'Presence Premium' Amps Event Value

Cvent CEO Reggie Aggarwal talks...

• Why the "presence premium" exists
• What the company knows now about how it will invest its $1 billion in the tech platform
• Why listening to customers is more important than ever
• The advantages of experience in a world of innovators 
• How Blackstone will help it win the race toward AI

Cvent CONNECT, the meetings technology platform’s annual user conference, took over downtown Nashville this week, with nearly 5,000 in-person attendees—the largest group ever, according to the company. CEO Reggie Aggarwal, during his keynote address on Tuesday announced Cvent’s first re-branding in the company’s more than 25-year history. Plus, Cvent plans to invest $1 billion in the technology platform over the next three years. Is it all about artificial intelligence? Not exactly. But the platform transformation environment that is underway is not unlike what was happening when Aggarwal founded the company in 2000. The era then called for a new way to manage and understand meetings operations and attendee management; he says the era now is calling for a new way to manage and understand meetings intelligence and value. AI will make those connections, but it won’t happen overnight. Aggarwal sat down with BTN VP of editorial and content Elizabeth West at the event to talk about the rebrand, the transformation ahead and why Cvent is positioned to lead the way. 

BTN: You made two huge announcements in your keynote this morning: Cvent has rebranded for the first time in its history, and the company will invest $1 billion in its tech platform over the next three years. Let’s take the re-brand first. Is it all about AI? 

Reggie Aggarwal: The rebrand is broader than AI, though that is a huge paradigm shift that is not temporary. It’s permanent and it’s poised to change so many things about how we work, plan meetings and experience meetings. We wanted to signal to the market that Cvent is a different company. We wanted to look at where we were today, and look at the investments we have made over the last 25 years and the investment we’re making now. We’re a totally different company [than we were in early days] in terms of the scale and scope of products we offer, and now additionally because of our focus on AI.  All those things, when you combine them, tell me that a rebrand is the right thing to do. And this is just the unveiling of the surface. The depth of what that rebrand means will come over time. There is a lot of work to do.

BTN: Let’s talk about the $1 billion investment—that represents a lot of work. The team outlined a constellation of innovations today on stage with a short timeline for rollouts and some are available now. Is there a strategic structure to these investments or are you focusing on AI and going in for surgical changes everywhere? How are you looking at that $1 billion at this point?

Aggarwal: The giveaway answer is that, of course, we don’t know everything right now because things are moving so fast. We want to lead with having the best software. It’s just that simple. You can do a lot of things with marketing, branding and sales, but fundamentally you better have a good product that is geared toward solving the pain points of your customers.
Right now, we know it’s AI, but it’s also innovation and integrations. The $1 billion is a commitment with good visibility into what we we’re going to do over the next six to 12 months. The market will have to tell us, beyond that, what we need to do.
One of the big points in my keynote was how much we are listening to our customers. We have almost half a million users and across that base a lot of them are not shy about sharing information with us and it’s on us to listen. That will drive our roadmap to a large extent. Of course, we do have to see what other companies are doing and what the large language models are doing because that influences what we can do. But we want to uplift the entire platform. 

BTN: We see emerging players in the meetings space with the headline that they are “AI native.” Does that mean anything to you? And how do you respond to a marketplace that is placing value on that concept?

Aggarwal: I do think there are companies that are AI native. Very few of them. If they are two or three years old, they’re not AI native. Anyone can claim it. But also think about where Claude was two years ago—to leverage AI development at that point, [the capability] wasn’t there. But it’s advanced tremendously and quickly, so what you can do with it now has advanced tremendously.
Having said that, I’m not here to say what a company is or isn’t. I can tell you what we are. Is that AI native? In general, the answer is no. But are we building products that are AI native? Yes. Because we are building new products. We are AI first. We have completely pivoted as a company, and we are over-investing in AI. We also believe there’s a huge advantage to the knowledge, the workflow and history that we have. I think a lot of startup companies underestimate how complicated things are, but we see where the puck is going. We’ll be there.

BTN: Does that billion include acquisitions Cvent might pick up along the way?

Aggarwal: The billion is what we are looking at now and have pretty good visibility for. If there was a larger acquisition in there, that would add to it. 

