Thursday, November 12th
Event Background: Every year Smart Business Dealmakers Conference, formerly ASPIRE, connects thousands of local dealmakers, including middle-market CEOs, top PE and VC firms, major lenders and leading service providers. With sessions ranging from raising capital to buying and selling companies to alternative asset investing, our conferences cover the breadth of the M&A landscape.
The Dealmakers event series, hosted by Smart Business, is a day-long conference with an agenda that is chock-full of various panel discussions covering all aspects of buying and selling a business. Due to these breakout discussions, we knew that we would need something that would allow attendees to build an agenda of the various sessions and attend the ones they wanted rather than have one main stage that people check into throughout the day. After researching and demoing multiple platforms we selected Pathable. It would allow all attendees to attend the sessions that fit their interest and their schedule while also maintaining the face-to-face networking aspect that is key for every Smart Business event. We built out the site to make it easy to navigate, appropriately showcased all of our sponsors, and included as much helpful information as we could via the Help Desk tab in the menu.
Smart Business hosts a network of Dealmakers Conferences in 10 markets across the midwest and southeast making the Smart Business Dealmakers Institute. The institute is the nation’s leading M&A education and networking organization for middle-market business owners and executives. Through online content and in-person events we share best practices for selling or buying a company, raising capital and planning for liquidity events with thousands of middle-market CEOs, M&A advisers and finance professionals. Chicago was the most recent and one of the largest markets this event is hosted in.
Testimonials
I thought the day went very smoothly and was surprised that my limited tech skills were able to navigate. The platform was very easy to use and promoted interactions and connections… Tom Gimbel and Doug Holladay were excellent, engaging speakers and I thought the topics were right on point for the day (and these times). Great job getting those two.
Joe Angel, Market Leader, First Midwest Bank
I thought the event was great – a lot more engaging and interactive than other formats for virtual conferences I’ve seen.
Michael R. Wilson, Partner, Locke Lord LLP
KATHERINE STUCKY 