Steve Brazier
Co-Founder
Steve is primarily responsible for corporate strategy at Canapii, guiding the long-term product roadmap, pricing, and resourcing for this hyper-growth company. He is loving the challenge of defining a corporate culture of a post-pandemic software company, that is extraordinarily fast growing, mainly remote, and extremely global.
Canapii’s goal is to be one of the three leading platform for smart events, whether virtual or on-site, by delivering amazing attendee experiences and enabling event managers to become super-heroes.
Steve brings a unique background to this role from his experience of keynoting well over a thousand conferences during his career as a tech analyst. He has seen events that are full of glamour, buzz and hype, perhaps highlighted by jumping off Mont Blanc to paraglide down the mountain with a group of delegates, an event activity that surely would not be allowed today. He has also witnessed event disasters, not least when his conference opening was interrupted on stage in Geneva, as news of the 9/11 disaster broke across the world.
This long experience with events has driven his passion to make them better, especially through digital automation. Events should not run late but if they do then the agendas of all attendees must be updated in real-time. It creates excitement to keep the location of the gala dinner secret, provided the logistics notifications can be delivered exactly when delegates feel their stomach’s rumbling. He knows what it is like to host a session in Chinese, or Portuguese, without speaking a word of those languages and how AI translation could have transformed these experiences.
Steve also founded Canalys in 1998, establishing a highly respected global technology analyst and research firm, where he is still active today. This journey has provided excellent management experience, as Canalys grew from a one-person bedroom start-up into a global company with offices in US, China, India, Singapore, the UK and Colombia. Developing an authentic culture was an important part of that success, but so was the discipline in establishing budgeting, tax, legal and HR structures that scaled globally. He has championed diversity at the workplace, long before it was fashionable and has maintained an employee base and management team that is 50% male/female, where all races, nationalities and religions are welcomed with open arms. Canapii is run by people who already know how to scale a global business.
Steve holds a Joint Honors Degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Bristol, UK. He also completed an International Executive Management Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in the United States.