Bizzabo

The events management platform, Bizzabo, was founded by the three entrepreneurs, Eran Ben Shoshan, Boaz Katz, and Alon Alroy, who met as students in IDC Herzliya’s Zell entrepreneur’s program. The trio decided to build a platform that would bring together all of the major elements for a physical event/convention, with the aim of tapping into the tremendous hidden potential of business events, by building relationships between participants and companies. Bizzabo started out as a platform that enables companies and organizations to plan and execute physical events more efficiently, while monitoring, analyzing, and translating the digital interactions into useful data collection. The product has been assisting clients to prepare for conferences, manage the registration of attendees, marketing campaigns, and create social-business networks around the events. The company grew constantly with dozens of clients from all across the world.

Reinventing Itself Due to the Coronavirus Crisis

Following the Covid-19 pandemic and the severe lockdowns and restrictions that it entailed, the global events industry was hurt severely. Bizzabo faced a gloomy outlook. In a brave decision, the company’s executives decided to transform the platform, which until then was suitable only for in-person events, into a platform for managing virtual and hybrid events (in addition to the management of in-person events). This bold decision was implemented within a record time of just a few months and turned Bizzabo into an industry leader. The new system enables automation, personalization, and more tracking for virtual and hybrid events. The system includes features such as website building, registration, and a purpose-built app for the event’s participants. The positive feedback for the technology and the user experience brought new mega-clients from all over the world to the company, such as Amazon, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, and Siemens, while the company successfully completed an enormous fundraising round at the end of 2020, amounting to $138 million, led by Insight Partners. This round completed fundraisings that amounted to a total of $195 million to date.

Acquisitions and Expansion

In 2021, Bizzabo acquired and integrated four promising startups: U.S.-based x.ai, Sweden-based Whalebone, Israel-based TeeVid, and Canada-based Klik. x.ai developed a tool for automating meeting scheduling, including finding suitable schedules for large groups, sending reminders and tracking options before meetings, with cancelation management and rescheduling requests. Whalebone enabled the audiences of virtual events to respond authentically to the content, just like in real life. The company developed “audience empowerment” and “audience visualization” techniques that help make digital events more interactive and human, by adding the option of expressing support and encouragement to the speaker. TeeVid produced video solutions for creating, editing, and broadcasting virtual and hybrid events. Klik provided smart wearables that improve the participants experience in physical and hybrid events. This technology is implemented into coin-sized hardware, attached to the name badges, and enables two-way communication that not only collects information on the participants but also conducts “touchless” entry control, exchange of contact details, delivering feedback, collecting contact details for the speakers, and more. Klik’s clientele includes, among others, MIT and Aribnb. These acquisitions are aimed at providing Bizzabo’s customers with a personally customized events experience that enables them to learn, share knowledge, and more importantly, build meaningful relationships.

A Unique Organizational Culture

Currently, Bizzabo is employing more than 420 employees in its Israeli R&D center and in its offices in New York, London, Kyiv, and Montreal. While the company is constantly growing and hiring new human capital, it also takes care to maintain the DNA of a familial startup with a particularly pleasant atmosphere between the employees and the managers. All of the company’s employees are fully devoted to the shared goal and identify with the revolution that Bizzabo is making in the global conventions world. A unique work community was formed in the company, and it enables the employees to fully utilize their skills and tap their potential while progressing to various managerial roles or alternatively moving to new and more challenging roles.

. While the company is constantly growing and hiring new human capital, it also takes care to maintain the DNA of a familial startup with a particularly pleasant atmosphere between the employees and the managers. All of the company’s employees are fully devoted to the shared goal and identify with the revolution that Bizzabo is making in the global conventions world. A unique work community was formed in the company, and it enables the employees to fully utilize their skills and tap their potential while progressing to various managerial roles or alternatively moving to new and more challenging roles.