A private network built on small groups discovered the limits of the video call. Its next chapter asks successful founders to do something surprisingly difficult: show up.
An event can have a brilliant keynote and still lose the room at registration. vFairs has built a business around the small handoffs that decide whether people get in, meet someone useful, and come back.
The event-software company started with a networking app, lost its market overnight, and rebuilt around a stubborn idea: a handshake should produce data without feeling like a spreadsheet.
Zuddl is a modular event management platform built for B2B event marketers, unifying conferences, field events, and webinars in one system. It handles the full event lifecycle - registration, ticketing, branded virtual stages, on-site check-in, attendee engagement, and post-event content - while pushing engagement data into CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot so teams can prove and improve event ROI. Founded in 2020 and backed by Y Combinator, Alpha Wave Incubation, and Qualcomm Ventures, Zuddl serves brands including Google, Microsoft, ServiceNow, and the United Nations.