FA Company Spotlight: Stova
In a business where “integration” is usually a dirty word, code for stitched-together ductwork and dashboard chaos, Stova didn’t just fix the plumbing. They tore down the whole house and rebuilt the infrastructure of enterprise events from the studs up. This wasn’t a rebrand. It was a merger with muscle memory. On October 10, 2022, three battle-tested pioneers, MeetingPlay, Aventri, and eventcore, folded into one, backed by Sunstone Partners and Camden Partners. One goal: become the single-vendor ecosystem powering the future of in-person, virtual, and hybrid experiences.
Each brought its own fire. MeetingPlay, founded by Joe Schwinger and Lisa Vann in 2011, came loaded with immersive tech and virtual engagement chops. Aventri, the 1998-born cloud-native (originally Global Executive Business Service, later Etouches), brought enterprise-grade event management muscle. And eventcore? The O.G., founded in 1984, quietly handled the high-stakes registrations and comms stack for some of the largest organizations in the world. Put them together, and you get a platform that moves like a startup but hits like an incumbent.
Now, under the operational edge of Kirk Ziehm, named CEO in January 2024 after leading Movista, the engine is revving. David Murphy (Executive Chairman), John Pulling (Board Member), Anupam Palit (President & CFO), Jeffrey Gregory (COO), Addison C. Grimes (CIO), and Gurpreet Singh (SVP Global Sales) round out a leadership bench built for scale, not status. Former CEO Eric Lochner, who drove the original integration, remains an investor and adviser, still playing chess while others are just setting up the board.
What does all that pedigree buy you? Reach. 50,000+ events annually. 10,000+ enterprise customers. 7 million+ attendees. Fortune 500 from Microsoft to Airbus, Paramount to Rolls-Royce. The platform powers everything from pre-event marketing to post-event analytics, with CRM sync, mobile apps, matchmaking tools, and hybrid engagement baked into the experience. It’s not a platform, it’s an operating system for the event-first economy.
Stova isn’t riding the hybrid wave. It’s weaponizing it. With enterprise finally waking up to the need for scalable, global-ready engagement, this team is playing the long game. No swivel-chair SaaS. No endless vendor spreadsheets. Just one ecosystem that actually works.
They’re not done building. With 248 employees across seven global offices and open roles in engineering, product, ops, and customer success, Stova is stacking talent like it stacks tech: all in, no weak links. This is where careers scale as fast as infrastructure.
Follow the journey. Join the build. Stova is hiring now
https://stova.io/about-us/careers/
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