We held our first Vulcan Poker Night a while back, and while it was an amazing night, it was also exhausting. Extremely exhausting. It was the first event we had ever held, and along the way there were obstacles aplenty, especially in logistics.
I’m pretty sure many of you have had experience with event planning in Singapore, be it an intimate affair or a grander one. Wasn’t a walk in the park, was it? From vendors to catering, your laptop screen would likely have been buried under multiple tabs and windows.
Which is why this startup will gladly handle all the heavy lifting for you.
Just Delegate It
Delegate is a free online marketplace where people can discover and book everything they need for their events, and I do mean everything. The website hosts an array of vendors carefully curated by the Delegate team, and they cater for everything you’d need for a memorable celebration.
As you can see from their blog and Facebook page, Delegate has helped to host birthday parties, weddings and company events aplenty.
Just to clarify, the Delegate team does not help to plan any events. They are a marketplace where people can discover, and compare event planners, caterers, entertainment choices… think of them as the organisers of the greatest shopping bazaar of event stuff.
And these are the 2 women behind it all.
Meet The Planners
“We are both truly passionate about the industry because we know how overwhelming the event planning process can be.”
Co-founders Jacqueline Ye and Melissa Lou were colleagues with lifelong dreams of becoming entrepreneurs. Between them, they have a solid decade’s worth of experience in events, and it was from this experience that they realised that the sector was still rife with inefficiencies.
In those problems however, they also a wealth of untapped potential.
Planning an event can be highly time-consuming, and so the women seek to automate the process to make it easy for anyone to plan a professional event without too much effort.
They are perfect pieces of a puzzle.
Jacqueline is the creative one, and she focuses on product development, growth and marketing, while Melissa, with her meticulous and hospitable nature, focuses more on customer satisfaction and overall operations.
According to Jacqueline, their skill sets complement each other’s perfectly and that “[Melissa] is on her speed dial and probably the person she WhatsApps the most.”
The Delegate team is also a robust one, and this creates a winning mix of members with the “specialist domain knowledge, industry connections and tech know-how”.
Event And Obstacles Come Hand-in-Hand
Since their inception, Delegate has managed to bring together a community of 32,000 users of event planners, HR and marketing professionals as well as people seeking to plan events, but this success hasn’t come easy. Jacqueline shares that the early days of starting up were the most taxing.
“We weren’t generating any revenue [and] were constantly worried about finances, whether users really would take to Delegate and whether we’d be able to sustain ourselves month on month.”
A significant aspect for the team was developing “mental strength and grit”, and as a team, Jacqueline indulges in sharing that they have become more adaptable. They keep themselves motivated on how they can add-value to Delegate’s users, and this mindset has tided them through many challenging moments.
Although the team does not personally take part in events, the co-founder notes that clients have requested they take a more proactive role. Something, Jacqueline admits, is something they are working on solutions for.
“Any occasion, big or small, is a good excuse to celebrate and have an event.”
“We love all types of events and we’re impartial to any categories,” Jacqueline laughs.
“Often people are intimidated by the perceived complexity and scale associated to event planning but we see events as daily occurrences that you can DIY.”
Living in this industry, Jacqueline ruminates that they become more appreciative of the dedication and meticulous planning that goes into each event. From RFID tech guest registration to conference apps and door gifts, all these little details count towards making an amazing event.
The Shape Of Success
“Our vision from Day 1 is to increase transparency and efficiency in the events industry!”
With that in mind, Delegate’s co-founders share their aspiration to become the household name for events, just like how AirBnb is with travel.
Although Delegate is currently only in Singapore and Hong Kong, the team is excited to say that they are on the lookout to enter Indonesia as well as the rest of Southeast Asia. In addition, they are also en-route to integrating a Pinterest-like board for Delegate users as well as more online tools for vendors.
For anyone interested in event planning in Singapore (or Hong Kong) , I’d definitely recommend taking a gander at what Delegate has to offer. No mess, no fuss and you’d have the amazing Delegate team to ensure that everything goes perfectly for you.
So why not put them on your speed dial as well?
Featured Image Credit: The Delegate Team
