The story of LEAP: From an idea to global impact

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From concept to implementation, we're sharing Tahaluf's journey of shaping ideas into unforgettable experiences. Authentic stories, from the people who make it happen.

LEAP ’s debut in 2022 featured over 500 speakers and 700 tech startups, and welcomed more than 100,000 visitors (making it the largest debut tech event in history). In its second year, LEAP became the most-attended tech event in the world. 

At LEAP 2025, our CEO Mike Champion stepped onto the stage with Annabelle Mander , our Executive VP, to announce a major step in LEAP’s evolution: our expansion into Hong Kong with LEAP East , launching in July 2026. 

But it’s not just about the numbers. We’re incredibly proud that LEAP has been able to work with government partners in Saudi Arabia to empower a new generation of tech pioneers – with learning opportunities, investments, mentoring and more; and we want LEAP to continue to have a positive impact globally. 

The story starts with Saudi Arabia: a country going through a profound transformation, with a government dedicated to enabling change. The nation’s leaders wanted to get innovators, entrepreneurs, startup investors, venture capitalists, and private equity firms together to form partnerships and drive tech sector growth. 

Mike saw the opportunity to create a platform that would enable that. In close collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Saudi Arabia (MCIT), Mike and his (at the time very small) team got to work – creating an event that was designed from the start to become a global movement. 

“The aim is to try and make Saudi Arabia not just an emerging tech hub, but one that will endure for many many decades - if not indefinitely in the future,” Mike says. “LEAP’s focus from the outset has been bringing a large amount of foreign direct investment into the Kingdom, building a big faculty of investors from around the world.”

A content-first approach made LEAP different right from the start.

From the early days, we knew LEAP represented a once-in-a-generation opportunity – if we did this right, it could redefine the global tech event landscape. So we never set out to position LEAP as just an event. 

Instead, we focused on creating a global event brand that could sit at the heart of a community of innovators – a brand that could grow into a movement, and a movement that could have real influence on the future of international technology markets. 

Our decision to take a content-first approach was key to making this happen. Ailsa Williamson was a Senior Content Producer for LEAP, and recently became the Head of Production for DeepFest (our co-located AI event). She points out that many events take years to build momentum, but LEAP didn’t launch quietly. From the very first edition, we showed up with a diverse, global agenda that instantly attracted a cohort of incredible speakers, partners and attendees from all over the world. 

That diverse agenda, packed with sessions that really did give our audience access to a whole world of tech perspectives and possibilities, was what really made (and still makes) LEAP different. And to curate that content, we had to trust our team to follow their instincts. 

Our Head of Production for LEAP, Fares Sahnoune , says that before he’d even joined LEAP, he kept hearing rumours about a tech event brewing that would shake up the industry – something unlike anything else out there. 

“What I heard was true,” he says. He joined us just as production was starting; “The team was tiny back then, and everyone was pitching ideas. It didn’t matter how junior or senior you were, or which department you came from – everyone was listening.” 

No idea was considered too wild. No suggestion was dismissed as ridiculous. Instead, it was ‘How are we going to make this work? Let’s go for it.’ 

“The level of trust and creative freedom was – and still is – second to none,” says Fares. “To some who have joined us since this might seem normal, but by industry standards, we are definitely an outlier.” 

Annabelle adds “by bringing together innovators, investors, and industry leaders, LEAP is about facilitating the conversations and collaborations needed to navigate change and harness the full potential of these modern technologies." 

What makes the LEAP production process unique?

From a production perspective, it’s impossible to pinpoint one single factor behind LEAP’s growth and success. 

“It really is the result of a combination of elements working seamlessly together,” Ailsa says. She agrees that there’s a huge focus on content at LEAP – “and as producers, we spend a lot of time conducting research to create a compelling narrative that resonates both locally and globally.” 

The production team constantly collaborates with leading tech companies, innovators and government bodies to make sure we deliver high-quality content through diverse formats, to make the LEAP experience dynamic and engaging from start to finish. And we’re big on collaboration internally too: “Challenges are never faced alone. They’re shared across the entire team. This supportive environment means every producer feels empowered and motivated to contribute to the event’s success.” 

The sheer size of LEAP, along with its rapid growth, requires the production team to work closely together – but also with the marketing and sales teams to enable a seamless execution. 

Fares says “I feel like we operate by a completely different set of standards compared to most of the industry.” 

While his experience with other event brands in the past was focused on securing a certain number of speakers that sponsors could sell to, and putting together sessions vendors could join before moving onto the next project, working on LEAP is different: 

“The real thrill and our main goal is to create a unique story told by the world’s best and most influential storytellers – and we’re empowered to make it happen.” 

