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IBTM Ignite 2026: Pitching the Future of Events in Barcelona · Event Industry News Podcast

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Hello everybody, and And welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with me,
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James Dixon, wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening,
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whenever or wherever you tune into today's podcast from.
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Now, autumn is almost upon us, which means
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that we see the return once again of IBTM World,
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uh, taking place in Barcelona, Spain, 17th to the 19th of
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November. This is an absolute fixture on the events industry
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industry calendar if you can call it that. Um, and as part
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of IBTM World, IBTM Ignite returns,
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uh, for— I'm not sure if this was launched last year, but our guest
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is going to tell us all about it, um, and what we can expect from
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the return of IBTM Ignite in November. Joining me
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is Max Fellows. Max, a very warm welcome to the podcast.
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Um, how are you, first of all? Very well,
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thank you, and thank you for having me. Not a problem at all. Joining us
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from the home of the event professional, a pub
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somewhere in the countryside, hopefully. We're very grateful for Max for
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taking a bit of time out today to join us, who's in the middle of
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an actual team meeting, probably very much related or likely
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related to what we're going to be talking about today. Max, can you start and
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just kick off just by telling us a little bit about yourself, what you do
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in the industry, and the company that you work for, All Points?
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Perfect. Yeah, so my name is Max Fellows. I've been in the industry for probably
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coming up to 20 years now. That experience has stemmed over many
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years, primarily agency-side exhibitions and so on, kind of grown
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globally in terms of campaign and things like that with larger and larger agencies.
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Over the last 5 years or so, we've established All Points as a strategic
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consultancy working with event businesses globally, and we have 3 key
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kind of areas of the business. We work with scaling businesses through strategic consultancy.
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We help amplify the message, brand, and activities
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through our PR marketing services. And then the eventual goal
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for many of the businesses we work with is an exit or to acquire something
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else. So we have our M&A division as well.
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And we've got coming up to, well, we've got 15 in the team. So it's
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been a really exciting time. The M&A market, as everyone knows, has been quite buoyant
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and it has been an Last year we got involved or invited
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to get involved with the tail end of Ignite, and this year
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we've been very fortunate to be awarded help and
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the production of the entire program, if you like. We are
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really excited and really passionate about Ignite. It's something that I personally
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feel is hugely needed. It has been underrepresented,
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and this is why we're here and driving this forward and talking to
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you today. Excellent. And IBTM World
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in many respects needs no introduction. It's one of the biggest, you know,
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events of its kind on the events industry calendar.
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And certainly for us based in the UK, you know, I know an awful lot
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of people that will travel and they absolutely have to go to it.
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Companies exhibiting there of, you know, all shapes,
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sizes, and facets of the events industry. But,
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you know, what we want to talk about really is the Ignite element of it.
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Frame what IBTM Ignite is, first of all, why it was created
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and what it aims to do. So the Ignite
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programme was conceived last year with the support of the
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B Futures programme, which was a European-funded body that
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had a central fund and it deployed those funds to a
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number of startup businesses, and they are very much in the lower end and in
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the inception. These are all event businesses, I might add.
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That fund was a singular one-off deployment of monies
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through the European Union that's now stopped. So B Futures as an entity has
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got stopped, but the the brand of Ignite remains and continues. So we
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have put our arms around it, we've put some of our expertise
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onto it, and we've developed it on from that. So it's now an
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incubator. So we're not just working with startups but also
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scale-ups. So startups are businesses that have been conceived that are in their
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first $0 to $1 million in revenue, and scale-ups are from $1 million to
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$3 million in revenue. And what the Ignite program does is that it
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brings together those startups and scale-ups. We provide this incubator,
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so we are providing training and development around
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financial management, pitching, the deck,
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all those other nuances that help people get investment ready in order
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to give them the best possible chance. The really exciting part is when it comes
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to Ignite in person at IBTM World. So it's going to be
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3 days of in-person pitches. So if you can envisage
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Dragon's Den on steroids with an audience of 100 or
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so people, and each day we'll have 5 key not judges, but investors
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sat present. So they'll be marking them, as does the entirety
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of the audience, on their investability, what they thought. And so there's an Investor Choice
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Award, but those individuals not only get that training development piece,
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they get the live pitching opportunity. We have upwards of 15 investors
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confirmed, it's growing all the time, who are there to deploy between
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£50,000 and £250,000 worth of investment and their
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time mentoring. So it's a really exciting opportunity, not just from a financial perspective,
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but also to get the leadership guidance and counsel to help
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really take these businesses to that next level.
