NEW YORK and TEL AVIV, Israel, April 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bizzabo, the world's leading end-to-end Event Success Platform, today announced the close of a $27 million Series D funding round, as well as the addition of Viola Growth Partners’ Rafi Carmeli and Eran Westman, and Next47 Partner, Matthew Cowan, to its board of directors. The investment is led by Viola Growth, along with new investor, Next47, as well as existing investors, including participation from Maor Investments and Pilot Growth, which led the company’s previous round. The new capital brings Bizzabo’s total funding to $56 million and will propel the company’s plans to expand its industry-leading platform capabilities - helping enterprise and mid-market organizations build data-driven, personalized and engaging professional event experiences - and to grow Bizzabo’s R&D and go-to-market teams in New York and Tel Aviv.
“85% of business leaders believe that in-person events are a critical component of their company’s success,” said Eran Ben-Shushan, CEO & Co-Founder of Bizzabo. “More specifically, 25% of B2B companies’ marketing spend is on live events. As a result, the number of professional events each year has exploded and more organizations, specifically, B2B companies, are creating personalized event journeys. But, the complexity required for an organization to create, manage, market and measure the growing number of professional events, while also maximizing ROI, is a challenge. This is where we come in. Bizzabo unleashes the power of professional events for businesses, bringing people together for impactful in-person experiences.”
Bizzabo, which has more than doubled its revenue in the last year, is already working with leaders such as INBOUND, SaaStr, Forbes, Dow Jones, Gainsight, Drift and more. The company’s data-powered technology enables enterprise and mid-market organizations across sectors (technology, media, services, finance and more) to unlock the full value of professional events. By making it easier to create, manage and execute every aspect of the event lifecycle, the platform helps companies to maximize ROI for their event marketing strategies.
“Traditionally, the $500 billion event management space has been focused on the operational and transactional elements of events,” said Ben Shushan. “These tools haven’t focused on capturing and using rich data that tells an amazing, actionable and broader story per attendee and company. This is fundamentally changing. Due to the increase in digital and offline noise, organizations are focusing on creating memorable, engaging and personalized experiences throughout the customer journey. And, more often than not, the peak of this journey culminates at in-person events—whether they be conferences and seminars, trade shows or other experiences. Because of that, marketers need to see the full picture of attending individuals and companies to ensure their unique journey is fulfilled while achieving event-driven KPIs. This is why we are growing at an unprecedented rate, and the demand for our technology is incredible.”
“In-person professional events have become a strategic growth driver for modern corporations,” said Rafi Carmeli of Viola Growth. “To maximize the marketing potential embedded in professional events, organizations are making Event Success technology a mandatory part of their overall tech stack. As that occurs, only a modern and holistic platform approach, built to deliver data-powered, personalized event experiences, will win. Bizzabo’s technology is disrupting this category with a great leadership team and we are honored to partner with them.”
Matthew Cowan of Next47 said: “We are excited to support Bizzabo’s vision as they continue to take the lead on event technology innovation. The future of this category is data-powered -- that means using data to increase professional event attendance and amplify engagement across channels through personalization, while granularly tracking event ROI. No platform is better positioned to deliver on that future than Bizzabo.”
Kim Darling, VP of INBOUND at HubSpot: “Bizzabo is the core of our tech stack for INBOUND, our 24,000+ attendee annual event. The platform delivers a seamless end-to-end attendee experience, improves attribution reporting for our marketing efforts, increases attendee delight, and streamlines the onsite process."
Anthony Kennada, CMO at Gainsight said: "We rely on Bizzabo to manage, scale and measure Gainsight’s flagship events around the world, including Pulse, our industry conference that attracts thousands of customer success and product leaders from around the world. Their Event Success Platform is end-to-end and comprehensive, ensuring that our events team can easily manage operations, marketing, engagement, and measurement, while also supporting our efforts to drive more personalized experiences for our attendees. By investing in an event technology platform that has a pedigree in innovation, we know that we will have access to game-changing solutions for years, especially as events grow more complex and central to revenue growth.”
Since launching in 2012, Bizzabo has enabled thousands of events globally to run seamlessly with a growing number of enterprise and mid-market organizations, including Electronic Arts, Forbes, Dow Jones, Hubspot’s INBOUND, Gainsight, Teach for America, and many more.
About Bizzabo
Bizzabo is the only Event Success Platform. Bizzabo’s all-in-one event software enables in-person events to deliver unique attendee experiences through intelligent and intent-based personalized engagement. We help companies measure, manage and scale events towards key business outcomes, empowering every organizer, marketer, exhibitor, and attendee to unleash the power of professional events. Bizzabo powers events for brands like Forbes, Hubspot’s INBOUND, Dow Jones, Gainsight, Bank of Ireland and Electronic Arts. The company was founded by Boaz Katz, Alon Alroy and Eran Ben-Shushan, and has more than 120 employees in its New York and Tel-Aviv offices.
About Viola
Founded in 2008, Viola Growth invests in Israeli-related global technology companies at their expansion stage. With the largest team of 7 partners in Israel, as well as a US presence, all with vast operational and financial experience, Viola Growth have raised over $430M AUM and invested in 23 companies. Viola Growth is a member of Viola, Israel's largest technology-focused investment group with over $3B under management. For more information visit:www.viola-group.com.
About Next47
Next47 is a global venture firm created by Siemens that invests in, and partners with, entrepreneurs who think big and build industry-defining companies. With offices in Boston, Beijing, London, Munich, Palo Alto, Paris, Stockholm, and Tel Aviv, Next47 gives start-ups unparalleled access to one of the world’s largest portfolios of customers in the areas of industry, energy and infrastructure as well as domain expertise in the deep technologies that impact those customers.
PR Contacts:
Chris Harihar
Crenshaw Communications for Bizzabo
chris@crenshawcomm.com
212-367-9748