BTN: You have talked about the “presence premium,” which refers to how we live in an increasingly digital world that can abstract us from real person-to-person experiences. There are trust gaps and authenticity gaps. And in that environment, meetings are bringing more value to the table than ever.

Aggarwal: There is such a proliferation of content that you can't trust right now. News is a great example, especially if you are viewing it on Instagram or TikTok, which people do now. It looks so real you can’t tell the difference. So you are scouring the comments for sources and someone has to point out, “this is AI. It’s not real.” So the digital world we consume so much of now is less trusted.
Meetings bring us back to some fundamentals with authentic moments between people. Those moments accelerate relationships and relationships accelerate business—whether that’s sales or partnerships—it just comes down to relationships accelerating what you're trying to accomplish between two parties quicker. Marketers see that, they experience the results of that in the business, so they are putting more investment in events.
And that's both internal and external. Cvent is an example, because now we have people spread around [in remote work situations], we do bring our people in and have more events to bring people together. Part of me going to trade shows isn't just to meet customers. When I go to some of our big trade shows, I'm trying to meet the 40 or 50 Cventers [who are also there] and might spend 20 percent of my time with employees because it’s an opportunity to strengthen those relationships too.

BTN: Cvent has made a huge investment in webinars, with the recent acquisitions of Goldcast and On24. You seem really bullish on that digital content space and what it brings to the marketing table.

Aggarwal: We are. We are very bullish on the webinar and virtual space. The reality is that the engagement there is not as deep as the in-person event, but webinars are going super strong and they have reach. What we see, particularly with Goldcast, is how users are producing content from their webinars. They are leveraging the AI tools within Goldcast to produce and distribute social content and 10x their reach. On24 is more of a marketing engagement webinar platform, where Goldcast is more AI video at its core (but webinars are a big use case for it). How marketers and content producers use these tools to help realize their total event program becomes the critical factor. That total event program includes in-person, live webinars and on demand. All three drive engagement with a brand or organization and they play a critical role. From a technology perspective it only makes sense that the platforms [facilitating that activity] all live in one place where it will be easier and easier to integrate data and get insights on that full engagement picture. We know there is some great competition, but there are very few companies that can say they truly have a platform.

BTN: Cvent was taken private three years ago. How has that influenced the direction, enabled the pace or otherwise impacted some of the transformation that's taking place now?

Aggarwal: When you're private, you have more flexibility. Let's pretend you have five data points to run your business. Your stock price is a data point. So when that becomes a data point, how does that align with the long-term interest? It probably does, but it also becomes a short-term measure that you have to meet. So that does change things a little bit. Now on the positive, it keeps you very transparent and objective and it keeps you disciplined. When going through transitions, though, it's definitely easier to be private. And we're going through the transition of AI and we are doing lots of acquisitions and we plan to continue to acquire, if we find the right assets—that’s also more difficult when you're public. You have to disclose the cost of the acquisition and you have to justify it to your investors. When you are private, you are working with your board.

BTN: What does Blackstone ownership bring to the table? Intelligence, capital, both?

Aggarwal: We have access to capital just because of our success as a business. They know we run a consistent growing business. We understand balancing profitability and growth. And I think we built a reputation being public twice and hitting our numbers. That creates credibility because you theoretically get more mature, you get more consistent. But Blackstone has 200 portfolio companies and they are able to give us information—I get a report every quarter about what all these 200 CEOs are seeing, ranging in industries from oil and gas to hospitality to manufacturing and software. Those are insights that other companies don’t have access to. And Blackstone also gives us access to AI partnerships that others don’t have. You may have seen that Blackstone is putting $40 billion in a debt facility for Anthropic. So they just have different relationships and it helps us get access and has enabled us to have a broader reach and talk to more senior people.

BTN: OK, last question: Cvent has always been very proud of the size of its engineering team. Do you see AI diminishing the need for such a robust army of human engineers?

Aggarwal: The total addressable market for what we do is so big. My view is that the team will get more efficient. If I have 10 engineers producing 100 widgets, can I get them to 130 widgets? I think that’s the question because there’s such a big opportunity in front of us and so much to unlock. Our general viewpoint is that we are hiring and we want to accelerate growth. That's how I would say it right now.