Are Virtual Events the Future?

In October 2024 I wrote about the virtual events market and where it was headed. Two years and a lot of live sessions later, here's the update. The thing that actually changed my mind wasn't a market report. It was running the events myself, every few weeks, on Zoom, with real money and real seats on the line.

Virtual didn't replace in-person. It replaced the passive stuff — the broadcast, the one-way slide deck, the "webinar" people mute and half-watch while doing email. What survived, and what I'd now bet on, is the live virtual working session: capped attendance, real output, a reason to actually show up on time.

The 2024 essay ended with a bet on the Full Stack Business Builder Conference becoming "the next evolution of TEDx" — a fully-digital, big-stage virtual conference. That particular format isn't what won for me. What won was smaller and more direct: the Builder's Table, a structured 3-hour live AI workshop, run over Zoom, capped at a table size that still lets me see everyone's screen.

It is not a webinar. There are no slides. Everyone builds five real things in the session — an AI agent, an app, a website, a reusable skill, a dashboard — and leaves with all of it. That single design choice is the whole argument: a virtual event where you watch is disposable; a virtual event where you ship something is not. Between April and September 2026 that format ran 13 times, seated 233 builders including private client cohorts, and holds a 4.96-star rating across 629 reviews.

It's also not free anymore, and that matters more than it sounds. A $299 seat, one price, no early-bird games, is a filter. People who pay to sit at a virtual table for three hours show up different than people who registered for a "free webinar" and never opened the link.

Here's the part the 2024 essay didn't see coming, because I didn't see it coming either: the highest-leverage move wasn't scheduling more virtual events, it was turning the event into something that never has to be scheduled again. The same curriculum that used to require a live session is now the self-serve AI Workshop — and since July 2026, it's not a subpage, it's the staas.fund homepage itself. Anyone can walk through the whole thing, any hour, with zero seats to sell out.

The live cohort didn't go away. It moved up-market, into the premium tier for people who want me in the room while they build. That's the pattern I'd tell anyone running virtual events to copy: stop treating "the event" as the product and start treating it as the on-ramp to a product that runs without you.

I still keynote 12-15 events a year, in-person and virtual, in 12-plus countries, because some things don't compress into a video call. Closing a deal, meeting a new client for the first time, building trust with a board — those still do better in a room. And some categories of "event" simply can't virtualize at all: I founded the Collegiate Racing Series, and a race happens on an actual track, with actual cars, or it doesn't happen. Virtual is not a replacement instinct across every category of event. It's the default for teaching and training, and it stays optional for everything built on trust or physics.

Are virtual events still growing, or did interest fade after the pandemic ended?

They didn't fade, they specialized. The pandemic-era flood of "just get on Zoom" events thinned out once in-person options came back, but the events that survived are the ones that earned a reason to stay virtual: lower friction, global reach, and a format built for the screen instead of a stage streamed onto one. My own AI Workshop cohorts are proof of that pattern — they didn't slow down after 2023, they turned into a paid, recurring product.

What's the real difference between a webinar and a virtual workshop?

A webinar is one person talking and everyone else muted, watching a slide deck. A workshop is everyone building something and leaving with it. I say this on the Builder's Table page itself: "This is not a webinar. There are no slides." The medium is the same video call, but the design is opposite — one produces an audience, the other produces output.

Should my company still spend money on in-person events?

Yes, for the moments where trust is the product — closing a deal, building a leadership team, a first meeting with a client. I still do 12-15 in-person and virtual keynotes a year for exactly that reason. But for teaching, training, and anything you'd repeat more than once, virtual is cheaper, scales further, and — done right — doesn't lose the energy that makes in-person worth the travel budget.

Is hybrid actually better than picking one format?

Hybrid isn't a single format, it's running two different events under one name — and most teams underestimate how much that costs to do well. My answer is simpler: pick virtual or in-person per event based on what that event is actually for, then let a person's full calendar look hybrid across the year. Don't force every individual session to serve both audiences at once.

What's the biggest way virtual events have changed since 2020?

The event stopped being a one-time broadcast and started being a product. My own AI Workshop is the clearest example on this site: it began as something people attended once, and it's now a permanent, self-serve, always-on hub — staas.fund's own homepage — with the live cohort as a premium, capped-seat tier on top of it, not the whole offering.

Will AI change how virtual events work?

It already has, at least in how I run mine. The Builder's Table isn't a lecture about AI, it's a room where an AI agent is doing the actual building while I direct the session — the content and the tool are the same thing. I expect more virtual events to move this direction: less watching a demo, more running the software live with the audience.

This page updates the argument I first made in The Future of Virtual Events for 2025 and Beyond — issue #52 of The Agile VC, published October 16, 2024. Read the original essay for where the market-size case started; read this page for what actually happened when I built on top of it.