Exhibitly, a Ghent startup that brings AI personalisation to B2B events, has raised €1.4 million in a pre-seed round led by New School VC, with participation from 100IN, Allusion Ventures and a group of private investors including Louis Jonckheere, Jeroen De Wit, Pieter Vanermen and Tanguy Serraes. The funding will go towards expanding the team, developing the product and accelerating international rollout.
Around 35,000 trade shows take place worldwide each year. Organisers spend up to €20 million per event marketing their event online. Yet, as those budgets grow, conversion keeps falling. The reason is structural. Attending a trade show is not an impulse decision: with flights, hotels and diary time on the line, a potential visitor wants to know whether the event is actually relevant before committing. They look for that answer on the event website. Unfortunately, that's where many potential attendees drop off.
"An event website is an organiser's most important marketing asset, yet it delivers the same generic experience to every visitor," says Hendrik Franck, co-founder and CEO of Exhibitly. "A Fortune 500 CEO and an intern see exactly the same content, despite having completely different priorities. If visitors can't quickly see why the event matters to them, they leave."
Tailor-made trade shows
Exhibitly solves this by adding an AI layer on top of existing event websites. A visitor enters their job title and company name and, within 10 seconds, they receive a personalised mini-website showing them their most relevant sessions, speakers and exhibitors. On average, 30% of visitors who use Exhibitly click through to the registration page, 10 to 20 times higher than on a standard event website. For organisers, setup is completely frictionless: Exhibitly automatically analyses the full event website and enriches the content with AI, no technical integrations required.
Pivoting and going global
Founders Hendrik Franck (26) and Brent Coppens (24) previously built ReadyEvent, a project management tool for event planners, under the Start it @KBC programme. After a year without real traction, they pulled the plug themselves. Two quick pivots later, they landed on the idea for Exhibitly. "You only learn what a market actually needs by building the wrong product first," says Franck.
In nine months, the Ghent startup, based in the Wintercircus, signed 114 events from leading organisers, including global market leader Informa, Easyfairs, Hyve Group and the Dubai World Trade Centre. From Ghent, Exhibitly now serves clients in the United Kingdom, the United States, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The startup has been cashflow positive from day one.
From event website to event intelligence
The fresh capital will grow the team from three to seven people and accelerate both product development and commercial expansion. Alongside its existing solution, Exhibitly is building a second product aimed specifically at exhibiting companies. Where the current offering targets event organisers, this new product is aimed at the 4.5 million companies exhibiting each year.
"Our current solution gets us a foot in the door. But our ambitions go further. The events industry has never been more relevant, yet it's a decade behind on technology. By the end of 2027, we aim to support more than 1,000 events worldwide and establish Exhibitly as the global reference in B2B event intelligence," concludes Franck.