Interview with LendIt CEO Bo Brustkern

What has your partnership with Brella been like?

The partnership with Brella is super important to us because it adds life to the show floor.

When we bring Brella into our floor, there’s immediately this lift and this buzz that we feel. So we’re extremely strategic about where we put Brella, and we’ve never been disappointed.

It’s always full, it’s always hopping and it adds this great energy to our experience on the exhibition floor.

Networking is, in fact, one of the only reasons why we have events. We can do a lot of learning.

We put a lot of our content online, so it somebody wanted to skip the LendIt Fintech conference, they could technically do that and see, or listen to, almost all the content we produce.

But they would miss the magic. And the magic is the meetings.

We chose Brella first because it put networking first.

Why is Brella special?

Brella’s concept is special because it actually allows users to opt in, in a way that identifies who they are and what they can offer. And in similar ways, what they’re looking for.

That is unique in our industry, and it allows our delegates to more efficiently connect. So when you have that double opt-in feature, you get much richer meetings.

And those rich meetings equate to a higher net promoter score and we measure that.

In fact, what we found is the more people use Brella, the higher the net promoter score. And that is a fact. And that is super powerful for us.

If somebody wanted to skip the conference, they technically could... but they would miss the magic. And the magic is the meetings.

How has Brella performed at your event so far?

Today it’s day one of the LendIt Fintech USA 2019. It’s 2:20 in the afternoon. And we’ve already booked 5,000 meetings confirmed.

We’ve had tens of thousands of interactions on the app, and it is just popping. We’re super excited about what’s going on, and again Brella has just exceeded our expectations.

What we found is that the more people use Brella, the higher our net promoter score. And that is a fact.

Why did you choose Brella?

We chose Brella first because it put networking first.

And for a long time we did two apps. Brella was for networking, and then we had this other app that did agenda and all this other stuff.

But the team at Brella has been developing and developing and developing and listening to our feedback and building an app that is robust enough so now we’re not only choosing Brella, we’re choosing only Brella.

And that’s a big deal for us, that we can have a single app that really does do everything for us, but puts networking first.

To learn more, read how LendIt's team facilitated 12,500 meetings!

This interview has been edited slightly for clarity.