In-person events are back, baby, and VendeluxOur AI-powered event intelligence platform tells event marketers which important people will be at which event.
The company was started by two former Shutterstock executives, Alex Reynolds and Stefan Deeran. They wanted to give event marketers and marketing leaders a way to see what events customers and competitors would be at so they could make better decisions about what to attend or sponsor.
Using artificial intelligence and predictive models, Vendelux delivers 65 million data points at more than 160,000 global events, trade shows and conferences, Reynolds told TechCrunch. We reported on Vendelux’s approach in 2022, when the company raised $2.4 million. At the time, the company analyzed 30,000 events.
In-person events took a nosedive during the global pandemic when virtual conference startups emerged, with some, such as Hopin, growing quickly and also quickly declining as events returned to normal. At the same time Hoppin was jumping, Reynolds and Duran started Vendelux.
Despite the virtual nature of events and conferences back then, Reynolds noted they were positive the events would return.
“We knew the events would come back bigger than ever, and certainly fast forward to today, that’s the case – the events are now bigger than 2019,” he said. “Everyone understands the importance of being together in person and what personal interaction can really create, whether you’re talking about new business deals or seeing existing clients.”
As a result, Vendelux has seen “incredible headwinds for the business and for the event space in general,” Reynolds said. He explained that this is partly because other marketing channels are hurting. For example, performance marketing was affected by privacy concerns and the phasing out of cookies.
At the same time, it is difficult to travel and see many clients or potential clients in one trip.
“It turns out that events are now the best way to see your customers and prospects in person,” said Reynolds. “Marketers are seeing that now, and we’re seeing a lot of dollars moving into the event space as a result.”
Since its last round of funding, the company has worked to better identify people its customers want to meet and then facilitate that interaction quickly and efficiently. It also improved its matchmaking capabilities and developed a collaborative digital design for event marketers that ties into a company’s customer relationship management tools.
Vendelux Team (Image credit: Vendelux)
Vendelux in turn doubled its customer base and tripled its annual recurring revenue last year. It has a free version of its software used by over 5,000 event marketers. It has also grown its customer base among businesses that now includes PayPal, MongoDB, Okta and T-Mobile. In addition, it analyzes data from larger conferences and began working with event organizers.
With customer demand coming from both the marketing and promoter sides, Reynolds and Deeran said it was time to look for additional venture capital. The company today announced a new $14 million Series A investment, led by FirstMark Capital, which included participation from Cervin Ventures and the founders of some of these event organizers and marketers, including HLTH, ShopTalk, Money20/20, SaaStock, Connectiv Events and FT Zo. Vendelux has now raised $16.4 million in total.
In addition to further product development and customer acquisition, Reynolds and Deeran plan to double their team by the end of 2024 and expand globally, including creating a London-based team to serve businesses across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
“After helping customers identify the right events to go to and who they should meet with, we want to continue the pipeline with customers,” Reynolds said. “Just identifying who these people are is very valuable. Then with this information we will take the next step to help clients book meetings with these potential prospects, send them email campaigns or invite them to round tables. There are integrations we can build with many other tools to help complete that end-to-end journey and ultimately help marketers track the value of that channel.”
