The Competition for Founder-Led Events Is Heating Up. Hyve Isn’t Worried

Hyve’s known for buying founder-led businesses—from HLTH and POSSIBLE to Manifest, LegalTechTalk and more. We asked CEO Mark Shashoua what Hyve looks for, how it wins over founders and whether there are enough attractive targets left to keep the strategy going.

Hyve has built much of its growth through founder-led acquisitions. Looking back, what’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about working with entrepreneurs that you didn’t appreciate when you started?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is the importance of alignment. It doesn’t matter how great the event or brand is, if we’re not aligned with the founder on the vision for what happens next, we won’t do the deal. That has become fundamental to how we approach acquisitions.

And when that alignment is there, the learning goes both ways. Founders bring new ideas, perspectives and ways of working into Hyve, and we’re always looking at what we can learn from them. When we see something working brilliantly in one business, we look at how we can adapt and apply that best practice across the Group. That constant learning is a big part of how Hyve continues to evolve.

Many founders remain with Hyve through an earn-out or transition period before moving on. What have you learned about keeping founders motivated once they’ve sold their business?

The founders we work with never stop caring about their business and the motivation comes from the ability to continue to build their event, with the full support of Hyve. In addition, they get access to our best practices and tech enabled products, giving them the ability to scale their event, and form even deeper relationships with their community.

Solome Tibebu continues to lead BHT because she cares deeply about the sector. Christian Muche stayed on as president of POSSIBLE because he is so passionate about the community. Josh Riff stayed with HGAN because he believes the best is yet to come and now has access to the wider HLTH/ViVE community and cross promotion that comes from being in a larger group. Our job is to remove the friction. Give them the infrastructure, the best practice, the commercial capability, so they can focus entirely on what they do best.

Several founders you’ve acquired have gone on to build new businesses after leaving Hyve. Do you see that as a competitive advantage? Does earning a reputation as a good partner to founders help you win the next generation of deals?

I spend a lot of time with founders, and I’d like to believe I understand the mentality – my father was one, I am one. What I can tell you is that the deals we’re most proud of were the result of relationships built over months, sometimes years, before any formal conversation began. For example, I first met Deborah Quazzo and Michael Moe over ten years ago. I admired their work with ASU+GSV Summit for many years, but we had to wait until the time was right for them to be a part of Hyve.

Founders talk to and advise each other. When someone is thinking about selling, one of the first calls they make is to a founder who has already been through it. If that founder says Hyve backed my vision, scaled my event, treated my team with respect – that conversation is worth more than any pitch deck we could put together. We’re proud of the relationships we’ve built, however our track record is the best competitive advantage we have.

Looking ahead, where do you think the next wave of founder-led event businesses will come from? Are enough entrepreneurs creating businesses today to satisfy the industry’s growing appetite for acquisitions?

We focus on sectors undergoing significant transformation, and again, there’s a reason for that. When an industry is being reshaped, there is a need for its ecosystem to come together. That’s how the best founder-built events emerge. Someone who deeply understands the sector sees the disruption coming and builds the community before anyone else does.

I’m constantly meeting founders at different stages of that journey, from those just starting to build something to those who have already created incredible businesses. I really enjoy those conversations, and what’s reassuring is that there is absolutely no shortage of entrepreneurial talent or great ideas coming through. The pipeline keeps renewing itself—it’s an incredibly exciting time for the sector.

With so much private equity capital flowing into events this year—and more expected—do you see a shortage of acquisition targets?

There’s no shortage of event businesses, but we’re very specific about what we’re looking for. We target category-leading events in sectors undergoing significant transformation, with engaged communities, strong levels of ‘gold-dust’ (i.e. decision makers) and real potential for growth.

I regularly meet with founders at different stages of building these businesses, so I’m very encouraged by what we see coming through.

If demand continues to outpace supply, do you expect sellers to have greater pricing power? How much higher can valuations realistically go? How competitive do you expect the market to become now that players like Questex/Emerald have greater scale? Will larger platforms have an advantage in winning deals?