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It strikes me as something that is critical, and I don't use that
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word lightly, to the industry, because in any business industry there is
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always a chicken and egg situation with startups and new businesses in that industry
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where an event like IBTM World, they'd look at
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it and would say, we absolutely have to be there, we have to be involved
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in this somehow if we're going to make a mark and we're going to take
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it make inroads into this particular industry. But then of course then
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there's a financial aspect of how do we commit to doing that and how
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do we get involved. So, you know, there will undoubtedly— there must
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be still a financial commitment from people involved in the Ignite program,
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but knowing that there's this structured program and structured
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way of actually bringing their business to the fore and actually pitching
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for some investment must be a real sort of game changer in, in attracting
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some of that business into the event. The main thing being is that
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if you look at the investment to attend, it's quite literally a tiny
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investment when you look at the entirety of the program.
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And those individuals not only get the chance to get exposure,
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there's branding opportunities. Credit to the team behind
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IBTM because they're putting a huge amount of emphasis on bringing them to life
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and giving them huge exposure, which otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get or
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afford. So there's that aspect of it. And then there is a diary that they
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get access to too. So they will have up to 30 pre-scheduled meetings as well.
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So there's huge value in creating this kind of opportunity in the
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vehicle. Like I said, at IBTM, we're investing quite heavily into this as us from
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an offerings perspective. And the reason why it's so important now is that we've
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seen through over the years, should we say, with the M&A market moving
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and being as buoyant as it has, you have a lot of those mid-market businesses
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that have accelerated or sold. And so there's a bit of a vacuum. And often
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businesses start in our industry through accidental entrepreneurship to some
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degree, people having an idea in business and kind of falling out and doing it,
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creating it as a side hustle to then kind of keep on the side until
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it kind of tips over into being financially positive
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and generating. There is nothing, or has been nothing like this, that actually
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looks to raise the awareness that actually
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the industry is an exciting one for new businesses,
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that there are a huge raft of possible avenues
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that you can choose to start a business up in. And candidly,
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if we don't do something about this now, is that we limit the potential
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future of what we see as our industry, both in terms of the innovation,
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in terms of the ideas, in terms of the people as well. So there's
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several reasons to why it's so important at this moment in time and
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to help kind of build the excitement around our space and industry for
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many reasons. And people know that we need all the kind of help that
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we can get at the moment. Yeah. And any business industry survives on
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the cyclical nature of the companies that work in it. As long
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as you know, for as many years as some event
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industry businesses have been established, there will always be that cyclical
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nature to them where eventually certain businesses will disappear,
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that they will reach the end of their life cycle. So it must be critical
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for an event like IBTM World to really sort
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of nurture and, like you said, incubate these new businesses, because ultimately
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in 5, 10, 15 years' time, these could be the really
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sort of big global players, you know, making events like IBTM survive
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and tick long into the future. Yeah, we have done
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an extensive amount of research from an Allpoints perspective, and if you
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look at the UK event market in itself, if you look at
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the agency side of that, is that we have nearly or just over 40%
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of that market is owned by individuals now entering into their 60s.
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So you have a huge succession piece that's taking place at the moment,
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individuals who are looking at Whether it's management buyouts,
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selling their business, whether it's just taking the profits and kind of sunsetting
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the business and things. And there's this vacuum, as I mentioned, that is coming and
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already here to some degree in terms of new businesses needing to
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be created in order to fill some of that space. And then you look at
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it from an innovation perspective, AI is changing the way that we're working,
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both in terms of how we're planning events, in terms of the nuances of how
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events work, and we need people on the front foot thinking, trying,
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failing, succeeding in order to kind of make sure
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that we are as best positioned
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on the global stage to win work from others and to
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hold our own really. Yeah, and as an observation,
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the research that you've done and what you just quoted there about the age of
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the business owners within the events industry,
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hand in hand with the age that you mentioned, 60 years old,
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will go, no doubt, a lot of experience in the industry. And with experience comes
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contacts. The events industry, you ask anybody, is, is people to
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people, it's relationships. And if you're that age and you run a business in
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the events industry, you will have those connections, those actual
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per— person-to-person relationships. And,
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and I guess going back to the Ignite program at IBTM World,
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the opportunity not just for financial investment but for personal investment,
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making connections, meeting people within the industry, because having
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the financial investment is one thing, but for a a young business,
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having the connections of people within the industry is as important
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in many respects as the financial aspect in order to build an events
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business. Yeah, and one of the other kind
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of passion projects that I have and co-founded with Melissa Notes and Peter
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Curwood is Elevate. So it's the largest mentoring program currently
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servicing the events industry globally. So I'm a huge,
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huge believer of the power of peer-to-peer kind of mentorship,
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guidance, and help. And so this not only has the financial aspect,
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which candidly there has to be in order for someone
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to be able to leave the job they're in or to accelerate or invest
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or whatever the case may be for them. But without the peer-to-peer support
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of someone having done it or having had that experience,
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it's effectively kind of building them a boat and then just pushing them out to
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sea. You kind of need to be able to give them some navigational tools and
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direction to help them steer the course. So really it's
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that combination and it's kind of the passion points that I have. And again,
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as to why we're so keen And so grateful to be involved with
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this, but you have to have the
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support from an individual in order to activate. And there is a
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personal reason that if you are deploying upwards of up to £250 grand,
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you also want to make sure that that's being used in the right way.
