On the TechTO stage ×2
Bijan Vaez of EventMobi presents Things We Did Wrong Building EventMobi
Watch on YouTube ↗Bijan Vaez of EventMobi presents The things that we didn't know, we didn't know
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on a TechTO stage in 2015. Every TechTO talk is searchable — ask the archive about Bijan ↗
In their words
Yes, we started in the middle of a recession, but this actually ended up working really well for us, because not having any money really focused us on building a profitable business right from the get-go and not depending on external capital to keep us going.
We've actually been around for six years and we've never been written up by TechCrunch — but they're actually clients of ours. They're paying us, and I like that relationship better.
No matter how smart you and your team are, no matter how unique your product and industry is, someone at some point has made the same mistake that you're about to make. So why not learn from it and avoid it?
Around the web ×2
Quick answers
What is Bijan Vaez known for?
Co-founding EventMobi with his brother Bob and running its engineering as CTO while the Toronto event-software company grew without venture capital to more than 15,000 clients. He is now founder and CEO of Merchkit.
What is Bijan Vaez doing now?
He runs Merchkit, an AI merchandising and product-catalogue platform he founded in 2022, based in Vancouver and Toronto. It raised $2 million CAD in pre-seed funding led by Afore Capital and Antler Canada, announced in February 2025. He is also a venture partner at Antler.
What did Bijan Vaez speak about at TechTO?
Twice. In 2015 he walked through everything EventMobi did wrong — starting in a recession, starting in San Francisco, spreading the product too thin — and how each turned out to help. In 2018 he argued for bringing coaches into a startup earlier than founders think they need them.