Merve Isler, Founder and CEO of Marvelous, sits down with Ventureport to discuss how AI can help revenue teams find the right rooms, guests and opportunities.
Updated
July 3, 2026 11:39 AM
.jpg)
Marvelous, an AI product company. PHOTO: MARVELOUS
Most B2B sales teams spend their days inside software. They track leads in a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, send emails, build outbound lists and measure every digital touchpoint. Still, many important business relationships move forward in person. A dinner after a conference, a small founder roundtable or a private customer event can do what dozens of cold emails cannot: build trust quickly.
That is the gap Marvelous wants to fill. The bootstrapped San Francisco-based AI startup is building what founder and CEO Merve Isler calls “Salesforce, but for real life”. Her idea is simple: if companies already use software to manage digital sales, they should also have software to manage the real-world moments that help close deals.
Marvelous brings data, automation and targeting into in-person go-to-market (GTM) work. It helps B2B sales, revenue, marketing and growth teams plan in-person events such as curated dinners, launch events, mixers, happy hours and conference side events. These formats are already familiar to companies selling to enterprise buyers. The problem is that they are often managed through spreadsheets, venue calls, scattered guest lists and manual follow-ups.
That creates two problems. First, the process is slow. Teams can spend weeks figuring out who to invite, where to host and how to manage responses. Second, the return is hard to measure. Companies spend heavily on conferences, dinners and private events, yet they often do not have a clear way to know whether an event will influence pipeline before they commit the budget.
Marvelous wants to pull those pieces into one AI-powered event management platform.
“Our main target customer is revenue and sales teams,” Isler said. “Because about 40% of deals close in person, but there's no infrastructure built for that—so that's what we do.”
For Isler, the idea comes from experience. Before starting Marvelous, she worked at Google from Istanbul, managing developer product launches and go-to-market programs across Turkey, Central Asia and the Caucasus. During that time, she helped build more than 100 communities around the world and coordinated thousands of events a year across eleven time zones. The work was fast, local and very manual.
That experience shaped the foundation for Marvelous. Isler saw that building products had become easier, while distribution remained difficult. A startup can now ship software faster than ever. Reaching the right people, in the right setting, is still a different challenge.
At Google, Isler had to understand how people gathered, communicated and built trust in different markets. A product launch might require developer meetups in dozens of cities, but the right approach could change from country to country. In Kazakhstan, she said, Telegram worked better than WhatsApp. In Afghanistan, Facebook mattered more. Each market had its own habits, and growth depended on understanding those details. Those details and adapt quickly.
Marvelous grew out of that playbook. Isler saw that offline distribution had patterns, even when it looked chaotic from the outside. The right guest list, the right room, the right timing and the right follow-up could change the outcome of a sales conversation. Most of that knowledge, however, lived in people’s heads. Marvelous is her attempt to turn it into software.
Inside the platform, a company can start by choosing the kind of satellite event it wants to host: a launch event, a mixer, a happy hour, a brunch, a lunch or a dinner. From there, users can connect their CRM. When Salesforce is connected, Marvelous analyzes contacts and creates relationship scores based on signals such as buying intent, past event activity and how warm a relationship appears to be. If a team also uses an event platform such as Luma or Eventbrite, Marvelous can bring that event data into the picture as well.
The product is built around Maven, Marvelous’ AI assistant. Maven can help plan an event through Slack, iMessage or the Marvelous platform itself. For instance, a user might ask Maven to plan an executive dinner for 18 people within a set budget. From there, Maven can find warm contacts, estimate who is likely to attend, build a guest list, recommend venues, send invitations and run follow-up sequences across email, LinkedIn and SMS. The goal is to let sales teams focus on conversations and closing deals instead of worrying about logistics. Put simply, Marvelous helps a company find the right guests, secure the right venue and understand which event format is likely to work. Instead of guessing whether a US$10,000 dinner will pay off, the company gets a clearer view of the potential return.
AI Insiders, Marvelous’ invite-only network of verified AI and enterprise leaders, is also part of the company’s go-to-market strategy. Rather than asking every customer to build an event from scratch, Marvelous can group several companies that want to reach the same audience into one curated event. Such a setting creates revenue, product feedback and fresh data about what works in different markets. The network spans verticals such as cybersecurity, fintech, robotics, healthcare AI and enterprise SaaS. It now includes members from more than 475 companies, with C-level executives making up nearly half of the community. So far, AI Insiders has facilitated more than 2,000 introductions and contributed to over US$560 million in deals. Isler describes it as one of Marvelous’ strongest go-to-market channels.
The first AI Insiders event took place at AWS GenAI Loft in San Francisco in April 2026. It brought together 150 curated guests, including AI founders, tier-one investors, enterprise executives and researchers for an evening focused on high-impact conversations and collaboration.
