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Headbox Australia’s CEO Ali Lord on Transforming the Event Planning Landscape
Ali Lord, CEO of Headbox Australia, on navigating COVID, growing from 6 to 24 staff, and how their tech platform is changing how corporates manage events.
About the guest
Ali Lord
CEO of Headbox Australia
Ali Lord is the CEO of Headbox Australia, the local arm of the UK-founded events technology and agency business. She launched Headbox in Australia just five months before COVID hit, having originally been Headbox’s first ever business client in the UK before moving to lead the Australian expansion. Under her leadership, the team has grown from six to 24 people, with enterprise corporate clients and a proprietary technology platform at the core of the business model.
Episode overview
Steve Grace reconnects with Ali Lord three years after their first conversation, which took place during Australia’s first COVID lockdowns. That episode was filmed with Ali in a studio and Steve talking to her through an earpiece from a separate room. This time they meet in person, and Ali reflects on what she built in the intervening period, how the events industry has changed, and where Headbox is heading.
Surviving the worst possible timing
Headbox Australia launched in early 2020. Five months in, COVID hit. Ali had a small team of six, no revenue certainty, and an events business facing a complete shutdown of its core market. Rather than retrench, she convened her board quickly and made the call to keep the team intact. The strategy: pivot to markets not yet in lockdown. Perth, originally 18 months away on the expansion roadmap, became the immediate focus. The team spent seven months building there, keeping morale alive and laying the groundwork for the post-COVID recovery. They also used that window to accelerate technology development.
“I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t know when we were going to come out of lockdown.”
Ali Lord on navigating the COVID period
The post-COVID bounce and what changed
When events came back, they came back fast but compressed. Lead times that were normally nine to twelve months were being squeezed into two or three months. Venue resourcing had not recovered to pre-COVID levels, so response times from suppliers had tripled. Companies also came back with a different posture: they wanted inclusive, safe events rather than the big-spend productions of 2019. Budget moderation was also driven by a sensitivity around layoffs. A company that had just let staff go was not going to put on a flashy all-hands event.
The technology at the core of the model
Headbox operates in two directions simultaneously. On the venue side, it partners with venues across Australia and globally, selling them technology for lead management and digital exposure. On the corporate client side, it acts as a managed events partner, with a platform that gives businesses complete visibility over all event spend across every team. The analogy Ali uses is a corporate travel management system: all event bookings routed through a single platform, producing real-time dashboards that show what the L&D team is doing, what comms is doing, what the sales team is spending. Data is restricted so sensitive commercial information does not flow to the wrong people inside the business.
“I honestly never thought I’d find data sexy but it’s really cool when you can get under the skin of that.”
Ali Lord on the Headbox corporate platform
Growing a small business that punches enterprise
One of the consistent themes in Ali’s story is the gap between how Headbox looks from the outside and what it can actually deliver. When the business first launched, there was some scepticism. Another startup having a crack. But the moment potential clients saw the platform, the reaction shifted. The technology was mature, the model was proven in the UK, and the service offering was sophisticated. That credibility won enterprise-level clients that a typical early-stage startup could not reach. From six employees to 24, the company now works with some of Australia’s largest corporates, managing their complete events program.
Key takeaways
Chapters
00:00Catching up three years on02:00How the Headbox tech platform works05:00COVID hits five months after launch09:00The post-COVID bounce: short lead times and compressed budgets14:00Industry events and the rise of startup conferences18:00Growing from 6 to 24 people22:00Sustainability in events26:00What’s next for Headbox Australia
Mentioned in this episode
Frequently asked questions
What does Headbox Australia do?
Headbox Australia operates as both an events technology provider and a corporate events agency. It sells platform technology to venues for lead management and digital exposure, and partners with corporates to manage their entire events program through a spend visibility dashboard. The business also offers traditional full-service event management.
How did Headbox survive COVID when events were shut down?
Headbox launched just five months before COVID lockdowns hit. Ali Lord kept her six-person team intact by pivoting quickly to Perth, which was not in lockdown. This move brought the Perth expansion forward by 18 months. During the lockdown period the team also aggressively developed their technology platform, which positioned them strongly when events bounced back.
What changed about the events industry after COVID?
