Don’t go to events as a startup founder

Starting a company requires heads-down work. But you also need to be out there evangelizing your product, finding investors, etc. You can’t (shouldn’t, rather) attend every event that looks interesting. That said, there will be events that can significantly change the trajectory of your company. Meeting that right person who opens that one important door is priceless. Given this Catch-22, I created a simple formula to decide if an event is worth my time.

The Formula

I recently tested my formula when deciding to attend Girl Geek Dinner at Box HQ.

Are the event attendees relevant to my startup?

WakaTime is automated analytics for developers, made by developers. So naturally my audience is technical. Girl Geek Dinner is one of the few women’s events I know that is chock-a-block full of engineers, designers and product people.

Requirement 1, check!

Is the organizer organized? ☺

The Girl Geek Dinner’s agenda is structured and makes the event’s purpose clear — Box wants to attract women in technology to explore their culture. The talks have meaty content, given by their top engineers. Also, looking at it I feel confident the event will run smoothly facilitating social interaction — not a shit show.

Requirement 2, check!

Will I get access to influencers & domain experts?

Given that WakaTime processes billions of text editor heartbeats a day, I wanted to meet big data expert and event speaker, Divya Jain. Girl Geek Dinners have limited tickets and are intended for companies to share their culture in an intimate setting. So I could safely assume I’d get face time with her. My assumption was correct and I had a very meaningful conversation with Divya.

Final requirement, check!

As you can see, Girl Geek Dinner fit my formula and was a good use of my time. Hopefully using this simple framework, you too can eliminate seemingly enticing events and go to the ones that make a difference.