Steve Blank: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 1

steveblank.com

15 pointslrm2422 comments

Hmm... perhaps trade shows and networking events are a different beast. I've been to quite a few conferences and networking events lately, but the main reason has been to meet interesting people and build connections with other entrepreneurs (or non-entrepreneurs, for that matter), rather than to get something speciifc out.

The few people I encountered who clearly had a specific agenda were not the most interesting, I found.

So far my best approach to meeting someone at a networking event is to 1) find out what they do, 2) figure out if there's any way I could help them. I like this approach in particular because it's scalable - if everyone does this, we all win. And, in fact, it seems most people do this at start-up networking events (most that I met, anyway)

My observation was that they had the "Going to Trade Shows" part down, they just needed to add the "Like it Matters."

lol - How true for so many things.

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