In Silicon Valley, huge sums of money are shuffled between venture capital firms and tech-savvy startups daily. In stark contrast, professionals looking to get a new event off the ground have a much harder time attracting investments, according to serial entrepreneur and event-industry veteran Marco Giberti, who found himself in a number of conversations about this disparity with industry friends. It led to the founding of Events Venture Group (EVG) in March 2024.
“Events are still particularly difficult [to raise funding], and we thought it would be a good idea to create a nonprofit entity which is supporting entrepreneurs from scratch, helping them to accelerate their launch opportunity [and] providing them capital and mentorship in order to make their entrepreneurial journey easier,” Giberti explained. “That was the whole thesis discussed with a couple of friends, and we immediately created the board. After that, we recruited our first 30 members and sponsors.”
Giberti—also the founder and CEO of Miami-based Vesuvio Ventures—was among the founding board members alongside TED’s chief program and strategy officer Monique Ruff-Bell; Jonathan Weiner, the founder, chair and CEO of health innovation conference HLTH; Joe Popolo, founder and CEO of private investment firm Charles & Potomac Capital; and Jay Weintraub, founder and CEO of NY-based event studio Connectiv Holdings. Already, among EVG’s sponsors are impressive names like the Venetian Resort Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), exhibition and events partner The Expo Group and turnkey trade show firm T3 Expo.
Sure, a VC catered to the events industry is offering money to entrepreneurs focused on industry events, music festivals, specialized conferences in medicine, academia and tech, just to name a few, but “funding is just one element,” Giberti said.
“We believe that money is a commodity, but way more than money, we can provide access to mentors in different areas, supporting founders across all event-related areas like operation, admin, content marketing, sales [and] business development.”
Giberti added that EVG can also provide access to venues and vendors. “We’re sharing literally hundreds of years of experience between EVG members supporting our portfolio companies,” he said.
EVG’s playbook starts out similarly to other angel groups and early-stage VCs in the tech industry, per Giberti. On EVG’s website, for example, it denotes that it’s most interested in early-stage events—from pre-launch to third anniversary—that bring in $3 million-$5 million in revenue. But after laying those numbers on the table, “there is nothing similar in our industry,” Giberti said of the events world—one where “it’s extremely difficult to identify event investors,” he recognized.
As a result, EVG taps event industry associations to assist with mentorship and constantly has an internal assessment committee “identifying the right founders, the right ideas and the right projects” as well as staying on top of “industry trends and insights.”
Backed with these insights, Giberti explained that EVG helps its startups “identify best practices, shortcuts and opportunities in order to minimize the risk of launching events, which is massive.” From there, EVG “accelerates opportunity,” which Giberti said is made easier with the help of “knowledge, relationships, validation and reputation from our group”—information that’s vital now more than ever.
When asked how he’s thinking differently about events now versus his early days working with events as a marketing director at Apple (before holding leadership positions at Cvent, Reed Exhibitions and Freeman), Giberti told Vendelux: “I think that there is a before and after pandemic in terms of live events.”
“We learned many hard lessons, but probably the most relevant learning was the fact that it’s almost impossible to replace face-to-face with technology,” he added, noting that “the magic of live events is a focus on the human connection.” Tech, though also here to stay, will serve as “a great partner for successful and sophisticated event organizers,” according to Giberti.
The need for innovation in events extends beyond tech to the startup economy that EVG is shaking up.
“We believe that innovation happens with amazing founders and entrepreneurs. We believe that these founders will continue to take risks, work out of their comfort zone and build events that are fresh, new and add value to our industry,” Giberti said. Combine these facts with the momentum of mergers and acquisitions, “and the whole event ecosystem should benefit from having better and more successful launches across all events categories.”
Ultimately, “we’d like to say that we’re going to be backing the new generation of event entrepreneurs,” Gibertii said of EVG, which has laser-focused on “revolutionizing funding for event startups” in its first year in business. After all, the firm is barely one year old. But as Giberti looks to the company’s fifth anniversary, he said: “I’ll be extremely happy and proud if we can have portfolio companies saying that EVG was transformational in their early days and helped these founders to achieve their goals.”
