Events management platform Bizzabo raises $15M growth round

Just eight months after its last round of funding, events management platform Bizzabo has raised another $15 million. The new round, which brings Bizzabo’s total funding so far to $30 million, was led by Pilot Growth Equity, with participation from Maor Investments and returning investors.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Eran Ben-Shushan told TechCrunch that Bizzabo raised more capital because the company is growing quickly and wants to expand its cloud-based event software platform to take advantage of market demand.

“We have both a product market fit and a scalable repeatable business model. This growth round will help us scale faster and bring our event innovations to more brands around the world,” he said. The company claims its annual revenue is in the millions and that its annual recurring revenue grew more than 200% last year.

Bizzabo’s cloud-based software wants to do for events what Salesforce did for sales and marketing. Like customer relationship management software, Bizzabo’s events management platform automates time-consuming tasks related to email, social media and web marketing, manages contacts and analyzes data to help organizers increase registrations, make more revenue and improve attendee experience. Some of the organizations that have used Bizzabo for events include WeWork, HubSpot, GitHub, EA Sports, Bank of Ireland and Teach for America.

Bizzabo was founded in 2012 as a networking app to help attendees at the same event find people with similar interests, arrange meetings and keep in touch afterward. By 2015, the number of events apps had grown, so Bizzabo began focusing on events management to stand out. Its main competitors include Cvent, but Ben-Shushan says Bizzabo’s advantage is that it was created after mobile, cloud software and social media upended events planning and is therefore able to adapt more quickly to the evolving needs of organizers.

In statement, Pilot Growth co-founder and managing director John DeLoche said he believes “Bizzabo is the company with the best platform and leadership to become the category leader in the rapidly growing, although still fragmented, $28 billion dollar event management software market.”