awesome.