More competition may have some influence on price, but price is only one of many factors. It really depends on what the founder wants to achieve. We’ve been able to attract incredible global brands largely out of any auction process because they want to sell to Hyve and have access to our best practices and products—not because of price only.

There are some great businesses in the market with significant scale and capital behind them, but that doesn’t mean we’re all looking for the same things. We’re prepared to invest earlier, take on more risk and work alongside founders to shape the growth of their businesses over the long term. Others may understandably be looking for more mature assets.

Most founders think long term. They care about what happens to the business they’ve built, the opportunities ahead and who they believe is the right partner to help them realise that potential. Having greater scale or more capital doesn’t necessarily make you that partner—but, that said, we’ve completed eight acquisitions since 2024, and every founder has continued to lead their business. I think that says a lot about the relationships we build and the confidence founders have in what we can achieve together.

Beyond price, what convinces a founder to sell to one buyer instead of another? What “secret ingredient” helps you win competitive processes?

Founders want to know that the buyer understands what they’ve built. Not just the revenue model but the community, the culture, and the reason people keep coming back. Again, it goes back to what the founder is looking to do—some want to sell a minority stake and continue to run their business independently, some want to sell 100% and walk away, some want to work with a company that will help them evolve and grow, with the potential to make more than just selling in one go. We fall in the latter category.

Trust is hugely important, and so is track record. We can point to businesses like HLTH, POSSIBLE and Manifest and show founders what can happen when you combine their entrepreneurial vision with Hyve’s investment, expertise and platform.

Every business is different, so there is no cookie-cutter approach. You have to understand what makes it special and then work out together how you make it even better.

Does the lack of traditional event assets force buyers to broaden their definition of an acquisition target? Would you consider buying media companies where events are still a minority of the business if they have strong audiences or communities?

Hyve is, at its core, an events business and we have no intention of that changing. We firmly believe in the power of B2B events. That said, there are absolutely formats, products and services which can enhance the business of connections and we’re exploring these all the time as another organic growth lever. We are doing this because our customers, both buyers and sellers, want access to each other in different formats throughout the year. It isn’t because of a lack of traditional event targets, but a considered approach driven by demand of our customers.

Two of our recent acquisitions illustrate this:

• HGAN is a brokerage and advisory service for the healthcare sector, connecting innovative healthcare companies with major employers and buyers and supporting those relationships through to successful outcomes. It complements HLTH and ViVE by giving us another way to connect and support that same healthcare ecosystem throughout the year.
• Virtuosi League is deep in the marketing ecosystem. It’s a leadership and learning community for senior marketing executives, offering executive forums, leadership development, thought leadership and curated peer-to-peer experiences. It already had a relationship with POSSIBLE, including delivering its CMO Lab, so bringing the two together allows us to deepen what we offer that community beyond the event itself.

There’s a huge amount of untapped scope still to explore here and it’s exciting.

Are there categories or verticals where you think acquisition opportunities remain plentiful, or is the shortage widespread?

Opportunities follow disruption. When an industry is being reshaped, there is a need for its ecosystem to come together, and that’s often where the best founder-built events emerge. Take our latest acquisitions – LegalTechTalk was born out of the huge ongoing shift within the legal tech and transformation space, whilst RAISE and MACHINA were in direct response to the huge momentum behind AI.

If acquisitions become too expensive, what’s the alternative? Building events organically, expanding internationally, or investing in adjacent businesses?

Organic growth has always been fundamental to Hyve; around 80% of our growth is organic, and we’re on track for a fourth consecutive year of double-digit organic revenue growth.

We have a number of powerful organic growth levers. One is taking our strongest brands into new markets, as we’ve recently done with Shoptalk, POSSIBLE, Bett and others. Another is product expansion—for example extending meeting programmes, peer to peer roundtables or other ancillary products and services across our communities.

So, M&A is an important part of our growth strategy, but it’s one of several ways we can create significant value from the portfolio we already have.

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