Startup Success: What does Collision mean to WFHomie’s Pavla Bobosikova?

As part of our Startup Success series, we spoke with WFHomie’s Pavla Bobosikova about how our event helped her business.

WFHomie is one of the many successful startups to have attended a Web Summit event. Since first participating in our startup program, the company has been acquired by GoCo. We sat down with co-founder and CEO Pavla Bobosikova to talk about WFHomie’s experience at Collision (our former North American event, succeeded by Web Summit Vancouver), and what the event did for the business.

WFHomie was founded in November 2020 as an employee experience company for remote-first teams. The startup helps companies that are flexible or partially distributed to engage their remote workforce, ensuring that they have enough employee engagement and employee retention, and that they can predict their workforce management early.

But what does an event such as Collision do for startups like WFHomie? We asked Pavla.

When did you first learn about Web Summit events, and what made you choose to attend one?

The first event I ever attended was actually Web Summit in Portugal – the OG [2016] from what I understand. A little bit of the story is also that, just because I’m European, I knew about it before a lot of North Americans.

I heard a lot of great things about Collision from previous attendees, so when we got approached to attend, it was kind of a no brainer. For the community, if you attend well-executed events you’ll see a lot of results. 2022 was the first year we exhibited, and then we’re coming again this year!

What stage of development was WFHomie at when you first attended Collision as a GROWTH startup?

Yes, so I think when we attended Collision for the first time that we were relatively decently set up. We had already raised a seed round in the fall of 2021. The first time we attended Collision was kind of mid-fundraise, as the round wasn’t announced until December 2022. And it was really the early days.

Did you make many useful contacts at Collision over the years?

I’ll give you the honest answer: I think that the speaker lounge [Forum], that’s the secret ticket. It was just a golden opportunity, and we definitely closed a lot of customers that way last year. That is really the goldmine of networking that can be done.

Besides, I think it’s great to bring your own team to these types of events because it’s great to get that exposure to the industry and get your team acquainted with the ecosystem. Like, headfirst with what’s going on; how people respond to the product.

I think, generally speaking, the average level of an attendee at Collision is a great reflection of what is currently happening in the industry. So it’s super helpful. That way you get your team up to speed and expose them to something.

Then, from the networking side in our case, because we were B2B SaaS, we are really selling to other companies. It’s a great place to learn about their needs, and find those that you can serve.

So with all that in mind, did Collision have an impact on WFHomie’s development?

Definitely, yeah. It had a lot of impact on customer acquisition. I think we were able to acquire a decent amount of customers directly from the events.

The other thing that I think is pretty important is the brand awareness, the brand building; getting your name out there at the event.

Would you recommend attending a Web Summit event to founders?

100 percent. As an early-stage startup or scale-up, it would be top of my list – both for customer acquisition (and whatever you can do to accelerate that process) and from a learning perspective. It’s accelerating your learning about whether you’re building great products. Really accelerating!

I attend a lot of conferences, and Collision is top of my list.

Thanks for your time, Pavla! Will you be joining us again this year?

Super, super excited to be back there this year, to share what we have learned, to meet new people, and to learn what’s new!

Web Summit is coming to Vancouver in 2025. Don’t miss out.

Main image of WFHomie’s Pavla Bobosikova: Web Summit