Fares believes the key ingredients that have driven rapid growth and success for LEAP are trust, creative freedom and collaborative effort. He says we tell stories that make sense to us as a business, and to the wider industry, because they’re relatable, informative, current, topical; but the driving force behind it all is the team. 

“The privilege to learn, evolve, and express one’s talent in an environment designed to nurture strengths and develop other skills – that’s rare. I think this is the ingredient that binds the secret sauce.” 

We had to match marketing strategy to event design

Speaking of different elements working seamlessly together – marketing LEAP has been a lot of fun. Why? Because even as we’ve grown, our marketing team is closely connected to every other team and we get to tie together the threads of stories from across the event. 

We’ve already talked about content as a top priority at LEAP. And that’s true across our marketing channels as well. From the beginning of the journey, we wanted to deliver high-quality content that sets a standard for what our audience can expect from us – whether they’re interacting with us on social media, through an ad campaign, in their email inbox or on the LEAP content hub. 

Our VP of Marketing and Communications, Richard McKeon 🌐 , looked at the exhibitors and sponsors we were speaking with and shaped our brand and messaging around what they were communicating to their markets.   

“We approach our marketing the way a media business would – always offering valuable, first party information,” he says. 

“And what made LEAP 2025’s edition so successful, was the work we did in 2021 when the marketing campaign kicked off, which obviously we’ve just built upon – so it’s been a compounding effect.”

One of the key strengths in LEAP’s marketing strategy has been our emphasis on understanding our audience and what they really care about, and using that knowledge to speak to them in a way that resonates. It’s not about what we want to say, but about what they want to hear – and how we can connect those dots effectively.

Our Head of Attendee Marketing Kitty Draper says that tailored campaigns in seven languages, partnerships with top-tier media, and innovative tactics like AR lenses and social media takeovers proved invaluable. “These efforts drove a 1026% registration increase in some of our key markets,” she says, with 34.4 billion media impressions achieved. 

“LEAP was designed as more than an event,” Kitty adds. “It was a movement to position Saudi Arabia as a global tech hub.” And from its bold vision of bridging international tech communities, to showcasing innovation through inclusive and immersive strategies, LEAP has redefined what a tech event could be. 

“This transformative ambition set it apart from the very beginning.” 

Can we replicate LEAP’s success with other events? 

With LEAP firmly established as a global success, people are asking us…can we do it again? Is this replicable? 

And the short answer is that we’re not trying to replicate LEAP with other events. Each of our events is unique, designed to interact with an industry in a different way. We’re not going to make a cookie-cutter copy of LEAP, but we’re definitely going to create other event brands that match its ambition, impact and influence. 

As Ailsa says, “LEAP’s success would be difficult to replicate in its entirety because it’s a product of a unique combination of timing, market conditions, and strategic vision.” 

The scale and speed of LEAP’s growth isn’t normal in the events industry. It’s been supported and enabled by government backing in Saudi Arabia, and the nation’s unprecedented investment in technology and innovation. 

But we’ve already shown we can develop new events that can quickly have a significant impact on different industries. Fares points to the first edition of 24 Fintech (now Money20/20 Middle East ) as an example of this: “It felt like it had been running for years.” 

And “events like Global Health Exhibition - ملتقى الصحة العالمي and Cityscape Global , after getting the Tahaluf treatment, immediately became record-breaking successes,” he adds. 

We’ll take LEAP further and expand it into new markets – it’s far from reaching its full potential. But we’re not trying to replicate it because every industry is different, with different challenges and potential, and at Tahaluf we’re sensitive to those nuances. We want to develop events that meet those challenges and enable that potential; and what works for the tech industry won’t be the same as what works for the healthcare industry, or cosmetics, or energy, etc. 

Overall, building LEAP has been a pretty mind-blowing experience 

LEAP has already exceeded our wildest dreams. And as some of our team have described here, our dreams and ambitions for this event were wild. 

Our team has grown a lot since LEAP’s inception, and individual team members have grown with it – their roles evolving as the event has levelled up in scale and impact, again and again. 

“Being part of LEAP has been profoundly rewarding,” says Kitty. “It’s inspiring to contribute to an event that not only drives industry innovation but also reshapes perceptions of Saudi Arabia globally. Watching it grow into a movement of such scale fills me with immense pride and motivation.”

And as to why the event has so quickly become an international focal point for the tech industry, she adds:

“It was a perfect storm: the right partners, the right industry, the right region and most importantly the right team.”

See you next time,

Tahaluf Team.