Case study: How meetmagic turns a simple meeting into a charitable act

AI-based meeting platform meetmagic connects Australian executives with vendors but every time a meeting occurs online, 100 percent of the profits go directly to a charity.

Carl Gough, CEO and founder of meetmagic told Digital Nation he came up with the idea after discovering that charities were struggling with finding a sustainable fundraising model.

Gough said what if they took some of the budget marketing teams spent on lunches and roundtables and siphoned that into a charitable meeting.

“I thought if you started asking a couple of execs, ‘would you take this meeting if it had an impact, a positive impact on the charity?’ The answer was overwhelmingly yes,” Gough explained.

The meetmagic platform launched in 2020, as people began working from home due to Covid.

“All of a sudden, these vendors and B2B companies couldn't go to the conferences, they couldn't do the lunches, they couldn’t do the roundtable, business had to keep moving forward. But they're all knocking on my door for meetings,” he said.

In the space of two years, meetmagic went from hosting 60 executives to 1000 and raising $20,000 to one million dollars for charity.

Vendors pay to have a 45-minute kickoff meeting with an executive and the executive can decide from there if the business relationship is worth pursuing.

This platform is mainly for those kickoff meetings between a vendor salesperson and an executive to help them understand if they are the right fit.

“If you're going to meet somebody for the first time, it's okay to do that via video for the first because you can pretty much determine whether or not you like that person and you want to meet them again after that first 45 minutes, that's the value of it,” he said.

Gough explained that this platform gives the executives a chance to save time and money in the whole discovery process.

“In the world of transformation that we're in today, executives are constantly getting harassed by vendors. They've got to stay ahead of the game, they've got to stay up to date with technology,” he said. 

Shared value

Alice Barbery, CEO of Universal Store has had five meetings on the meetmagic platform. One of the reasons she was drawn to the platform was the reach out request function.

“As the CEO you get hundreds of requests a week and generally out of sync from your needs and not necessarily the most time effective,” she said.

She said if the meeting has come through meetmagic, she already knows they have shared value.

“It's about doing good work with good people for the right reasons. I haven't passed up an opportunity that's come and you feel like the laws of reciprocity really kick in,” she explained.

Sometimes the meeting doesn’t eventuate into anything but she has inadvertently created a relationship with a brand.

“I certainly keep my ears open and when my board of directors is talking about other boards that they sit on and information that they might be interested in, you've already made the relationship,” she said.

Barbery said she found every conversation she had on meetmagic to be “incredibly beneficial conversations”.

“It is great to understand what's available in the world, outside of the busyness that we have at all times. But knowing that you're working with someone with shared value is a great place to start and you can't get that from a cold call email.”

Meaningful meetings

Andrew Matuszczak, chief transformation and information officer at Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation, has been using the meetmagic platform since its inception, and has raised $12,500 from his meetings.

Being a C-suite executive, Matuszczak said he is constantly bombarded by salespeople through different channels with what they think you need.

He said meetmagic tackles two issues, having meaningful conversations and having partnerships with vendors.

“When I use the meetmagic channel, with cold calling, generally I'll get the level one salesperson with no authority and little knowledge about what they're selling” he explained.

“When I use meetmagic, I end up with the director of sales, or the general manager of sales, or the national sales manager on the call with the account representation to make sure that we're having a meaningful meeting and this meeting counts for them.”

Matuszczak said these salespeople know who he is, where he works and what he wants out of this conversation.

“We have meaningful conversations and that is the big differentiator here. I cut out the noise, I produce that filter, I get to go underneath everything that I want to do there,” he said.

“That's what is important, because then I start creating conversations that have gold nuggets in them, real information I want to use, I want to know, I want to digest, I'm looking to explore and I'm doing it at speed. That's really important to me from that point of view.”

Matuszczak said the meetmagic platform puts marketing dollars into a worthy cause. Whereas other methods just waste marketing dollars and there is no return on investment.

“It is this continuum of marketing dollars that just goes into nowhere. If you talk to some of those people, and ask how many real conversions you get on these conversations, it is a handful, if that sometimes even less, sometimes none,” he explained.

“Being able to redirect those funds into those meaningful conversations and then helping out foundations like Starlight. Then seeing the outcomes of that with regard to the impact on the kids, it's a no-brainer. It is not something we should do, but we have to do because that's the better way of doing it.”