Stop hosting events, go where your buyers already are: are conferences worth it for B2B lead generation?
Running your own event is the most expensive way to meet people who were already in the same room last week. I learned that again on a golf course on June 8.
It was a golf day attached to a Canadian Bitcoin conference I own a small piece of, about 10%. Maybe 500 people. We sponsored the second hole. The next morning on my weekly call with Charles I described it the only way that made sense: "it was like the who's who of the bitcoin world in Canada."
So are conferences worth it for B2B lead generation? Yes, when the room is curated and your buyers are already in it. Running your own event to recreate that room is usually a worse deal than buying a ticket to someone else's.
One golf day, three real leads
The numbers from that day, as I gave them to Charles: around 500 people, two or three billionaires in the room, and I knew roughly a quarter of the attendees. I walked out with two or three strong leads. One was a lender that needed help taking a new Bitcoin lending product to market. That is not a business card. That is a conversation about a real problem that we solve.
Three leads from one afternoon sounds small until you price it. Our sponsorship was one hole. A booth at a big trade show, travel, a team, swag and a week of lost selling time costs a multiple of that, and the leads are strangers who walked past your table.
The key takeaway in the notes from that call was blunt: attending curated events where your network already shows up beats running your own. We also wrote down a less polite version that I will stand behind. Spending time in rooms with people who can write cheques is a repeatable pipeline strategy.
Why curated rooms beat your own event
A curated event did three jobs for me that my own event could not.
- Someone else did the filtering. The organizers decided who got invited, and they invited the people I want to know.
- Someone else paid for the room. Venue, food, logistics, the sponsor who covered the bar. My cost was a hole sponsorship and an afternoon.
- Nobody was there to be sold to, so nobody felt sold to. A golf cart is the best discovery call format ever invented. Four hours, no slides, and you find out what everyone is working on.
When you host, you take on all three jobs. You build the list, you fill the seats, you pay for the room, and the attendees know it is your event, so they show up braced for a pitch. Most founder-hosted events end up half full of friends and vendors.
Know a quarter of the room before you walk in
The stat I care most about from that day is not the 500. It is the quarter I already knew.
Knowing a quarter of the room changes the math. You are not cold-introducing yourself 50 times. You are catching up with people who then introduce you to the person standing next to them. Every warm hello is a door into a cold one.
That is a function of time in the industry, which you cannot fake. You can accelerate it. Before an event, look at the speaker list and sponsor list. Pick the ten people you most want to meet. Invite a few of them onto your show the week before. Now you are not a stranger at the event. You are the person who interviewed them last Tuesday.
Follow up while the handshake is warm
Conference leads die in the gap between the event and the follow-up. Everyone comes home with a pocket full of conversations and a week of email backlog, and by the time they get to the follow-ups the other person has forgotten the context.
Our rule is the same for events as for calls. The follow-up goes out fast, it references the specific problem they mentioned, and it carries something useful. In June our post-call follow-ups started going out with a short strategy document, a payment option and a booking link, drafted by AI from the conversation notes and reviewed by me before sending. A golf-course conversation does not come with a transcript, so the notes have to get written the same day, while you still remember who said what.
Where the show fits: events in, show out
None of this means we stopped producing our own things. We did, and we still do. But they are shows, not events.
A live show is an event with no venue and no catering, recorded, and repeated weekly. Our live pitch show was pulling five or six strong investors per session around this time. A sales show for founders premiered on June 11 with ten founders attending. The cost per session is a studio link and two hours of our time.
So the split we landed on is simple. Physical events: attend the curated ones where our buyers already gather, sponsor lightly, and spend the day talking. Our own production budget: put it into the show, where every guest is a buyer and every episode lives on after the day ends.
When to host your own event anyway
There is one case where hosting wins. When no curated room exists for your buyers. If your market is so niche or so new that nobody has gathered them yet, being the one who gathers them is a moat.
Even then, start small. A dinner for eight beats a conference for 300 when you are new, because eight people can actually talk to each other. And start it virtual if you can, because a show proves the guest list works before you rent a room.
The test is the same as for any channel: are the people in the room your buyers, and did you leave with conversations about real problems? If yes, it is worth it. If you left with a stack of business cards, you paid for a party.
If you would rather have the buyers come to you every week, start the show that follows up for you.
Frequently asked questions
Are conferences worth it for B2B lead generation?
Curated ones usually are, because the organizers have already filtered the room for you. Measure by conversations about real problems with real buyers, not badge scans.
Should a startup host its own event?
Rarely, unless nobody else is gathering your buyers. If you host, start with a small dinner or a virtual show to prove the guest list before renting a room.
How do I get leads from a conference?
Know who is attending, invite a few of them onto your show beforehand, spend the day in conversation instead of at a booth, and send specific follow-ups within a day or two.
Is sponsoring an event worth it?
A light sponsorship can be, if it gets you into the right room. We sponsored one hole at a golf day and left with two or three strong leads.