Conference meetings and business plans
20 May 2008If you are going to BIO or any other large conference as an early stage company, you might be thinking about meeting up with investors or partners as part of your dream scenario. While this is definitely possible and does happen, on thing I noticed when I was at conferences as an investor, was that companies that had just introduced themselves at a conference wanted to leave me with their full business plans. My preference would have been to hear their elevator pitch, and if there was interest, get their business card and make a follow-up appointment to get more information. At most, I would like an executive summary to remind me of your business. You could always email or courier the full plan later if there is interest.
One thing most investors (and likely the rest of us too) don’t need is more information than we can deal with. Paper particularly is bad when you receive it at a conference. There is too much, it’s heavy and since we’ve been away from our offices for a few days, often don’t look at it when we get back home. Therefore, I think that it is best that when we are at conferences that when we meet people who are interested in our businesses, that we get their contact information and follow up within a week or so to further the discussion.
Obviously, if you pre-planned a meeting with someone at a conference, you can leave them with some information, but they probably need less paper than you think and that glossy brochure you spent so much time and money preparing may just not make it off the conference room floor if it given out to those who aren’t fully engaged in pursuing further discussions.
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