Events Venture Group’s First Investment Headed for Fourth Profitable Edition

Quantum World Congress will hold its fourth event in September on the back of raising money from the newly formed Events Venture Group and trade organizer Consumer Technology Association.

The event hit profitability last year for the first time, with attendance expected to surpass 1,000 in 2025 from about 600 in 2022. Some 30 countries will be participating, twice the number at the original gathering, said Stu Solomon, co-founder and CEO of QWC Events, which runs Quantum World Congress.

Events Venture Group launched last year with a board that now numbers about 30 executives with deep industry experience to mentor new entrepreneurs and provide funding to early stage events. The group analyzed more than 100 deals before choosing to invest in Quantum World Congress.

“This whole idea started around 2023, I was talking with some friends and colleagues about how difficult it was to launch and raise capital and have mentors for their projects,” Marco Gilberti, founding board member at EVG, told AMO. He did a survey of colleagues and peers and 87% said something like EVG was needed.

EVG hired a managing director last year and invested $500,000 in Quantum, with CTA coming on later as a co-investor.

“We invested in Quantum because it was the right combination between great founders, initial track record and an opportunity for EVG members to accelerate growth and add value,” Gilberti said.

Nice Roster

EVG is a who’s who of the events industry that includes Jonathan Weiner, founder of HLTH, Douglas Emslie, chairman of Cuil Bay Capital and Raccoon Media Group who sold Tarsus to Informa for nearly $1 billion, and Greg Topalian, chairman of Clarion Events North America.

The company is what Giberti calls a single-purpose vehicle and a non-profit. Board members have a responsibility to mentor and advise nascent event entrepreneurs. The members are also expected to invest in at least one deal with a minimum of $25,000. EVG is expecting returns of 5x investment in a cycle of three to five years.

“We invest early enough to have a successful outcome if a deal goes into the right direction, and it’s a little bit longer cycle than private equity,” Giberti said.

EVG is analyzing new proposals now for funding and wants to be aggressive with marketing and reaching more founders. The number of deals to be made will depend on how many high quality founders and high opportunity scenarios they can discover, he said.

That said, they’re in no rush to deploy capital or close a certain number of deals.

Quantum Computing Galore

The EVG and CTA funding will be used to expand educational programs, grow the trade floor and support the event’s continued development, Quantum’s Solomon said.

Connected DMV, a nonprofit, created Quantum World Congress as a separate company. The former comprises a team of “solution engineers” that focus on next generation industries, and how to prepare for those. They explored AI, crypto and quantum computing and found the latter to be the area most in need of attention. 

“The Washington DC region had a lot of assets already, and we wanted to pull those assets together across industry, academia, government, community,” Solomon told AMO. “So we created Quantum World Congress as a means to bring a world together to talk about the important things that need to be done to accelerate an ecosystem.”

The company was bootstrapped to begin with and demand has grown quickly, to the point where they have already outgrown Capital One Hall in Greater Washington where the event will be held later this year.

While there is no editorial component yet to the business, Connected DMV runs several programs between annual events, including a recent quantum track at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January.

Quantum is seen as a critical national priority by many countries and should see significant job creation amid rapid technological innovations, Solomon said.

“Our job right now is to make sure we get this [show] content right and that the core is absolutely right, so that whatever growth is going to take place can take place on a really solid foundation. That’s our mission right now,” Solomon said.