From the outside, large events look effortless. The lights come on, the schedules run, and thousands of people move through a space that feels tightly controlled.
But behind the scenes, most large events are still run across spreadsheets, slide decks, email threads and scattered documents. Different teams are working off different versions, approvals are buried in inboxes, and no one has a completely clear view of where things actually stand.
That creates an underlying uncertainty across the whole process. Things are getting done, but no one has a clean view of it.
The insight: the system is what’s missing
Organisations already know how to run events. They have a tried and tested process that works but no repeatable system to govern it.
When an event is being planned, there are hundreds of small decisions that need to be made and signed off. Risks need to be identified, documentation needs to be created, and different stakeholders need visibility at different points in time. Right now, that gets stitched together manually across tools that were never designed for this kind of work.
The result is slower approvals, inconsistent documentation, and gaps in visibility, especially at a leadership level where decisions carry the most weight.
Evatto is built to bring structure to that.
How it works
Evatto acts as a central system for planning and approving complex event programs.
Teams start by entering a small set of details about the event, such as location, audience size and potential risk factors. From there, the platform maps out what needs to happen. It identifies required documentation, outlines approval pathways, and generates the core materials needed to move forward.
Everything lives in one place, which means teams can see progress clearly and leadership can understand whether an event is actually ready to deliver. It also creates a record of decisions, including who approved what and when, which is something many organisations struggle to track today.
Built from experience
Evatto is built by two founders with years of experience running events where there was no margin for error.
Hailey Mason has spent more than two decades producing large-scale events for organisations like Red Bull, Casio, FIFA and government agencies. She has worked inside the pressure of delivery, where timelines are fixed and expectations are high, and where gaps in planning show up quickly.
Over time, she became increasingly focused on the systems behind the work. Not just how to deliver an event, but how to make the process more consistent and easier to manage across teams.
Alongside her is Chris Toward.
Chris is one of the most trusted event operations leaders in the Australian events industry, often brought in when projects are complex and high-pressure. He has spent his career delivering large-scale event programs and managing the operational reality behind them.
Originally trained as a graphic designer, he brings a rare mix of creative thinking and operational precision, understanding both how ideas are conceived and what it takes to deliver them on the ground.
Together, they bring a full view of the problem: strategy, execution, and the systems that sit underneath it.
What changed
There wasn’t a single moment where things clicked. It came from building and testing different parts of the problem over time.
In 2025, the team launched several components across staffing, project tools and documentation. Some were designed to generate revenue, others were used to better understand where friction actually sat in the process.
What became clear was that the real issue sat behind the scenes. It was not execution on the day, but everything leading up to it. Governance, documentation and readiness were the parts that consistently slowed teams down or introduced risk.
That’s what pushed the product towards a clear direction.
Going all in
One of the biggest decisions came when Hailey stepped away from her role as CEO of The Shift Corp to focus on Evatto full time.
It meant leaving a successful agency that had been built over more than a decade and shifting all attention to something that was still taking shape.
Around the same time, being accepted into Startmate reinforced that decision. It was the first real external validation of something she had believed for years.
From there, the focus narrowed and the pace increased.
Where this is going
In the near term, Evatto is working with organisations that run complex, multi-region event programs, bringing them into pilots and refining the platform based on how these teams actually operate.
Over time, the ambition is to become the system those organisations rely on to plan and approve events. Not an additional tool layered into the process, but something that sits underneath it and holds everything together.
Events will always involve complexity; there are too many moving parts for that to change.
What Evatto is solving for is how that complexity is managed.
With the right system in place, teams can move with more clarity, decisions can be made with better information, and leadership can have a real view of readiness before anything goes live.
It’s not the part people see, but it changes how everything gets delivered.
The ask
Evatto is looking to connect with Heads of Events, Brand Experience and Marketing leaders running large-scale event programs across regions.
If that sounds like you, or someone you know, they would love an introduction.
Watch them pitch at Demo Day
When: Thursday, 30 April @ 7:00 PM (pre-party starting at 5 PM)
Where: Carriageworks (at the close of Blackbird's Sunrise Festival)
What: Pitch night (19 companies)
Tickets: Grab your ticket here
