We’re Investing $138M in the (Hybrid) Future of Events

We’re humbled to announce our latest round of funding for the hybrid future of events. Here’s the official announcement from Bizzabo CEO and Co-Founder Eran Ben-Shushan. 

First and foremost, I’m extremely grateful for the trust and partnership of our customers during this unique and challenging year. 

We at Bizzabo are so excited for what comes next and I’d like to take a moment to provide you with more visibility into what makes us so excited!

This investment that we are announcing today isn’t just an investment in Bizzabo; it’s an investment in our customers and an investment in the future of virtual, in-person, and hybrid event experiences.

2020 forced us to adapt to unforeseen difficulties. But it also presented an unprecedented opportunity for innovation.

Alongside the understanding that in-person can’t be replaced, we’ve learned to embrace the huge benefits virtual has to offer when it comes to reach, personalization, efficiencies, environmental sustainability, and more. 

Moving into 2021, we are determined to apply our almost 10 years of experience in building events software to combining the best of both worlds. 

Specifically, we plan to tackle the following:

• Meetings and Networking: From our conversations with both organizers and attendees, we realize that networking is the #1 challenge that virtual events face. This is a huge area of opportunity that no event technology is currently addressing an integrated approach. In 2021, we will focus on building capabilities to empower authentic and strong relationships for virtual, in-person, and hybrid events.
• Engagement and Interaction: It’s pretty straightforward – if virtual and hybrid events won’t be genuinely engaging – they won’t succeed. Events cannot be passive. They must provide opportunities for interaction beyond just polls and Q&A. To be successful, they will need to make us feel something. That emotional, inspiring, magical experience that we as human beings love about events will be top of mind for us in how we design our products. 
• Personalization: The hybrid technology of tomorrow will need to do much much more than just combine a virtual platform and an in-person platform. It will need to be built from the ground up with a hybrid approach in mind. It will need to create a uniquely tailored experience for attendees based on how they choose to participate at an event, their interests, goals, and preferences in mind. We have a head-start in creating personalized journeys with our end-to-end software but in the next stages of our growth we will be doubling down on personalizing the attendee journey – from the first visit to a website to the follow-up email they receive after and beyond, regardless of the type of event someone is attending.
• Simplicity and Exceptional User Experience: Now that events lean on technology to a far greater extent, the importance of building seamless, simple, reliable, joyful products, services, and – ultimately – experiences is key. We’ve already started investing enormous resources to pull the best talent in those domains and empower them to build world class products and experiences.

I’ll admit: It’s ambitious.

Fortunately, we’ve never been better equipped to take on this role of leadership within the industry. 

We have our strong bedrock of BizzaValues which defines our company culture. Those serve as our North Star in everything we do and our overall organizational operating system.

We have our extremely talented team of 180 Bizzaboers and counting who are passionate about our mission. And we’re hiring for almost every team.

We have our one-of-a-kind Event Success Platform which has proven itself by powering both virtual and in-person events for many of the Fortune 500 companies. 

And we also have the support of our investors who share an unwavering belief in the power of events.

Specifically in this round of funding, we have one of the best investors we could ask for, in Insight Partners. Not only do they understand the irreplaceable power of events, they also strongly believe in our hybrid vision and have the expertise needed to help Bizzabo scale to become a category leader.We are also extremely grateful for the support of our existing investors who believed in us in our early days and those who are also participating in this current round including Viola Growth, Next47, and OurCrowd.

And above all, from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of everyone who believes in us and our mission – a huge thank you to each and every Bizzaboer on our team (and to their friends and families). We were able to achieve so much this past year thanks to their hard work, their commitment to our values, and their contributions to our culture that were crucial to our ability to adapt so quickly and successfully in times of change. You can learn more about why Insight Partners is so excited here.

Whether you are a customer, a fan, a partner, an investor, a Bizzaboer, or a competitor, I hope you can appreciate that we are all at a pivotal moment in our industry.

For our part at Bizzabo, we are committed to staying “all in” on innovation – for the future of events and everyone involved in them.

On behalf of the entire Bizzabo team, I am so thrilled to build what comes next, together with you.