Deve Go 2025 is the Social Development Bank’s flagship entrepreneurship forum showcasing innovation, investment and business opportunities.
Riyadh is midway through hosting DeveGo 2025, the Social Development Bank–led Entrepreneurship and Modern Business Practices Forum, as the event enters its second day at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center, bringing together thousands of founders, freelancers, SMEs, and investors around the future of modern work in Saudi Arabia.
Held under the patronage of Ahmed bin Sulaiman Al Rajhi, DeveGo is being positioned by the Social Development Bank as a working platform rather than a conventional conference, designed to connect ideas directly with advisory, financing, and market-access opportunities. Organizers expect overall attendance across the three days to surpass 25,000, highlighting the growing scale of Saudi Arabia’s entrepreneurship and freelancing ecosystem.
Running daily from 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., the forum is structured around three zones that mirror the founder lifecycle. GO SHIFT focuses on early-stage inspiration, emerging technologies, and new work models. GO EVOLVE targets SMEs moving into execution, with sessions centered on partnerships, franchising, and expansion readiness. GO HATCH convenes policymakers, investors, and corporate leaders to discuss capital flows, regulation, and sectors shaping the next phase of the Saudi economy.
Across its first two days, DeveGo has featured keynote addresses, panel discussions, workshops, and one-to-one advisory clinics, with participation from government officials, venture capital partners, AI and gaming executives, and startup founders. Competitive tracks such as the NEXT UP Challenge are enabling selected startups to pitch directly to investors, while the Salam Award for Promising Projects is surfacing early-stage ideas through short-form video pitches.
The forum aligns closely with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 objectives, particularly the goal of increasing SME contribution to GDP from roughly 20 percent to 35 percent by 2030. SMEs already represent close to one-third of national output, while freelancing continues to expand as a core labor-market pillar, with more than two million registered freelancers contributing to income generation and economic diversification.
By anchoring DeveGo, the Social Development Bank is actively channeling participants into its broader ecosystem of financial and non-financial support, including microenterprise financing, franchising programs, and advisory services delivered through its business development platforms. The presence of international media partners and global development organizations underscores an ambition to benchmark Saudi entrepreneurship against global standards rather than frame it purely as a local initiative.
As DeveGo moves toward its final day, the forum is reinforcing Riyadh’s positioning as a regional hub for entrepreneurship, modern work, and SME policy coordination, aligning founders, freelancers, financiers, and public institutions around a shared national growth agenda.
