When I started working in VC, conferences were treated as a nice extra. Something you sprinkled on top of a sourcing strategy that lived elsewhere, often in a partner’s address book. Being an investor meant you mainly had to spend a few days out of the office per week for dealflow meetings, you attended the occasional panel slot if you had a friend on the programme team, shared a few tweets and that was it.
But today conferences are part of the core marketing infrastructure that keeps the firm in the flow of founders, operators, LPs and peers. These events act as a pretext to re-engage with warm or cold leads, whether a fund is at the beginning of their investment cycle or deep in fundraising for their next flagship fund.
Every tech city has its own flagship event. If you are a generalist VC, chances are you can easily identify 20 conferences that you are expected to show up at, and 40 that you could attend.
So, where do you start? How do you really decide whether it’s a good reason to attend?
Most investors only see the tip of the iceberg: the logo of the headline conference. They rarely see the resource constraints that come with executing the field work. That tension creates too familiar operational dramas for marketing teams, including last-minute “Where is my ticket?” message, partner demands for main-stage slots, and the flurry of FOMO driven interest because another prestigious fund has been announced as a partner.
And yet, despite common belief, investors don’t attend conferences for the parties.
When I look at the 100 plus conferences I have attended over my career, I tend to group the real reasons into 10 buckets.
1. Qualified dealflow
Good conferences act as magnets. They pull in the startups that are relevant for a specific thesis, geography or stage. For generalist VCs, niche events are a way to see a concentrated sample of the market in two days. For more specialist firms, these events are a way to go deeper into a vertical, and to be visible in that niche.
2. On-the-shelf networking
Conferences provide “on the shelf networking”: the infrastructure of meetings, lounges, apps and social events is already built. You simply step into it. For investors, that is valuable across several fronts: they can connect with founders and future founders, operators for senior hires, practical experts and LPs exploring new funds.
3. LPs and the (secret) permanent fundraise
Most funds are always fundraising. Events that attract LPs are therefore particularly attractive. Even a handful of good LP conversations can justify several days out of the office, especially if this involves underground Berlin (Super Return) or a roundtrip to the French Riviera (IPEM).
4. Media relationships
Some partners only have meaningful conversations with journalists at conferences, mainly because engaging with the media is not part of their day-to-day routine. For them, conferences provide an efficient way to concentrate press engagement in one place without having to pitch themselves. For marketers handling complex logistics across several markets, an event is often the one moment where the stars align.
5. Thesis signalling
Good investors have local-based theses and want to attract dealflow consistently across several years, whether or not they have cash to invest. Attending Stockholm-based conferences is a way to say, “we are serious about the Nordics” without having to buy billboards in the airport (although some folks do exactly that).
In that sense, VCs and event organizers are sometimes competing as community enablers. Both are trying to become the natural node for a given ecosystem.
6. Speaking and thought leadership
Speaking slots are a form of social currency in venture – and comes with a few perks such as “speaker dinners”. Many partners enjoy being on stage and the status premium associated with it. I guess there’s a reason why some people are more interested in how they will look like on their Slush stage picture than what they are going to say.
Beyond ego, speaking opportunities give VCs a platform to articulate their thesis, test a narrative in front of a live audience, and attract founders at the very top of the funnel. Some of the best inbound I have seen has come within a week of a talk. A founder who heard a line and followed up. A journalist who spotted a quote for a later story. Someone who waited backstage with a pitch.
This is part of why VCs can be VERY intense about speaking slots. From their perspective, stage time is not simply a visibility perk. It is a key input into the marketing engine.
7. Curation
Some conferences have a strong reputation for curation. You trust that if you turn up at TEDx, DLD, or similar events, you will be challenged and inspired. For investors who spend most of their year buried in spreadsheets, this is attractive. Alas, I think the content quality has nosedived these last couple of years so it’s less true.
8. Portfolio support
Serious investors use conferences to help portfolio companies with commercial introductions, support them on talent hunting, offer stage visibility and access to LPs, journalists, and peers. When a portfolio company is having a big moment, everything else tends to rearrange around it.
9. IRL experiences
Many VC franchises have grown used to operating digitally. What is often missing is a reliable in person interface for the broader community around the fund. Conferences solve this by using those moments to crystallise the community you are building. A simple breakfast, an LP catching up with several of your founders in one afternoon: these are small touches, but repeated over ten years they are part of how trust compounds.
10. Watching to competition
Conferences are one of the few places where you can literally see how competitors behave with founders, with LPs, with the media and with each other. Who is always surrounded by founders. Who is quietly building a niche. Who is sponsoring heavily in a sector you thought they had left behind.
No one admits that they attend conferences to observe others. But in practice, everyone pays attention.
One last thing
So yes, conferences are here to stay. AI-generated content now accounts for over half of all English-language material on the web today.
And here’s my belief: the more AI floods the digital space, the scarcer – and more valuable – genuine human connection becomes. Each LLM even has its own fingerprints… ChatGPT favours “certainly” and “overall,” Claude prefers “here” and “according to.” People frantically remove the dashes to sound more human.
And VCs are now getting excited to have machines that handle their content, outreach, and distribution – then spend more time hunting for founders IRL. Because in a world where anyone can generate a newsletter, a deck, or a LinkedIn post in seconds, the only thing that still can’t be automated is trust.
See you at Sesame Summit in Biarritz?
About the author
Vincent Touati-Tomas is a marketing advisor specialising in asset management and category-defining businesses. With over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, he most recently led marketing operations for five years at Northzone, a global VC firm with operations in Europe and the US. Vincent has advised 200+ companies on marketing strategy and communications, as well as helping fund managers institutionalise their marketing functions and build enduring investment brands.