How did the early years go for Unisfair?
According to Brent Arslaner, Vice President of Marketing for Unisfair, the company was self-funded through the early part of the 2000’s. Moreover, the initial target market was B2B media publishers. Publishers emulated a model very similar to the physical event world whereby they would leverage their content and their audience and then sell sponsors tiered packages. From 2002 through 2006, Unisfair experienced incremental growth from the publishers and remained focused on strengthening the virtual event platform. Eventually, in 2006, Unisfair began getting more interest from large corporations and as a result, the number of virtual events they organized skyrocketed. Innovative high-tech companies including Cisco and IBM were early adopters that paved the path for Unisfair’s growth. In 2006, Unisfair received funding from Sequoia Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist, which enabled them to expand the customer facing parts of their business. Successful virtual events are m