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Not that you're micromanaging, but you want to support and give that person the best
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success. No, of course, absolutely. And tell me,
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bringing it back to the actual event itself in November in Barcelona,
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how will the IBTM Ignite element of it manifest
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itself in and around the main event? Well, it's going
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to be the place to be, so if you are attending IVTM, the Future
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Stage is where you're going to want to come. But we have live pitching
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going on each of the 3 days, so it'll be approximately
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about an hour and a half. And as I mentioned, we have between 3 and
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5 minute pitches from all of our startups. They're going to be live pitching on
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stage. There will be immediate feedback from applications, so you can
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effectively kind of rate and vote against those that you think are most
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exciting and investable. And then we have our panel of investors
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who will then be able to ask questions and equally then kind of rate themselves
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who is most investable or not. The idea being is
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that it creates a really exciting live dynamic. We saw this
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last year, and so we're building on that massively. And this all takes place at
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the Future Stage, which is next to the main stage in IBTM.
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Excellent. And I was going to ask in terms of
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the structure of it and the pre-qualification process.
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Is there, is there a pre-qualification process? You know, presumably you don't just,
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you know, want to, with the greatest respect, put anybody in front of an audience
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like that at such a big international event. You know, what's the process for
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some of these companies to actually get to the stage where they get on stage
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physically at IBTN World and within the Ignite program?
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Yes, and that's where that incubation comes into play, which is an evolution
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from, from the program last year. So there is an application process.
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You then go through a screening exactly to your
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point to make sure that the businesses that are being put forward are both relevant
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and right. They're at the right stage in terms of their journey and equally fall
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into one of the 7 or 8 categories that we've got. And that might be
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around platform, it might be around AI services,
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it might be around production, and so on and so
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forth. And so we've got categories that they sit into to make sure we've got
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a really good broad spread of investable businesses. But once they've gone
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through that process and they've been approved, then they join this incubator program, as I
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mentioned, and we've got several, um, structured sessions around that
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in terms of workshops. There's curation, there's the mentoring that goes into that,
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as well as getting them as best positioned as possible to make the most
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of this incredible platform and the incredible opportunity. And I'm
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always curious to know, because at heart I kind of always deal with technical
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production and things like that, so I'm curious to know, when it comes to the
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actual pitches themselves, is that something that you, you've you take,
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you know, a certain amount of control over to make sure that they
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are, you know, within time frame, that any presentation slides that
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they've got have all been sort of, you know, pre-agreed to an extent?
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How detailed is the process before, again, that they step on stage and somebody
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puts a clicker into their hand? Well,
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the beauty is, and we are all about helping channel
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guide and develop and train and effectively arm them with
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all of the relevant tools, But we have no interest
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in dulling down or reconstructing
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people's decks. It's going to be helping them refine and improve what they
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have at the core. Ultimately, that's what makes them unique. So the idea is that
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we're going to get them really confident and comfortable on stage, that they're going to
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be able to articulate the right relevant information at the right time.
