So, you have made an important decision and arrived at the conference to present your startup. Now the most productive and interesting phase begins: communication with attendees and networking. In the second part of the article, we have collected the opinions of repeated participants of large startup events that will help you build effective communication and keep focus in the whirlwind of events. 

How to get leads at a conference 

Each conference is not only about new technologies and new contacts, it’s also about leads that can help you grow your startup. We asked Alina Pendeshchuk, Business Development Lead at Datrics, a portfolio startup of Sigma Software Labs, about her experience in preparing for conferences. She shared the secrets of successful lead acquisition from a team that has traveled halfway around the world and attended such conferences as JICA conference in Japan, Nordic Fintech Week, Ukrainian delegation to London Tech Week, and European Blockchain Convention.

Preparing for a conference is probably the most important thing to plan. We choose only those events that are relevant to our track record, i.e., that will bring us the most benefit, or events where we are more likely to meet the right people. We don’t rule out the possibility of attending Web Summit, but specialized conferences are often more relevant to us,

Let’s go through the most important steps:

1. Book meetings in advance with interesting people, who will be attending the conference, through a special event app or direct contact via social media. The hottest time is 2–3 days before the conference. This way, you will get a plan of action & meetings and will be able to confidently follow it throughout the trip.
2. Put away your work and spend all your free time during the conference days communicating with people at the stands or in specially designated areas. However, remember that the main communication boom will take place at side events. Don’t forget that this is a big component of communication, albeit in a more informal style.
3. If you have a booth at the conference or are working as part of a delegation at a joint booth, make sure that your brand is well covered. Your startup’s identity, logo, and video should be visible everywhere. 
4. Instead of using paper business cards, merchandise, and handouts, use QR codes with a direct link to LinkedIn, your website, or a form to connect with visitors and all stakeholders you communicate with. 
5. Choose the relevant side events you want to attend, where you can establish personal communication with future clients, partners, and market players. 
6. Keep a record of each useful conversation in a special working chat or document that is available to your team for quick lead processing. After each important conversation, write down the main points:
   • the contact’s LinkedIn profile; 
   • a brief description of the meeting;
   • a photo of the person you’re talking to or a photo of you together; 
   • next steps for communication.
7. Get involved with the local community. When planning a visit to another country or city, schedule meetings with local clients or partners. This will help you adapt more easily to the city where the event is taking place and possibly get involved in the local community.

Business communication at conferences

To get the most out of a conference, you need not only to attend the event itself, but also to plan business meetings with participants. We talked to Daria Yaniieva, Investment Director at Sigma Software Labs, about business communication during events. Daria attended about 10 top international and many Ukrainian events last year alone. She participated as a member of Ukrainian delegations, as a speaker, and as a jury member in numerous startup pitches in many countries around the world. We asked Daria how proper communication affects the results of business trips.

The geography of our events is incredible — from a major summit in Lisbon to a technology conference in the heart of Morocco, from a VC event in Warsaw to a Ukrainian delegation in London. Over the year, we visited numerous locations for completely different types of events, and each one brought its results,

Daria Yanieva, Investment Director at Sigma Software Labs, says.

“Today, it is even more important than ever to maintain existing contacts and create new global opportunities. This opens up new horizons for business and great prospects for our portfolio companies. But it is not enough to be present at the heart of technology events. In addition to all the tips on how to prepare, we clearly got that learning about cross-cultural nuances is another major success factor. For example, the casual dress code for most European events should be set aside when you are packing a suitcase for a tech conference in Marrakech. Your personal agenda is also important. It’s better to check the locations, format, and invitees for the side events in advance. Ignoring the accepted formats will not add success points.

The optimal timing of follow-up communications requires special attention. From our personal experience, it is not always effective to follow up with potential contacts the day after the meeting, and sometimes a delay of a day can, on the contrary, make a negative impression. The first rule applies to large-scale events like Web Summit. Where the schedule of official and additional events takes a full day, except for a few hours of sleep. Firstly, in such a schedule, it is quite difficult to process all contacts effectively here and now, not to mention personal follow-ups. Besides, there’s a pretty high risk of losing emails among hundreds of notifications from networking apps, organizer emails, calendar reminders, and regular mail that never stops during your travels. Of course, you shouldn’t postpone communication in a super long box, but it seems optimal to process contacts within a business week after returning. At the same time, after more small events for 70–100 people, it is highly recommended to send follow-ups the very next day. Be sure that the number of emails will be ten times smaller and, with a high degree of probability, the scale of the event allows you to agree on more specific points to include in further communication. And in this case, there is no need to lose time and interest to continue the conversation in detail.”

What conferences are interesting to attend in the first six months of 2024

Yes, there are a lot of conferences, but not all of them can boast of a sufficient number of attendees, classroom impact, or the target audience that gathers there. We have prepared a shortlist of conferences worth attending in the first half of 2024:

Startup Grind Global Conference

• Date: April 23-24 
• Location: San Francisco, California, USA
• Topics: Startups, entrepreneurship, technology

TechChill

• Date: April 18-19
• Location: Riga, Latvia
• Topics: Technology startups

Latitude59

• Date: May 22-24
• Location: Tallinn, Estonia
• Topics: Innovations and startups

Infoshare

• Date: May 22-23
• Location: Gdańsk, Poland
• Topics: Technology and startups

GITEX AFRICA

• Date: May 29-30 
• Location: Marrakech, Africa
• Topics: Innovation and startups

London Tech Week

• Date: June 10-14 
• Location: London, England
• Topics: Innovations and startups, business

Collision

• Date: June 17-20 
• Location: Toronto, Canada
• Topics: Technology, innovation, startups

Author: Elvira Zhukovska, PR-Lead at Sigma Software Labs

In the guest column for AIN, Elvira Zhukovska, PR-Lead at Sigma Software Labs, gathered tips from tech event organizers and regular attendees to help you make the most of your time and energy and avoid getting lost in the shuffle. The material will be released in two parts. This is the first part of the column, which starts with the basics: do you need to attend conferences and what to expect? Find all the pros and cons below.

