Vaitea Cowan

TechCrunch Disrupt? Overrated. Web Summit? A $4,700 mistake I’ll never make again. I’ve burned $18K learning which startup events actually matter for B2B SaaS founders trying to close deals—not just collect business cards. Here’s what nobody tells you: the biggest events aren’t where B2B deals happen. Why “Best Startup Event” Lists Are Useless for B2B Founders Every January, tech blogs publish the same recycled garbage: “50 Must-Attend Startup Events!” They rank by size and buzz. What they don’t rank by: where your buyers actually show up with budgets. I learned this after exhibiting at a 70,000-person mega-conference. Spent $4,700 on booth space, flights, and hotel. Had exactly zero conversations with our target market. The attendees? Mostly consumer startups and the press are looking for the next Uber. According to Cvent, 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority—but only at industry-specific events. Generic “startup” conferences are networking theater. If you’re serious about finding the right startup event strategy, you need to think differently. The 5 Best Startup Events Where I’ve Actually Closed B2B Deals SaaStr Annual – Where SaaS Deals Actually Happen 13,000 SaaS professionals in San Mateo every March. APIDays – The Technical Depth You Need If you’re building APIs, this is your room. 2,000-3,000 API architects who can actually read your docs. Paris is the flagship, but they run 10+ cities globally. What makes APIDays different: it’s deeply technical. No marketing fluff. €3,000 gets you in, and European buyers are way less saturated than US markets. Big Data & AI Paris – Enterprise Buyers With Actual Budgets 15,000 enterprise CTOs and data engineers. I closed two partnerships here worth €400K combined—with French banks and telecom companies that had active Q4 budgets. The French government subsidizes AI adoption, so budgets are real. But your networking tactics need to adapt. Less aggressive, more relationship-focused. €800 for a pass and 3,200€ to exhibit as a startup, totally worth it if you’re targeting European enterprises. Track it on Sesamers so you don’t miss early bird pricing. MicroConf – Where Bootstrapped Founders Share Real Numbers 200-300 attendees max. Everyone’s profitable or trying to be. Zero VC hypergrowth bullshit. I’ve learned more in hallway conversations here than at conferences 50x the size. The attendees are other founders who share actual numbers—not vanity metrics. Churn rates, CAC, payback periods. This is how you measure real ROI from events. Worth every cent if you’re bootstrapped. Industry-Specific Trade Shows – The Secret Weapon Here’s the move nobody talks about: skip tech conferences entirely. Go where your buyers congregate. Healthcare SaaS? Hit HIMSS. Fintech? Money20/20. HR tech? HR Tech Conference. I watched a founder close a $400K deal at a healthcare event while competitors were posting selfies at Web Summit. These cost $3,000 avg, but attendee quality is 100x better. According to Statista, B2B trade shows hit $15.78B in 2024. This strategy works because you’re fishing where the fish actually are. The 3-Filter System I Use to Pick Events Filter 1: Who’s actually attending? Can you name 20 people who match your ICP? If not, wrong event. Use Sesamers to check historical attendee data before buying tickets. Filter 2: What’s your actual goal? Raising money? Go to investor-heavy events. Closing customers? Industry trade shows. Different goals need different event selection criteria. Filter 3: What’s the all-in cost? Ticket + flights + hotel + meals. If it’s over $3K, you need $30K in pipeline to break even. Most events don’t hit that unless you’re strategic. Events I Skip (And Why You Should Too) Web Summit: 70,000 people is networking hell. Consumer-focused despite the B2B claims. Pass unless you need Series A+ PR. CES: Consumer electronics show. Your B2B SaaS buyers aren’t here. I see founders at CES every year wondering why they’re not closing deals. Now you know. TechCrunch Disrupt: Great for press and VCs. Terrible for enterprise buyers. Worth it for launch PR, not pipeline. How I Track Everything Without Losing My Mind I track every event in a spreadsheet: cost, conversations, pipeline generated, deals closed. After three years of data, the pattern is crystal clear. Niche beats broad. Quality beats quantity—industry-specific crushes general tech. The best startup events for B2B SaaS are never on TechCrunch’s homepage. For API companies: APIDays and API World are superior to generic conferences. For AI/ML: Big Data & AI Paris provides European enterprise access that’s nearly impossible to achieve otherwise. Geography matters—European buyers at European events are way less saturated than US markets. Stop Wasting Money on the Wrong Events You have limited time and budget. Most founders can hit 3-5 events per year max. Choose wrong and you’ve burned $15K and 15 days for zero ROI. Choose right and one event generates $500K+ in pipeline. Use Sesamers to find events filtered by your industry and target attendees. See which ones similar founders recommend. Track ROI data. Set reminders for early bird pricing. Never waste another $4K on an event where your buyers don’t show up. Because the smartest way to pick events is learning from founders who’ve already tested them—and can tell you which ones actually matter. Ready to find your next high-ROI event? Start tracking on Sesamers and build your calendar based on data, not FOMO.

