PBN BUSINESS WOMEN AWARDS 2020 ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE: Leonora Valvo | Swoogo
SWOOGO FOUNDER LEONORA VALVO believes that we often fall in love with our own ideas.
Over her decades of starting technology companies, Valvo has succeeded in raising funds and building teams, inspiring others to pursue their dreams of entrepreneurship along the way.
Raised in Bedford, N.Y., Valvo has lived in San Francisco, Chicago and Boston. But it was in New York that she started out in the travel industry and has since built a name for herself, finding ways as to how technology can help companies plan travel and events.
“I am not a product person but a businessperson,” Valvo said. “I know how to find a market and position to sell into that market.”
Valvo founded travel consultancy Options in 1992 and was founder and CEO of Global Executive, an event-management services company, from 1992 to 2007. Valvo started etouches (now Aventri) in 1998, a cloud-based, event-management platform that she grew before leaving the company in 2013; and InsightXM, which makes a data-analytics tool tailored to the event-planning industry.
Valvo’s path into software innovation began at age 17, working as a KLM Airlines reservation agent in New York. She would speak with General Foods’ corporate travel department often, and was eventually recruited there, she said.
Back then, Valvo saw what she calls a pocket of opportunity for companies to save on travel. The travel-agency model was based on commission for things such as hotels and car rentals, she said.
When she moved to Connecticut with her children, she reengineered Global Executive. “That’s when we developed software” that would allow planners to run global events, find sponsors and other functions, Valvo said.
Global Executive would grow to earning $5 million in revenue.
These days, Valvo works with Warren-based Swoogo – she founded it in 2015 – the company has devised a software tool for event planners called Registration Wizard, referred by Swoogo as “an eerily smart tool for setting up your event.”
A virtual company with 21 employees, Swoogo has become profitable in three years without any external funding, Valvo said. Valvo’s history is illustrative of a person who didn’t attend college and has not followed the beaten path through life.
“I also feel the world is changing,” regarding the notion that a college degree is a necessity, she said. “There are other ways to move forward. For instance, I have great interest in teaching manufacturing skills. There are awesome things in manufacturing for those who can’t afford [college] – awesome careers,” Vavlo said.