Mastering Startup Business Development: Proven Strategies for Early-Stage Startups to Succeed at Events and Outreach in 2024 by PitchBob's Founder

Events are gaining momentum. By 2024, nearly all major industrial events have rebounded and welcomed guests worldwide. Business travel is once again possible, offering not only a pleasant experience but also the opportunity to connect with individuals who may not respond to messages on LinkedIn or emails.

In 2024, the PitchBob team has already attended over ten events globally, generating more than 150 meetings for our partners throughout 2020. This success is due to events allowing us to focus on high-quality leads—people essential for sales, investments, and industry strengthening.

In this interview, we decided to share our internal outreach processes to explain how we leverage events and share tips on minimizing costs and maximizing business benefits. More hacks about events’ outreach are here.

Kristina Tertyshnikova leads the PitchBob outreach team, so she handles all the preparation for events the team attends. She also manages the development of PitchBob's partner network in the UK, often doing outreach herself to set up meetings and establish collaborations for our startup within the local ecosystem. Additionally, she assists startups that come to PitchBob for the leading products and then requests help with outreach, sales strategy development, attracting investments, or expanding their industry network.

Dmitry Maslennikov is the founder of Pitch Bob. Dima is a serial tech entrepreneur, corporate innovation consultant, and startup mentor at Startupbootcamp. Alchemist and Founder Institute. He has over ten years of experience in corporate innovation and tech entrepreneurship, three exits, thousands of trained tech entrepreneurs, and hundreds of startups consulted as a mentor.

Kristina (K.T.): Please tell me which events you find most beneficial to attend and why. There are different types of events—large business events with thousands of attendees and more intimate, industry-specific events. Can you share your experience and what you find most useful?

Dmitry (D.M.): That's a good question; thank you. In my experience, there are many types of conferences. Let's divide them into two groups.

As you mentioned, the first group includes large conferences. I've attended Web Summit several times, starting in Dublin and continuing in Lisbon. I’ve also been to Slush in Finland, and I just returned from VivaTech in Paris and Vienna UP in Vienna. These are all major events for startups, with many participants worldwide.

The second group consists of smaller events. I try to attend these locally in Israel, but on the other hand, any large event consists of side events around it. I also attend these events, and sometimes, I don’t buy tickets for the main event; I just visit the local side events. These can be investor meetings, industry networking sessions, or talks by notable speakers on topics of interest to me. I can save on tickets by attending side events while benefiting from networking and gathering quality contacts.

K.T.: Got it. What’s your goal when participating in conferences or just side events?

D.M.: I usually have several goals. The first and always top priority is attracting new contacts and clients and building long-term relationships to develop our products. This includes accelerators, incubators, communities, studios, and universities—those who always participate in such events and are abundant. That’s the first goal.

The second goal is more general—to gauge the market, understand the trends, and see what’s essential and happening in the industry. Based on the first goal, my participation involves specific practical actions, starting with outreach in the event’s app. Considering the second goal, I try to participate in networking events within larger events.

K.T.: Thank you for sharing. Moving on to preparation and participation in conferences and events, you mentioned outreach in the app. Let’s discuss what other steps and channels we use to build an effective outreach strategy before the event and what we include in the post-event steps.

D.M.: I'll explain how I see this process. Perhaps you have additions or recommendations to improve it. Currently, the process looks like this: Before the conference, the team creates a database unrelated to the event but related to the country or neighboring countries likely to attend the event. I identify the main organizations and key players in the innovation ecosystem—accelerators, incubators, universities, and companies. We create a database of decision-makers in these organizations and contact them via LinkedIn and email.

When the event app with the participant list becomes available, the outreach team performs the same task but focuses on registered participants. We message them in the app and on LinkedIn since the app starts functioning as a communication tool just 5-7 days before the conference, while LinkedIn is always accessible. For those not in the app, we send messages like, “I’ll be at this conference. You’re not there; let’s meet in the city.” Finally, those not found on LinkedIn but seen in the app, often about 30%, are also outreached separately.