At SaaStr 2023, I had a 12-minute conversation with a VP of Partnerships at a Series C company. No pitch. No business cards. Just asked him about his biggest challenge with international expansion. Three months later, that conversation turned into a $2M partnership deal. That’s what good startup event networking looks like—and it has nothing to do with collecting LinkedIn connections. Here are the 7 tactics that turned me from “business card guy” into someone people actually want to talk to. Tactic #1: Research 20 People Before You Arrive (Not 200) Most founders show up at a startup event hoping to “meet people.” That’s code for wandering around awkwardly. Here’s what works: Before the event, identify exactly 20 people you want to meet. Not 200. Twenty. Pull the attendee list (most B2B events share this 4-6 weeks before). Use Sesamers to see who’s attending events you’re registered for. Then research each target: LinkedIn profile, recent posts, their company’s latest news, what they’re working on. I spend 5 minutes per person. That’s 100 minutes of prep that separates you from the 80% of attendees who show up cold. When you walk up and say “Hey Sarah, saw your post about expanding into EMEA—we just cracked that market, happy to share what worked,” you’re already 10x more memorable than “Hi, I’m a founder, what do you do?” Pro tip: DM all 20 people on LinkedIn two weeks before the event. “Hey [Name], seeing you’re going to [Event]. Would love to grab coffee and hear about [specific thing they’re working on]. Tuesday 8am work?” Pre-booking even 3-5 meetings means you’ve already won the event before you land. Here’s how I pick which events are worth this prep work. Tactic #2: Ask Questions That Make People Think (Not Talk) The worst networkers ask “What does your company do?” Everyone gets that question 47 times. It triggers autopilot mode: rehearsed elevator pitch, eyes glazing over, polite nod, move on. Zero connection. According to Harvard Business Review research, people remember conversations where they had to think, not just recite. Ask questions that don’t have scripted answers. My go-to questions: “What’s the hardest problem you’re trying to solve right now?” or “What’s working surprisingly well in your business that you didn’t expect?” or “If you could wave a magic wand and fix one thing about [their industry], what would it be?” These questions do three things: show you’re interested in them (not pitching), surface actual problems you might solve, and make you memorable because most people at networking events don’t ask interesting questions. They just wait for their turn to pitch. Tactic #3: The 10-Minute Rule (Then Move On) I used to have 45-minute conversations with one person at events, thinking I was “building rapport.” Wrong. That’s hogging. Startup event networking is about starting conversations, not finishing them. Research from Cvent shows that 72% of attendees are more likely to do business with people they meet at events—but only if you follow up properly. Set a timer. Ten minutes max per conversation. If it’s going great, say “This is super valuable—I’ve got to run to another meeting but let’s schedule 30 minutes next week to dive deeper. Are you free Tuesday?” Then book it right there. Exchange numbers or grab a calendar link. The goal isn’t to close deals on the event floor. It’s to identify who’s worth a real conversation later. Ten minutes is enough to know if there’s fit. Everything else happens in follow-up. Exception: If you’re mid-negotiation on something big, obviously don’t bail after 10 minutes. But for initial networking? Move fast, meet more people, book follow-ups with the right ones. Here’s my full pre-event checklist for maximizing these conversations. Tactic #4: Kill the Business Card Theater Business cards in 2025 are cosplay. They’re what people who don’t know how to network think networking looks like. I watched a founder collect 83 business cards at Web Summit. Know how many he followed up with? Zero. Because he didn’t actually connect with anyone. Here’s what I do instead: After a good conversation, I text myself their name and one specific thing we discussed. “Alex Chen – struggling with European compliance, mentioned needing help with GDPR.” Takes 10 seconds. No card to lose, no app to forget to check, just a note I’ll actually use. Or skip the middle step entirely: “Hey, let me get your number so we can schedule that follow-up call.” Boom, you’re in their phone. Text them before you leave the event: “Great meeting you. Tuesday 2pm work for that call?” Now you’re a person with a scheduled meeting, not a business card in a pile. The best networking at startup events happens when you think less about “making connections” and more about “starting relationships.” Cards don’t build relationships. Scheduled follow-up calls do. Tactic #5: Organize Your Own Dinner (This Is the Cheat Code) Want to know the real secret of startup event networking? The conference itself is just bait. The real networking happens at dinners, breakfasts, and after-parties you organize yourself. I started doing this at every event: Book a table at a restaurant near the venue for 6-8 people. Invite 3-4 people I want to meet from my target list, tell them each to bring one interesting person. Done. Now I’m having a real conversation over dinner instead of shouting over techno music at the official after-party. Cost: $150-300 for dinner. Value: Way higher than the actual conference ticket. Last dinner I organized at a fintech conference led to three partnerships and one customer that’s now $400K ARR. The conference sessions? Taught me nothing I didn’t already know from YouTube. Pro tip: Track events where multiple people from your target list are attending using Sesamers’ attendee tracking, then organize dinners strategically around those events. Here are the B2B events where this tactic works best. Tactic #6: The 24-Hour Follow-Up (Not “Next Week”) According to Salesforce data, leads contacted within 24 hours are 7x more likely to convert than those

