How to Organise Meetings with Startups?

Being an investor or a corporate executive, each year brings you plenty of opportunities to network at conferences, meet with tech startups and establish new connections. You probably already have Wolves Summit marked in your calendar since it’s a must-attend event in the CEE region. We—as the organisers—place considerable emphasis on the issue of efficiency. That’s why meetings at Wolves Summit are pre-scheduled and last only 15 minutes. Is that enough time to decide whether a given startup is the right fit? Absolutely. You might also consider following two simple recommendations to get the most out of each minute.

The More You Know

Since—as we have already established—every minute counts, the better prepared you are for the meeting, the more informative and productive it will be. Performing comprehensive research on the startups present at Wolves Summit (approx. 600 including scaleups) requires time and effort. Participants purchasing the Investor or Corporate Ticket are entitled to certain perks, including the detailed startup information. Thanks to this document, you will be able to select only the startups relevant to your business profile or the technology you want to implement in the organisation. Moreover, you will receive startup presentations prepared by selected up-and-coming companies to provide even more insight into their capabilities and needs.

With this information available ahead of the conference, you will:

• ensure that all your meetings are well-matched,
• keep introduction and pleasantries to a bare minimum because startups also receive information about you in the Partners and Investors Book,
• be able to begin the conversation with questions to the startup, getting into details quickly,
• ask only specific questions (there is no time for asking what your company does and the like).

A Set of Disqualifying Questions

As in life in general, it is a good strategy to know which aspects of a specific thing—let’s say headphones—disqualifies it from meeting your requirements—only wireless ones, for instance. The same goes for startups. We recommend preparing a set of questions which will, right out of the gate, tell you if a company matches your expectation. From the corporation perspective, these questions can relate to performance of:

• a specific task; if you have an aspect of an implementation to be performed by a startup that is an absolute must-have,
• work in a specific time; if the time is of the essence and you cannot wait longer for the company to be available or the startup knows that during a specific period will have to focus on other tasks,
• an implementation with the use of a specific technology; if you already have a system in place and you need the implementation to be operational within your framework.

In summary, having effective 15-minute meetings at Wolves Summit is possible because both parties of the conversation are already familiar with each other and know the respective expectations. With the disqualifying questions prepared and asked at the beginning of a meeting, you will have a clear picture of whether the conversation should be continued.

What I like is that the companies which come here, come with a real need to find a matching investor and likewise for investors. So I think the speed dating, the concept of being able to preselect ventures, to meet them, to put them through your own set of questions, clearly works very well.

Stanisław Knaflewski, Altamira

We hope that with these recommendations your meetings will be even more effective, leading to profitable investments and successful partnership.

See you at the next Wolves Summit.