Software that runs the world’s meetings and events.

Reggie Aggarwal came out of McIntire in 1991 and trained as a lawyer. As president of the Indian CEO Network he organized hundreds of events by hand, and concluded that the tooling for it did not exist. He started Cvent in September 1999 with five colleagues, raised $17 million within months, and grew to 125 people.

Then the bubble burst. He laid off roughly eighty percent of the staff, took personal responsibility for a five-year office lease meant for 250 employees, and carried several hundred thousand dollars of credit-card debt. The company spent years paying its way back before it raised outside money again.