The Team
The cornerstone of VoiceHive is quality of service. Co-founders John and Andy, along with an experienced team, are driven to provide memorable and exceptional experience and quality.
John Cosgrove
Co-Founder and Champion of Customer Success
John grew up in Ireland, where hospitality and service are an inherent part of the culture. After college, his career was based mostly in hotel and restaurant management roles. He has over 20 years of experience in the customer service and events industries. In 1999, he moved to Minneapolis where he worked closely with Kieran Folliard at Cara Irish Pubs. His work life evolved from day-to-day operations to the events side of the business and included hosting trivia-themed events. From there he developed into a professional emcee and started his first business in 2006 focusing on meetings and events. As a professional emcee, he craved an easier way for audiences to connect with the people on stage. VoiceHive was born.
Since founding the company with Andy Grant, John has grown that initial audience engagement idea into a full-featured event-registration and audience-engagement platform. Customer service continues to be the defining narrative for John at VoiceHive. He enjoys nothing more than accompanying clients on the journey from idea conception to successful implementation.
Outside of the office, John is a huge soccer fan and still plays, as do his three kids. He takes every opportunity possible to visit the homeland, where his own journey began.
Andy Grant
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Andy is the product of a family of educators who spent their summers working a farm, painting houses, and travelling. His father, a math teacher, introduced him to computers and related technology at a very young age. Writing programs and creating software quickly became a passion and eventually led him to a degree in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota.
Andy has had the great fortune of working with many companies, both large and small, as both an employee and a consultant. He has found the experience of working with many different types of organizations and team dynamics to be useful and effective in working with and understanding the needs of VoiceHive customers.
As architect of the VoiceHive platform, Andy oversees making sure everything works better than expected. He leverages his technical leadership, project management, and engineering skills to ensure projects are completed successfully.
He has a knack of bridging his expertise in development to the functional needs of clients. Andy works closely with other members of the VoiceHive team to create new and interesting uses for VoiceHive platform. Launching solutions and experiences built on VoiceHive and seeing them effectively and successfully used in the real world is a prime motivator for Andy.
When not buzzing around the hive, Andy enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, mountain biking, snowboarding, and an occasional triathlon.
The Story
VoiceHive was created in 2012 with the idea that interactions with technology at events should be seamless and more effective for attendees, stakeholders and event planners. The event apps on the market were clunky, not intuitive, and difficult to manage and access.
VoiceHive had a solution: a web-based platform accessible across the wide spectrum of devices, user abilities, and geography.
The first iteration of the VoiceHive platform focused on the basics: live polling and live Q&A. Built on the success of those features, we worked closely with experienced event planners to build and add features that addressed the more specific needs of attendees. Event content — interactive agendas, speaker bios, and surveys — were added to our tool kit.
Then our offerings then began to grow far beyond event apps. Planners wanted VoiceHive to manage all of the attendee touch points. In response, VoiceHive now powers full-service registration complete with key features like payment, on-site check-in, ticket printing, badge printing, badge scanning, and reporting.
As VoiceHive continues to grow and expand, the company is now meeting the needs of not only event planners but also internal teams by building communication hubs and custom engagement experiences for large organizations.
The range of tools we offer continues to expand because the capabilities are driven by client needs and backed by service that includes thoughtful feedback and collaboration. The VoiceHive team understands that our success comes from being fully committed to the success of our clients. By paying attention to their unique needs, we deliver results that delight and thrill customers again and again.