Last year I spent 11 hours scrolling through Eventbrite, LinkedIn Events, and random newsletters trying to find startup events worth attending. Found 47 “amazing opportunities.” Went to 8. Got ROI from 2. Here’s the problem: there are over 32,000 startup events globally every year according to UFI Global, and 90% of them are a waste of your calendar and cash. I needed a system. Here’s how I now find high-ROI events in 20 minutes instead of 11 hours. Why Most Founders Suck at Finding the Right Events You know what kills me? Founders who Google “best startup events 2025,” click the first TechCrunch listicle, and drop $3K on a ticket because Web Summit looks cool on LinkedIn. Then they complain events don’t work. The issue isn’t that good startup events don’t exist. It’s that you’re using consumer discovery methods for B2B decisions. Eventbrite is built for yoga classes and birthday parties, not finding where enterprise buyers congregate. LinkedIn Events is 80% webinar spam. Google? Shows you the events with the biggest ad budgets, not the best attendees. According to Cvent research, 67% of trade show attendees represent completely new business prospects. But only if you’re at the RIGHT show. Wrong event selection is the #1 reason founders think “events don’t work.” The events work fine. You’re just showing up to the wrong rooms. Here’s the system I use to find events where actual deals happen. Source #1: Reverse Engineer Where Your Buyers Already Go Stop asking “what startup events should I attend?” Start asking “where do my target customers already hang out?” Different question, different answer. If you sell API infrastructure to DevOps teams, you want KubeCon, not Collision. If you sell HR software to mid-market companies, you want SHRM Annual Conference, not Web Summit. This seems obvious but I see B2B SaaS founders at consumer tech conferences all the time wondering why they’re not closing enterprise deals. Here’s my process: Pull your top 10 customers. Google “[company name] + speaking” and “[company name] + sponsoring.” See which conferences they present at or sponsor. That’s where their peers are. That’s your target event list. Takes 15 minutes, beats 11 hours of blind searching. For finding these industry-specific events, I use trade association directories. Every vertical has one: SBA.gov has a comprehensive list, or search “[your industry] + trade association” and check their events calendar. These are where buyers go, not tourists. Source #2: Follow the Money (Where VCs and Partners Speak) Want to find quality startup events? Track where the money shows up. Check Crunchbase for your target investors and see where they’re listed as speakers. Use LinkedIn to follow VCs and watch what events they post about attending. I have a simple spreadsheet: 20 investors I want to meet, their LinkedIn profiles bookmarked, notifications on. When they post “Looking forward to speaking at [Event],” that event goes on my shortlist. If three investors I want to meet are all going to the same conference, that’s not coincidence. That’s signal. Pro tip: Most VCs announce speaking gigs 4-6 weeks before the event. Set Google Alerts for “[Investor Name] + speaking” to catch these early. Registration is cheaper and you can book meetings with them before their calendars fill up. Here’s how I turn those meetings into actual conversations. Source #3: Use a Real B2B Event Discovery Platform After burning months on consumer event platforms, I switched to Sesamers for B2B event discovery. It’s built specifically for founders looking for business events, not birthday party planners looking for venues. The difference? You can filter by industry (API/SaaS, fintech, healthcare tech, etc.), attendee profile (VCs, enterprise buyers, distribution partners), and event size. You can see who actually attended past editions before buying a $2K ticket. You can track which events your network is going to. Game changer. I have filters saved for “B2B SaaS events in North America with 500-2000 attendees” and “fintech conferences with VC attendance.” One click, boom, my quarterly event shortlist. Beats the hell out of scrolling Eventbrite for three hours. Here’s my full system for tracking events without losing my mind. Source #4: Mine Your Network (The 80/20 of Event Discovery) The fastest way to find startup events worth attending? Ask founders who are two years ahead of you what they go to. Not “what events do you recommend” (they’ll just name drop). Ask “what’s the ONE event where you closed your biggest deal last year?” I send this exact message to 5-10 founders in my industry every quarter: “Hey [Name], building my 2025 event calendar. What’s the ONE conference that drove the most revenue for [their company] last year? And which one was overhyped?” Two-question email, 90% response rate, pure gold. Set up a simple Notion database or Airtable with: Event name, Recommended by, Why they liked it, Approximate ROI. After 6 months you’ll have a curated list of events that actually work for your specific business model. Worth more than any “Top 50 Startup Events” listicle. Another hack: Join Slack communities for your industry (SaaStr has great ones for SaaS founders). Search the channels for “conference” or “event” and read what people actually say, not what sponsors promote. Real founders complaining or praising = real signal. Source #5: Check the Attendee List Before You Buy This is my non-negotiable filter. Before I buy any ticket over $500, I demand to see the attendee list or at least historical attendance data. If the organizer won’t share it? Red flag. They’re hiding something. Some events publish attendee lists 6-8 weeks before (especially B2B trade shows). Others have “matchmaking platforms” where you can browse who’s registered. If the event has neither, email the organizers directly and ask for: average attendee seniority, percentage of attendees by role (founder/investor/corporate), and top companies that attended last year. I track this in Sesamers because they aggregate historical data on major B2B events—attendance numbers, speaker quality ratings, and which types of companies typically show up. Saves me from buying tickets to events that