K.T.: Great, you explained it well. Let me summarize. An event is an excellent trigger for starting communication with your leads. We always use it to the fullest. We gather several lists for the event:

• Local leads (those living/working in the region): LinkedIn profiles
• Event participants: event app profiles + LinkedIn profiles
• Event participants not found in the first list: LinkedIn profiles

The outreach goal for different audiences at different times is to set as many relevant meetings for the trip as possible, whether at the event or just in the city/region.

Let me share a trick we use. You can buy a ticket for an event but not attend it. It’s hard to be everywhere—it’s costly and time-consuming. So, you can do the same without in-person meetings by buying an event ticket and getting access to the participant list in the app or website. In this scenario, more calls are usually made after the event. The trick works as if we couldn’t meet at the event, so we suggest a call afterward, which is accepted 99% of the time. You can go further and not buy a ticket but use the event as a communication trigger on LinkedIn with the audience from the first list. We find relevant leads in the country/industry, tell them about the planned event, ask if they’re attending, and suggest a call beforehand to save time for an in-person meeting. Then, we mentioned we couldn’t attend the event. The effect and results might be less than with app access, but it’s still a good trigger to start communication, usually working better than cold outreach by country or industry.

Okay, tell me how we work with new contacts after the conference.

D.M.: For me, as the founder and someone responsible for business development, the most important thing is attending meetings. And your outreach team does everything to set up these meetings with the most interested people. So, I’ll share how I handle meetings and then pass the information to you to turn chaos into business. When I have a meeting, and there are dozens over a few days, it can all become a blur. To avoid confusion, I do the following:

• Photograph the person’s LinkedIn profile.
• Take a screenshot or scan the QR code on their badge
• Sometimes, take a photo with the person to remember who they were and what we discussed

I then save these in notes or in saved messages. Recently, I started using the Hinter app. It’s useful, and I recommend trying it.

K.T.: Yes, I agree. When you have a constant, somewhat chaotic flow of content at an event, with the stress of new meetings and introductions, it’s great to offload information quickly with comments on how to follow up. When the team picks up these notes, it’s much easier to work with them and extract useful insights for quality, native follow-ups. The channels we use after the event include:

• Email addresses gathered from leads
• LinkedIn outreach to those we didn’t meet or even arrange a meeting with

Event apps usually either close or get deleted, but even if they remain active, as was the case with the London Tech Week app, it worked for a month after the event. However, using them isn’t very useful because people stop checking them.

K.T.: As the founder, how do you measure the success of your participation in a conference? Are there any metrics or indicators that are important to you?

D.M.: Thanks for the question. The metrics are quite standard, I think, for any campaigns of this kind:

• Number of scheduled meetings
• Number of conducted meetings
• Number of deals from contacts made at the event

So, I care about conversions from the broadest part of the funnel to the narrowest. For me, a good conversion is 30% of the people I contacted turning into partners with whom we launched what we agreed upon in a short in-person meeting, followed by calls. This good result is achievable within weeks, maybe months after the event. An excellent conversion is 50-60% over 3-6 months, when the initial contact turns into a partnership, requiring more time.

K.T.: Great, thank you. What advice do you have for founders planning to attend conferences, perhaps for the first time, or those who haven’t attended yet but are considering it?

D.M.: I’m happy to share, but first, a remark. I’m an introvert. For me, open networking is always a step outside my comfort zone. It’s challenging. Simple tips I use to overcome this:

• I get introductions in advance, so I don’t have to make cold introductions. These can come through friends, colleagues, acquaintances, the ecosystem, clients, and, of course, outreach. This improves meeting conversion and eases communication.
• I try to participate in organized trips and outings. In our case, these are various delegations or group trips. There are delegations from business communities of countries. I often use delegations from Israel organized by government agencies and private organizations. I travel with them frequently.

K.T.: Great, thank you for the interview.