Event Planner Faces Biggest Party Yet: DNC

When the Democratic National Committee announced it would hold its presidential nominating convention in Los Angeles, downtown restaurateurs began calculating how many arugula salads they could sell, political activists started plotting ways to lure cameras to their causes, and Angelenos braced themselves for a grinding week of clogged streets.

Steven Koltai, meanwhile, was hatching a plan for his fledgling Internet company, Event411.com Inc., to keep the convention’s hundreds of meetings and nearly 5,000 delegates organized with its online event-planning software. Although his customer base was mostly limited to amateurs planning weddings and bar mitzvahs, Koltai wanted the convention so badly he offered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of services for free.

“I wanted to go after something big, a showcase of how to use these tools,” said Koltai, Event411.com’s founder, chairman and chief executive. “It answers the question of future clients: Can you handle a major event?”

If Event411.com proves the answer is yes, the Marina del Rey-based firm could be well-positioned to capture some of the estimated $500 million spent each year planning events ranging from baby showers to corporate retreats in the U.S., according to analysts.

A successful showing for DNC411.com, the site Event411.com created for the Democratic National Convention Committee, could also help sell the company’s services to well-heeled corporate clients in addition to its core business of building sites for use by everyday consumers.

Event411.com’s business is built around three dozen or so software applications that let people schedule meetings, RSVP to parties, keep track of “to-do” lists and manage other tasks involved in event planning. The company uses those tools to build custom sites for companies, professional organizations and Web sites that cater to individual consumers.

That’s quite a switch from Koltai’s original plan for his 4-year-old company, which was launched in Culver City with the name CyberStudios.

An eight-year veteran of Warner Bros. who led the studio’s interactive division, Koltai expected CyberStudios to become an online equivalent of a major film studio. Warner Bros. doesn’t produce its own movies or television shows, but it has deals with dozens of independent producers. In the same vein, CyberStudios developed a stable of about 70 “affiliated developers” who created online games, serialized shows, “edutainment” programs and electronic commerce opportunities that could be sold to budding Web sites that hoped to compete with television networks.

In the fall of 1996, CyberStudios introduced 12 of its favorite ideas to Internet entertainment executives. The one with the most universal appeal turned out to be an online wedding planning site to help couples scout locations, hire DJs, register for gifts and communicate with guests.

“The applause meter went to 100 with the wedding planning site,” said Koltai, a seasoned business executive who embraces numbers and eschews hype. Based on that feedback, CyberStudios dropped its 11 other projects and focused exclusively on what would become Wedding411.com.

Koltai’s staff built a handful of basic tools, including an online planner, a guest management program and software to post photos in online scrapbooks. In addition to launching Wedding411.com--and later BarMitzvah411.com--the company also started creating private-label wedding planning Web sites for customers such as J.C. Penney, Discovery Channel and the Washington Post.

But as CyberStudios’ customer list grew, it became uncomfortable for the company to compete directly with its customers through Wedding411.com. Besides, plenty of firms were clamoring for CyberStudios to build Web sites for them. Koltai put the brakes on his own business-to-consumer sites and focused his tools on creating sites for others. In March 1999, the company changed its name to Event411.com and became an application service provider, or ASP, months before the business model would emerge as an e-commerce buzzword.

That summer, the company raised $14.7 million from private investors to hire more programmers--along with some additional graphic designers and writers--to develop more specialized and robust software capable of serving larger, more lucrative clients, such as corporations and professional organizations. But to make a splash, Event411.com needed that first really big client.

The announcement in March 1999 that the Democrats would hold their convention in Los Angeles provided the perfect opportunity. Koltai pitched the merits of an online event planner to both the Democrats and the Republicans for their conventions.

“How do I tell everyone who’s interested in gun control that I’m having a round-table discussion on gun control on Wednesday?” he said. “There’s thousands of delegates, and they’re staying at 100 different hotels. Are you going to put up a notice in each one’s lunch room? These are some very low-tech problems we’re solving.”

The GOP balked, but the Democrats accepted. They worked with Event411.com to select which planning tools they wanted to include in their Web site (yes on message boards; no on e-mail). Some tools, such as the scheduler, were customized: On DNC411.com, events that would normally be displayed in a simple list pop up in a calendar instead.

Each of the 4,979 delegates received a letter in the mail with a DNC411.com user name and password. Upon logging in, they can sign up to receive notices about events relating to education, the minimum wage and other topics. They can also create an online schedule to keep track of delegation meetings, cocktail parties, round-table discussions and other events during the four-day convention. Delegates can even upload their own photos to personalize their planners.

Already, one delegate has used his DNC411.com account to make sure that he’d have a sign language interpreter when he got to the convention. Another delegate used the message boards to discuss nuclear waste disposal and how the issue could be used to sway Republicans in Nevada and other Western states.

“It’s just fantastic,” said Lewis Goldstein, a 57-year-old delegate from the Bronx who has used DNC411.com to discuss the Democratic Party’s position on gays in the military. “The anticipation and participation in the convention would not have been as good without this Web site. It’s a fantastic way to reach hundreds or thousands of people that you might have something in common with.”

In addition to those functions, state chairs, delegation chairs and other convention leaders can also use DNC411.com to organize meetings and invite people to attend.

Creating and maintaining the “digital nerve center” for 5,677 Democrats at their most important event in four years is “scary,” Koltai said. But he’s not scared about pouring a six-figure sum of money into a project that won’t generate any direct revenue for his company. Normally, Event411.com charges customers a setup fee of $35,000 to $50,000, plus a per-user licensing fee of between $5 and $8 to cover a period of five years. The company, which expects to be profitable within a year, said it took in more revenue in the first three months of 2000 than it did in all of 1999 but wouldn’t discuss specific numbers.

Koltai said he can’t yet point to a customer Event411.com has landed as a result of the Democratic convention. But he said his investment in DNC411.com won’t go to waste--whatever happens. Whenever Event411.com creates a tool for a client, it can be offered to other clients as well.

If everything goes smoothly at next week’s convention, both Event411.com and the entire concept of online event planning could get a big boost, said Mary Cicalese, a senior analyst with Jupiter Communications who follows ASPs. So far, Event411.com’s competitors are focused on planning small events with fewer than 100 guests. But she praised the company for targeting big business customers, who could be much more lucrative.

“It’s a huge opportunity, and they have a first-mover advantage,” Cicalese said. “The Democratic convention has brought them to the forefront.”

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Times staff writer Karen Kaplan can be reached at karen.kaplan@latimes.com.