INVE raises $300,000 pre-seed from Outliers VC to scale event platform across the Gulf

INVE, a Saudi eventtech startup, has raised $300,000 in pre-seed funding from Outliers VC. A modest check for a pre-seed round. The path to it was not the usual one.

Outliers is an operator-led venture firm that backs early-stage founders. Before it wrote a check, it was INVE's first paid business design partner, and it used the startup's platform to manage invitations and guest communications under its own brand for its forthcoming Builder Summit.

INVE was founded in 2024 by Abdulrahman Alabdulkarim, who is 23 and runs the company as chief executive. He is a software engineer by background and previously worked on backend and infrastructure systems at Lean Technologies. He graduated from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, where he became the second recipient of its President's Medal for Entrepreneurship, awarded for INVE.

The product started as a family favour. Alabdulkarim built the first version in 2024 for his sister's wedding, concentrating on the two chores that consume a host's week: sending invitations and tracking who is actually coming. That build turned into a consumer product. Both the consumer and the business platform are live.

The consumer side has supported 250 events and sent more than 35,000 invitations, with an 88% RSVP response rate. Those events took place in more than 60 cities and towns across Saudi Arabia and the GCC. No comparable figures have been released for the business product, which is much newer.

The platform handles personalised invitations, RSVP management, guest profiles, branded registration pages and digital entry passes. The guest record is the part the company leans on hardest. Each guest carries a living profile that enriches itself as the person engages, holding dietary preferences, interests and a full attendance history. Hosts send invitations from their own email addresses and their companies' WhatsApp numbers, so they no longer rebuild guest lists or ask for the same details twice. RSVP pages, registration pages and entry passes carry the host's own branding.

The business platform launched in August 2026 and targets technology companies, venture firms, financial services businesses and agencies that run events on behalf of others. It is built for companies that treat their events as part of their brand. The self-service product can be used internationally. Customer acquisition in the near term is focused on Saudi Arabia and the GCC. Longer term, INVE plans to develop its business customer base in North Africa, other African markets and Europe.

The new money goes to team expansion, brand development and customer acquisition, and to scaling both platforms across Saudi Arabia and the GCC: bringing the business product to more companies and growing the consumer one. The consumer product's stated aim is to become the default for every occasion, from weddings and birthdays to business dinners and summits.

"The guest experience begins before someone walks through the door and continues after they leave," Alabdulkarim said. "Every interaction, from the first invitation to the next time someone hosts, matters."

The guest experience begins before someone walks through the door and continues after they leave,

He said hosts often juggle spreadsheets, messages and several different tools, which fragments guest information. INVE's answer is to bring the whole hosting experience together and make hosting easier at any scale while building relationships. His stated vision is for INVE to become the infrastructure behind how people and businesses host across the Gulf. Outliers' backing, he said, will help bring that vision to more hosts in the region.

Sarah AlSaleh, a General Partner at Outliers VC, said the design-partner work gave the firm conviction in the product and in Alabdulkarim's ability to execute. She described him as combining deep technical expertise with an instinctive understanding of hospitality in the region, and said he had turned a personal project into technology that can scale without losing its human touch.

She said INVE applies the same philosophy to consumer and business engagement, making every interaction more intentional and every relationship more valuable. Outliers is proud to back Alabdulkarim and INVE's team, she said, describing the company as redefining how people and businesses connect.

For a pre-seed company, the investor's own event is the useful test case. The Builder Summit will run on INVE's platform, under Outliers' branding, in front of founders and companies the firm already backs. A live demonstration at the moment INVE is trying to sell its business product to exactly that kind of customer. Whether agencies, venture firms and finance companies adopt it at anything like the rate of families planning weddings is the open question the round is meant to answer.