Ghent’s Exhibitly raises €1.4M to personalise B2B event websites — 114 events signed in nine months

Every year, over 35,000 trade shows take place worldwide. Organisers pour up to €20 million per event into digital marketing. And yet the most important asset in that marketing stack — the event website — serves every visitor exactly the same generic experience, whether they’re a Fortune 500 CEO or a first-year intern.

That structural mismatch is what Exhibitly was built to fix. The Ghent-based startup has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding to bring AI personalisation to B2B event websites — and it’s already doing it at scale.

The round was led by New School VC, with participation from 100IN, Allusion Ventures, and a group of Belgian angel investors including Louis Jonckheere, Jeroen De Wit, Pieter Vanermen, Tanguy Serraes, Piet van Waes, Bernard Rossel, Stefaan Rossel, Matthias Stevens, Jürgen Degrande, Wim Vernaeve, and Arthur Stockman.

The problem: €20M in marketing, then a generic website

Attending a trade show is not an impulse decision. With flights, hotels, and two days out of the office on the line, a potential visitor needs to quickly understand whether the event is actually worth it for them specifically. They look for that answer on the event website — and that’s where most registrations are lost.

“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.”

How it works: a personalised event in 10 seconds, no integration required

Exhibitly’s solution sits as an AI layer on top of existing event websites — no technical integration required from the organiser. A visitor enters their job title and company name, and within 10 seconds they receive a personalised mini-website showing their most relevant sessions, speakers, and exhibitors.

The conversion numbers are striking: on average, 30% of visitors who use Exhibitly click through to the event registration page — a rate 10 to 20 times higher than on a standard event website. For organisers, setup is frictionless: the platform automatically analyses the full event website and enriches the content with AI, with no development work needed on their side.

The second product currently in development is aimed at the other side of the equation: the 4.5 million companies exhibiting at trade shows each year. Where the current offering targets event organisers, this next product will help exhibitors maximise the return from their participation — moving Exhibitly from event website tool to full event intelligence platform.

The founders: learning by building the wrong product first

The founders’ backstory is worth noting. Before Exhibitly, Franck and Coppens built ReadyEvent — a project management tool for event planners — under the Start it @KBC programme. After a year with no real traction, they shut it down themselves. Two pivots later, they landed on Exhibitly. “You only learn what a market actually needs by building the wrong product first,” says Franck.

The company is based at Wintercircus, a converted 19th-century circus building in the heart of Ghent that has become one of Belgium’s most vibrant startup hubs — home to a community of founders, investors, and operators building ambitious companies.

Nine months of traction: global clients, cashflow positive

The numbers Exhibitly has achieved before raising institutional capital are genuinely unusual for a pre-seed stage company. In nine months, the team of three signed 114 events with some of the world’s largest event organisers: Informa (the world’s largest B2B events company), Easyfairs, Hyve Group, and the Dubai World Trade Centre. The client base spans the UK, the US, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Critically, the company has been cashflow positive from day one — a rare marker at pre-seed that speaks to both the strength of the product and the founders’ discipline in building a business that pays for itself before seeking external capital.

What the funding enables

The €1.4 million will grow the team from three to seven people and accelerate product development and commercial expansion. The ambition is clearly stated: by the end of 2027, Exhibitly aims to support more than 1,000 events worldwide and establish itself as the global reference in B2B event intelligence.

The events industry is, as Franck notes, a decade behind on technology despite its scale. With 35,000 trade shows per year, an average marketing budget of up to €20 million each, and conversion rates that have stagnated for years, the market is ripe for disruption — and Exhibitly has already proven the product works at the top of the market.

Exhibitly is based in Ghent, Belgium. More information at exhibitly.ai.

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