The timing may work in Marvelous’ favor: Digital outreach is getting louder, and AI will make it easier for companies to send more emails, messages and automated pitches. That may make high-trust in-person conversations more valuable, especially in enterprise sales where relationships take time. At the same time, event budgets need proof. Revenue leaders want to know whether a dinner, roadshow or customer event is worth the cost.
Marvelous is betting that offline sales will become a measurable category for software. If the company can prove that its relationship scores, event intelligence and AI agent help teams create a stronger pipeline, it could become an important tool for B2B go-to-market teams. The core message of Marvelous is easy to understand: the deals may happen in the room, but data can still power the room.
Keep Reading
A global survey shows robot anxiety drops when people encounter robots in real life
Updated
April 1, 2026 8:55 AM
Ameca the humanoid robot, featuring a grey rubber face. PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK
People often assume robots make people uneasy everywhere. But a new global study suggests something more nuanced. Robot anxiety tends to be highest in places where people rarely see robots in real life. Where robots are more visible, attitudes are often far more positive. That insight comes from a global study by Hexagon AB, which surveyed 18,000 participants across nine major markets. The research explored how adults and children think about robots and how those views change depending on everyday exposure.
In the United Kingdom, anxiety about robots is the highest among the countries studied. Around 52% of adults say they feel worried that something might go wrong when they think about interacting with or working alongside robots. South Korea sits at the other end of the spectrum, with only 29% reporting similar concerns. One factor appears to explain much of the gap: familiarity.
British adults are among the least likely to have encountered robots in real life. Only about 30% say they have seen or used one. In contrast, countries where robots are more visible tend to report greater comfort. China offers the clearest example. Around 75% of adults there say they have seen or interacted with robots. At the same time, 81% say they feel excited about the technology’s future potential.
The study suggests that attitudes toward robots are not fixed. Instead, they shift depending on where people encounter them and what tasks they perform. When robots are seen solving clear, practical problems, confidence tends to rise.
Across the surveyed countries, adults report the highest comfort levels with robots working in factories and warehouses. Around 63% say they are comfortable with robots in those environments. These are settings where tasks are clearly defined and safety standards are well understood. Acceptance drops in more personal spaces. Only 46% say they feel comfortable with robots in the home, while comfort falls further to 39% when robots are imagined in classrooms.
In other words, context matters. People appear more willing to accept robots when they take on physically demanding or dangerous work. Half of the respondents say improved safety is one of the main advantages of robotics in those environments. A similar share point to productivity gains as another benefit. Another finding challenges a common assumption about public fears. Job loss is often described as the biggest concern surrounding robotics. But the study suggests security risk worries people more.
Around 51% of adults say their biggest concern about robots at work is the possibility that the machines could be hacked or misused. That fear outweighs worries about physical malfunction or injury, which stand at 41%. Concerns about being replaced at work appear at the same level.
For many respondents, the issue is not simply whether robots can perform tasks. It is whether the systems controlling them are secure. According to researchers involved in the study, these concerns reflect how people evaluate emerging technologies. Instead of having a single opinion about robotics, people tend to judge each situation individually.
A robot helping assemble products in a factory may feel acceptable. The same technology operating in more sensitive environments can raise different questions. Dr. Jim Everett, an associate professor in moral psychology, says trust in artificial intelligence and robotics is often misunderstood. People are not simply asking whether they trust the technology, he notes. They are thinking about specific tools performing specific roles.
A robot assisting in a classroom or helping in healthcare carries different expectations than an AI system used in defense or surveillance. Even though these technologies are often grouped together in public debates, people evaluate them differently depending on their purpose.
Finally, the study also highlights another important factor shaping public attitudes: experience. When people actually encounter robots, fear often declines. Michael Szollosy, a robotics researcher involved in the project, says reactions tend to change quickly when individuals meet a robot for the first time.
The idea of an autonomous machine can feel intimidating in theory. But when people see a small service robot or an industrial machine performing a straightforward task, the reaction is often much calmer. Exposure can shift perceptions from abstract fears to practical understanding.
That shift matters because robotics is moving steadily into everyday environments. From manufacturing and logistics to healthcare and public services, machines capable of autonomous or semi-autonomous work are becoming more common.
As that happens, the study suggests public confidence may depend less on technical breakthroughs and more on visibility and transparency. Burkhard Boeckem, chief technology officer at Hexagon AB, argues that trust grows when people understand what robots are designed to do and where their limits lie.
Anxiety tends to increase when systems feel invisible or poorly understood. Clear boundaries and clear explanations can have the opposite effect. When people see robots working safely alongside humans, performing well-defined tasks and operating within clear rules, the technology becomes easier to accept.
In that sense, the future of robotics may depend as much on public familiarity as on engineering. The machines themselves are advancing quickly. But the relationship between humans and robots is still being negotiated. For now, the study offers a simple insight: the more people encounter robots in everyday life, the less mysterious they become. And once the mystery fades, the conversation often changes from fear to curiosity.