Think Big, Start Small
- TJ Nelson
- Apr 30
- 4 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
How a 12-week pivot rescued revenue, delighted 1 M+ attendees, and rewrote the playbook for modern events.
Executive Snapshot
Role | Timeframe | Scope | Business Impact |
Manager of Product Design & IC lead (Page Builder) | Mar 2020 → Aug 2021 MVP → 2024+ growth | 6 cross-functional sub-teams | +400 % contracted ARR, 92 % client retention, 55 % ↓ implementation hours |
The Moment of Crisis
Before 2020, RainFocus powered large, in-person conferences for Fortune-500 customers. In March 2020 the pandemic cancelled physical gatherings worldwide and 100 % of projected event revenue evaporated in three weeks. We had to pivot—fast—from “venue software” to “virtual-first experience platform.”
What I Led
Area | High-Impact Decisions |
Page Builder MVP → v2 This product included the ability for our clients to design and build their event website. | Built a lean component system; deferred “channel-switching” idea to meet 12-week window |
Networking & 1:1 Chat | Directory + async chat to recreate hallway conversations |
Gamification | Tiered trophies tied to engagement behaviors (sessions, surveys, booth visits) |
Design Ops | Launched weekly Friday demo/critique, remote whiteboard jams, shared Figma libraries |
Delivery Timeline
12 weeks – AVE MVP with live, simulive & on-demand sessions
+6 weeks – Attendee directory & chat
Feb 2021 – First fully virtual RainFocus INSIGHT user conference
2022-23 – Adobe MAX draws 100 k+ global virtual attendees, smashing prior records Welcome to the Adobe Blog
2024-25 – Attendee Mobile app is available plus continuous UX optimization on the web; RainFocus named a Leader in 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Event Tech Platforms RainFocus
Product Principles That Guided Us
Principle | How it shaped our approach |
Go & See (Toyota) | We ran our own virtual conference within six weeks. A live retro in FigJam with every stakeholder surfaced first-hand pain points. |
Outcomes > Output | We framed success as an attendee outcome, not a feature checklist or revenue target. North-star metric: % of registered attendees who watch ≥ 1 session. |
Think Big, Start Small | We sketched “channel-surf” concepts that syndicated sessions like Netflix, then trimmed to a minimal, testable slice we could ship in two-week increments. |
Braintrust Culture (Pixar) | Cross-disciplinary reviews—Product, Eng, Design, Content, Client Success—met every Friday to critique artifacts candidly and “root out mediocrity.” |
Affinity Mapping
In an effort to more fully understand the problem to solve, we created our first virtual user conference with the technology we could put together over the summer to experience an event for ourselves.
After the event we got as many stakeholders as we could get into a white-boarding doc
and took many notes about what went well and what could've been improved.
If we zoom in closer on the big orange cluster in the middle, you can see Content Curation / Content Discovery was the category that we received the most feedback about. It ended up being a major focus for us as part of our attendees virtual experience.
Problem Definition
Only 42 % of registrants watched a session during our first virtual event. Qual & quant feedback pinpointed a single, high-leverage obstacle: attendees couldn’t find content worth watching.
We translated that insight into an OKR:
Objective: Increase attendee engagement with event content.
Key Result: Raise the viewer-rate (registrants who play ≥ 1 session) by +10 % event-over-event.
North-Star Vision
“If attendees love the experience, customers will trust us with their entire event portfolio.”
Success metrics we owned:
Engagement – Attendees who viewed ≥ 1 session
Revenue recovery – Contracted ARR growth
Client retention – Renewal rate
Efficiency – Implementation hours per event
Prioritization and JTBD
This diagram shows how we mapped each Job-to-Be-Done (JTBD) onto the Kano Model to decide what should make it onto the very first page of our virtual event. By plotting desired features against two axes—customer satisfaction (vertical) and level of implementation (horizontal)—we could see which ideas would simply meet basic expectations and which would delight. The analysis revealed that “Channels/Tracks,” although technically elegant, sat in the performance zone rather than the basics zone for most clients; they weren’t table-stakes and could be deferred.
What consistently drove satisfaction, however, were features that helped attendees find and engage with content quickly: rich thumbnail imagery for every session, a picture-in-picture player, and the ability to curate personalized lists. Those insights led us to prioritize visual session cards and content-curation tools for the MVP, ensuring we nailed the must-have experience before layering on advanced navigation concepts like Channels.
Survey Research
Design & Delivery Process
V1 Site Map
Ideation sprints
→ 15+ concepts graded on impact/effort.
We started with low fidelity concepts and incrementally tested and refined designs.
High Fidelity Designs
Key Experience Improvements Shipped
Smart Agenda – Live, Upcoming, Popular tabs; auto-refreshes while sessions start.
Session Cards 2.0 – Prominent “Watch Now” CTA, speaker avatars, duration badges.
Featured Tracks Carousel – Content team schedules banners in CMS; zero-code updates.
Analytics Tracking – Embedded charts for organizers fuel continuous agenda tweaks mid-event.
Gamification – tier-based trophies and points that rewarded high-value behaviors (session ratings, booth visits, survey completions), boosting engagement and session-to-session stickiness.
Attendee-to-Attendee Chat – a directory with title/company filters plus one-to-one messaging that recreated hallway conversations and extended networking beyond the event.
Exhibitor Booths – self-service profiles with rich media, product spotlights, and lead-capture forms that helped sponsors drive measurable ROI.
Mobile App – a fully native companion app that let attendees view sessions on the go, add them to personal agendas, and keep chatting with peers from their phones.
Outcomes
Metric (last 5 yrs) | Result |
Contracted ARR | +400 % |
Client retention | 92 % |
Implementation hours/event | –55 % |
First 5 months live | 1 M+ unique virtual attendee experiences, 2.5 M sessions streamed, 50 k one-on-one meetings |
Scale proof | “Over two million virtual attendees and counting” powered in 2020 alone GlobeNewswire |
“In powering many successful virtual events, RainFocus has been at the forefront of this digital transformation, helping clients navigate the pivot and optimize engagement.” — JR Sherman, CEO GlobeNewswire
We overshot the Key Results we aimed for, proving that better discovery, not bigger budgets, drives virtual engagement—and future revenue followed.
What I Learned
Crisis = clarity – ruthless scoping and weekly demos kept 40 people aligned on a single engagement metric.
Remote doesn’t mean siloed – disciplined critique rituals + shared design libraries eliminated rework.
Templates beat training – packaging best-practice layouts into Page Builder slashed build time and boosted adoption.
Final Thoughts
Facing a 100 % revenue collapse when COVID-19 shut down in-person gatherings, we led RainFocus’ sprint from a physical-events platform to a full-fledged Attendee Virtual Experience in just twelve weeks—an effort that ultimately boosted contracted CARR by 400 %, pushed client retention to 92 %, and cut event-setup time by 55 %.
Guided by a Kano-model assessment of attendee Jobs-to-Be-Done, we focused the MVP on high-satisfaction basics— rich session imagery, easy content curation, chat-driven networking, and gamified participation. Within the first five months the platform delivered more than one million virtual experiences, streamed 2.5 million sessions, and facilitated 50 000 one-on-one meetings.
Key takeaways: in a crisis, ruthless prioritization and weekly demos keep cross-functional teams aligned; templates and visual defaults beat training for accelerating client adoption; and disciplined remote rituals can turn uncertainty into industry-leading innovation.
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