Why you should attend conferences

• Meet investors. Conferences are the perfect place to meet potential investors who might invest in your startup.
• Network. You can meet people from different industries and expand your contacts, which can help open up new opportunities for your business.
• Research new trends. Conferences allow you to learn about the latest technologies and market trends, which will help your startup stay at the forefront of innovation.
• Build brand awareness. Speaking at a conference is an opportunity to raise awareness of your product or service and gain credibility in your industry.
• Learn. Conference presentations, panel discussions, and workshops can teach you new strategies and approaches that will help your startup grow.

Which risks are there?

• High cost. Attending conferences can be expensive, especially for small startups with limited budgets.
• High competition. Conferences often bring together thousands of companies, making it difficult to stand out and attract the attention of investors or partners.
• Waste of time. If you don’t do your homework  and skip preparation for efficient conference navigation, it can be a waste of resources.
• Potential disorientation. Too much information and events at conferences can lead to a loss of focus.
• Unsuccessful contacts. Not all the contacts you make at a conference are useful or lead to results.

But there is good news. These risks can be avoided if you follow a simple rule: preparation. 

How to prepare for the conference

We asked Kateryna Stefanovych, Event Management Lead at Sigma Software, how to get the maximum out of the event without breaking the already limited budgets of startups.

Teams often finish preparing for a conference by booking tickets, giving priority to polishing their pitch deck and developing a product. The result is a lack of focus, scattering on everything at once, unjustified budgets, and at best, returning home with a bunch of contacts, most of which are irrelevant. Inside conferences, however, many opportunities and nuances will help you achieve your goal, which everyone knows about but forgets when preparing. Let’s go through the main ones:

• Goal: What are you going there for? Is your goal finding new clients, networking, investment search, competitor research, hiring, or maybe you just want to be inspired by trends? Answer the question clearly and focus on two main areas of your activities.
• Go beyond the standard agenda: find out what tracks are available, whether participation with a stand is possible, and whether startup competitions, broadcasting, mentoring sessions, business matchmaking, and hackathons are planned.
• Make plans for side events and your schedule: there is a chance to find an investor or client at presentations, but you are more likely to do so at smaller events that are not part of the main event. As practice shows, some organizers are ready to share these events directly on their website (such as ETHCC Paris), but if not, you can safely search for them in lu.ma, evenbrite, meetup.com, or Telegram groups, which often publish compiled tables with side events that are niche and worthy of attention.
• Apply as a speaker: usually in 4–6 months, a CFP (Call for Papers) opens, where you can submit your candidacy and topics. There is a chance to get in, but we recommend paying special attention to the naming and originality of the topic, which ideally should be in line with the conference theme. 
• Elevator pitch exercise: start practising a short, clear, and catchy description of your startup for networking and presentations. The rules are simple: 2 weeks before the conference, set aside 15 minutes a day to “sell” your idea. It’s important to find people who don’t know what you do and get honest feedback on what catches their eye, where you feel insecure, or where your explanations are too complicated. 
• Delegate roles: Often teams go to conferences and have a common plan for the meeting. Can you split up and cover more ground? Think along these lines and send those who really need it and are able/will be willing to communicate a lot.
• You can’t have a meeting if you don’t plan it: you can often find conference participants in conference mobile apps. If this is not possible, use social media and hashtag searches. 
• You are remembered when you stand out: it can be an item of clothing, a hairstyle, an accessory, something small, but something that will capture a person’s attention and make them remember you among hundreds of others. The same applies to cold emails when you’re scheduling meetings before an event. Don’t write standardized messages, take the time to make sure your message catches the eye of a person out of 100 other invitations.
• Act quickly and follow up on meetings and new connections right away: it always works to send a selfie of you and your friend right into the chat.
• Have a QR code with quick access to your contacts and product: Linktree and Beacons are great options for this.
• Create printed materials: business cards, informational brochures, and other materials about your startup that you can hand out to potential partners or investors. Yes, yes, it still works.
• Don’t neglect partnership offers for booths: sometimes there are very good opportunities, for example, at the Web Summit conference there is a Startup Alley. If you are selected, you will have the opportunity to get a stand and 3 tickets for the price of one.
• Minimize stress, you still have a startup to launch: conferences are not easy, because in addition to expertise, you pay with emotional resources. Get enough sleep, remember to drink, eat, and have everything you need for a comfortable stay, including a power bank, notebook, and comfortable shoes.

AI tools for conference planning and attendance

It’s easier and faster to navigate a conference if you have helpers. AI-powered apps can help you schedule a meeting, translate a speaker’s presentation, or follow important news that happen during the event. We have collected several tools that will help you be more productive at the conference: 

• Crystal: Helps you analyze the communication style of conference participants and prepare for effective communication.
• Covve: Helps you keep in touch with contacts made at the conference and track new opportunities.
• Feedly: Helps you keep track of news and articles from your industry before the conference.
• Voicea: Records key points and ideas during conference presentations.
• Whova: Helps you organize your event schedule and connect with other attendees.

In this article, we shared a couple of reasons to attend conferences, what AI technologies to use, and detailed the steps that can be taken to prepare for the conference. The second part of the article will reveal the secrets of lead generation during the event and communication with the international community. Stay tuned…

Author: Elvira Zhukovska, PR-Lead at Sigma Software Labs