Reggie Aggarwal

CEO and Founder Cvent

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Reggie Aggarwal founded Cvent in 1999 and has run it ever since — an unbroken tenure spanning an IPO, a take-private, a re-listing and a second acquisition. A lawyer by training, he came to the problem as a customer rather than a technologist: as president of the Indian CEO Network he had spent years planning hundreds of events by hand, and built Cvent to make that easier for his peers. The company nearly died in the dot-com crash, when he laid off close to 80 percent of his staff and faced the prospect of bankruptcy. What survived became the dominant platform in meetings, events and hospitality technology, with more than 5,000 employees, over 24,000 customers, and the trust of 89 percent of the Fortune 100 by the company’s own count.

Career Highlights

• Founded Cvent in 1999 after years planning events as president of the Indian CEO Network, and has been its chief executive throughout.
• Survived the dot-com collapse, cutting nearly 80 percent of the workforce while approaching bankruptcy, and rebuilt around employees and customers.
• Took Cvent public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013 under the ticker CVT, with a market capitalisation above $1 billion.
• Led the 2016 sale to Vista Equity Partners at $1.65 billion, a 70 percent premium for Cvent stockholders.
• Returned the company to the public markets on the Nasdaq in December 2021.
• Led Cvent through its $4.6 billion acquisition by Blackstone in June 2023, under which it remains private.
• Grew the business to more than 5,000 employees and over 24,000 customers, with the platform serving 50 percent of the Fortune 500.
• Inducted into the Washington Business Hall of Fame in 2022 and the Business Travel Hall of Fame in 2019; named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, the number one Business Software CEO in The SaaS Report’s 2019 Top 50 list, one of Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, and most admired CEO by the Washington Business Journal.
• Awarded the 2024 Entrepreneurial Sales Leadership Award by the Institute for Excellence in Sales.

Professional Journey

Aggarwal trained as a lawyer, and his route into software ran through an unpaid job. As president of the Indian CEO Network he organised hundreds of events, and the tedium of doing it by hand was the origin of the product. He founded Cvent in 1999 to make meeting planning easier for the business community he already belonged to, and found early success as a pioneer of the category.

Then the dot-com bubble burst. Cvent laid off nearly 80 percent of its employees and came close to bankruptcy. Aggarwal’s account of what got the company through is unglamorous and specific: he and the core executive team narrowed their attention to the two things that would decide whether the business lived, its employees and its customers. That period is the hinge in the company’s story, and he has told it consistently since.

The recovery took Cvent through an unusual sequence of ownership structures. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013 as CVT, with a market capitalisation above a billion dollars. In 2016 Vista Equity Partners took it private for $1.65 billion, a 70 percent premium to the share price. In December 2021 it returned to the public markets, this time on the Nasdaq. And in June 2023 Blackstone acquired it for $4.6 billion, taking it private again. Aggarwal remained chief executive through every one of those transitions, which is rare — founders usually do not survive two private-equity owners and two listings.

The company he runs today spans the whole event lifecycle, from registration, venue sourcing and diagramming through on-site check-in and badging to post-event measurement, with a hospitality cloud selling into hotels and venues on the other side of the same market. Cvent has put a stated $1 billion technology investment behind its AI programme, CventIQ, unveiled more than seventy product innovations at its 2026 CONNECT conference, and opened a Center for Event Insights. Aggarwal has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and BusinessWeek and interviewed on CNN and the BBC about the meetings industry.

Education

University of Virginia

B.S.

Washington and Lee University School of Law

Juris Doctor

Georgetown University Law Center

LL.M.

He has also received an honorary doctorate from Southeastern University in recognition of his contribution to the community.