Saudi Event-Tech Startup INVE Raises $300,000 Pre-Seed from Outliers VC

Saudi event-tech startup INVE has raised US$300,000 in pre-seed funding from Outliers Venture Capital, money it will use to scale a business platform launched in August 2026 and push its proven consumer product beyond weddings.

The numbers behind the round tell you why Outliers wrote the check. INVE's consumer product has supported 250 events across more than 60 cities and towns in Saudi Arabia and the GCC, sending over 35,000 invitations with an 88% RSVP response rate. For context, industry-wide RSVP rates often languish far below that — meaning hosts on INVE actually learn who's coming.

What does INVE actually sell?

Two things. For consumers, it's invitation and RSVP management, battle-tested at weddings and now aimed at birthdays and every other occasion. For businesses, it's a platform that solves a problem most event teams know painfully well.

Guest information for corporate events typically sits scattered across spreadsheets, inboxes, and WhatsApp threads. Details gathered for one event get lost when the next gathering kicks off. INVE fixes that by keeping a living profile for every guest, one that enriches automatically as they engage. It holds whatever a host cares to track — dietary preferences, interests, full attendance history — and carries it forward to every future event.

Hosts send invitations from their own email addresses and company WhatsApp numbers, without rebuilding guest lists or repeatedly asking guests the same questions. RSVP pages, registration pages, and digital entry passes carry the host's branding throughout. The target market: technology companies, venture firms, financial services businesses, and the agencies that host events on their behalf — companies that treat events as part of their brand.

How a 23-year-old built this

Founder and CEO Abdulrahman Alabdulkarim, now 23, built the first version of INVE in 2024 to simplify invitations and RSVP management for his sister's wedding. The side project grew into a consumer product, then a business platform.

Alabdulkarim isn't a first-time tinkerer. A software engineer by background, he previously worked on backend and infrastructure systems at Lean Technologies. He graduated from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, where he became only the university's second recipient of the President's Medal for Entrepreneurship — for INVE itself.

"The guest experience doesn't start when someone walks through the door, and it doesn't end when they leave," Alabdulkarim said. "From the first invitation to the next time you host, every interaction matters. But creating that experience often means juggling spreadsheets, messages, and different tools, with valuable guest information fragmented across them."

His framing is infrastructure, not invitations: "Our vision is for INVE to become the infrastructure behind how people and businesses host across the Gulf. With Outliers behind us, we're bringing that vision to more hosts across the region."

Why Outliers invested — after eating its own cooking

Outliers, an operator-led VC firm backing early-stage founders, became INVE's first paid business design partner before it put money in. The firm has been using the platform to manage invitations and guest communications under its own brand, including for its forthcoming Builder Summit.

That design-partner-first path shaped the investment decision. Sarah AlSaleh, General Partner at Outliers VC, said: "Working with INVE as a design partner before investing gave us conviction in both the product and Abdulrahman's ability to execute. He combines deep technical expertise with an instinctive understanding of hospitality in the region, turning something deeply personal into technology that can scale without losing its human touch."

She added: "We're proud to back Abdulrahman and the team as they redefine how people and businesses connect."

What does this change for event hosts?

For practitioners running corporate events in the Gulf, a funded competitor to the spreadsheet-plus-WhatsApp stack has just arrived with real money and a reference customer. With both products live, INVE will invest in team, brand, and channels to scale from weddings and birthdays to business dinners and summits.

The self-service product is available internationally, but immediate customer acquisition focuses on Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Longer term, INVE plans to build its business customer base in North Africa, other African markets, and Europe — so event teams well beyond the Gulf should expect to hear the pitch.