The industry recovered in volume but not in budget levels. Lead times compressed from 9 to 12 months down to 2 to 3 months for major events. Venue resourcing lagged, making supplier response times much slower. Companies became more focused on inclusive, safe experiences rather than big-spend productions, and budget sensitivity increased alongside corporate layoffs.
How does Headbox’s corporate events technology work?
Headbox provides a management dashboard where all of a company’s event bookings flow through one platform, giving leadership teams real-time visibility of spend by department. It works like a corporate travel management system. Data access is restricted so commercially sensitive information stays with appropriate stakeholders.
How large is Headbox Australia?
As of mid-2024, Headbox Australia has grown to 24 employees, up from six at launch. The business works with enterprise corporate clients and has expanded across Australian cities including into Perth. Its UK heritage gives the product a maturity that has helped it win large accounts despite being a startup in the local market.
Topics discussed
Full transcript
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Show full transcript (31 minutes)
00:00 Catching up three years on
Welcome to another episode of Give It A Nudge. Today we have Ali from Headbox back on the show, but this time in real life. So welcome Ali. Thank you Steve, great to be here. So you were on the show three years ago, 2021, and we were right in the heart of lockdown. You were at home, I was at home, or I wasn’t at home, I remember I went into the studio but I wasn’t allowed to see anyone, so all the studio staff were talking to me through an earpiece. They were in a different room. I remember it was crazy. And I sat on my own for six, seven hours and filmed all these episodes and we didn’t know what was ahead of us.
02:00 How the Headbox platform works
Headbox is an events agency, really multifaceted. On one side we partner with any type of venue across Australia and globally and we have our own tech products that we sell to them to support with lead acquisition and digital exposure. On the other side is where we partner with companies to be that extension of events team, and there too we’ve built really cool tech that supports companies to get that visibility and spend under management.
The best analogy is a company will typically partner with an external travel agent for everybody in the company to book their flights, so they get best value for money, compliance, and visibility of spend. Our model is exactly the same whereby we will partner with a company and everybody in that company is then instructed to book their events through Headbox so that they can get spend under management but they’re also relying on expertise.
05:00 COVID hits five months after launch
We were five months into launching the business so I’m a new business owner, learning literally day by day, in a new country with the business. We came into this when we met, we were sort of thinking, God, first five months of business was incredible. I honestly remember sitting there going, if this is business, I’m here for it. Happy days. How naive I was.
When the second lockdown came, fortunately I put a board in place. I didn’t have to, but I thought if I’m going to go on this steep learning curve I need somebody. We met with them pretty swiftly. We decided that we didn’t have to lay off anyone. We’re only a small team of six but that’s still headcount when you’re about to go into lockdown. And we actually refocused the next seven months on markets that weren’t as affected. Perth wasn’t in a lockdown. That launch was meant to be eighteen months away so we brought that forward, put a lot of energy into doing that, which meant we could keep headcount.
09:00 The post-COVID bounce
There was a bounce in terms of short lead. That was the most frightening thing. We had Omicron and it was crickets. Nobody was wanting to discuss an event. And it was really around March that people were like, okay, we want to do things, we want to get back out. And very quickly we’re like, we’ve got to pull this together, and it’s short lead.
Big events that you would normally work on a nine to twelve month lead time, we were doing in two to three months. And then we were met with challenges because venues weren’t resourced back up to what they should be. So response times from venues had doubled, if not tripled. It wasn’t that just because the events were back that operationally things were back. It was far from it.
18:00 Growing from 6 to 24 people
When we last met we were circa six. We have just ticked over to 24. Which is a lot. When we launched into the Australian market people very quickly looked at us and were like, oh, another startup. But as soon as people met with us, they were like, wow, your tech’s really sophisticated, your model’s sophisticated. So whilst we were a startup, we had a very mature product to offer and a service that we knew worked because of our legacy in the UK.
We’ve partnered with brilliant enterprise-level companies which has then supported our growth. Amazing clients who day in day out, and I say this genuinely, I love working with them. And that’s been a game changer for us. They’ve really understood that this is a female-owned business, a small business, they want to work with us.
About the host
Steve Grace is the CEO and co-founder of The Nudge Group, a talent and advisory firm working with Australia’s fastest-growing companies. Give It A Nudge features unfiltered conversations with founders, operators, and investors. Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.
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