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And in terms of that timekeeping, is that they are practiced and well-versed
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in order to deliver the highest impact in their kind of most condensed or
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the, the most appropriate amount of time. So we don't have someone
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doing 5 minutes on a single slide, we, we have them coached up and
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ready. Again, it's all about giving and empowering them with the
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tools to deliver the best possible pitch that they can,
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which again hopefully becomes the best possible outcome in that they receive
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multiple offers of investment and then they get to pick and choose who is relevant
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and right for them. So it's all about empowering them rather than trying to shoehorn
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or, or restrict, really. It's not our intention at all. Uh,
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no, absolutely. And with that empowerment, you know, comes, um,
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no doubt a certain amount of skill that they can take away post-event as well,
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because this is not just about, you know, the skills that they will get and
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the experience they get from doing that at IBTM World within Ignite is one
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thing, but that's also going to put them on a good footing, isn't it,
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beyond there if they get opportunities to go and pitch?
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Absolutely. The skills that they're learning, this experience, and there is nothing
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like this in the industry. And so not only is it around trying to raise
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awareness for the industry, it's about trying to get people excited and motivated to,
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to think about starting a business in the industry, or those that are in the
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industry already. But in terms of the process, the awareness that's gained, the skills
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that you develop from a training perspective, the understanding of financial and commercial
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pitching and how investment works, as well as then the structured meetings, these are
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things that candidly money can't buy, although it can in this case, but it's,
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it's an amazing platform. And where you talk
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about it from, from long-term skill sets, I'd imagine that we're going to build this
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and grow this consistently. And so we're going to see people coming in from,
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from all over the world. At the moment it tends to be a UK,
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European type focus with a little bit of US influence, which is exciting,
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but I can see this growing, growing, growing as people get behind it and the
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awareness of this grows more and more as well. It's incredibly exciting, and imagine being
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able to sit there and see the future of our industry being presented in
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15 5-minute slots type of thing, or 10, whichever the case
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may be on the day. It's a real opportunity for everyone.
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And before we wrap up today, Max, we've mentioned a lot about the,
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I guess, the more formal aspects of IBTM Ignite and
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what's available. Is there a more sort of social element to that as well as
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an opportunity for the organizations, the companies who are participating
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in it also to meet people in a more informal setting whilst you're all in
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Barcelona? Yeah, so the entire program is centered around
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this incredible event, and so we have several thousand people attending it.
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So they are, uh, granted the opportunity to go blend,
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network, and meet everyone that they possibly can. On the beginning of
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the program, the first day, we actually got a reception as well. So that's a
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more informal way and, um, opportunity to meet some of those investors as
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well as some of the wider leaders in the industry and involved in IBTM.
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So there's a real opportunity across the board.
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Fabulous. It's been great finding out some of the sort of the headlines about
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it, and I guess really if anybody listening and watching today's podcast wants
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to sort of take this a stage further, they're going to IBTM World and they
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think actually this is something that maybe not to get involved
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in, you know, in the sense of going to pitch, because I guess the process
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is already well underway for that, but if they want to find out more about
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it, maybe attend some of these, see what's going on, how do they find out
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a little bit more about what's going on? Well, applications are still open,
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so it's a really relevant time to get involved. We've got
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only a couple of investor places left on the programme,
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and then in terms of the startups and scale-ups, that we're still very
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much open and looking for exciting entrepreneurial
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individuals and businesses. I mentioned in that early phase of startups or the scale-ups
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and things, so if you check out the website ibtnworld.com,
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you'll then look at that from an exhibitor perspective to be able to highlight.
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You can also directly message myself, Claudia, or any of the team from the show,
19:39
and we'll be able to guide you there. So please do get involved. And equally
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then, the show is incredible. As you mentioned, it's one of the market leaders in
19:46
terms of broader content, and the broader show
19:49
itself is best in class. So it's also well worth attending. So have a look
19:53
and check it out. Fabulous.
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ibtmworld.com is the website to go to. And once again, 17th to the
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19th of November, in Barcelona. If anybody fancies a trip out
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to Barcelona, let's face it, who doesn't? If you've not been along to IBTM World
20:08
before, get yourselves along. If you're involved in the events industry in any capacity,
20:12
it is well worth going. Certainly one of the class-leading events for
20:16
the events industry in the world. Get along to IBTM World,
20:19
17th and 19th of November this year in Barcelona.
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My thanks to today's guest, Max Fellows from Allpoints,
20:27
to tell us a little bit about the IBTM Ignite program.
20:30
Before we wrap up, just a very quick couple of things as far as Event
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Industry News is concerned. If you are listening to today's podcast on your podcast audio
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and register for that now via eventindustrynews.com. It brings
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us to the end of today's episode. Thanks again to my guest Max Fellows from
21:40
All Points to tell us all about IBTM Ignite at IBTM World
21:43
this year. Thanks for tuning into the podcast and we'll see you all on the