In-person meetings and venture studios

Had a few good solopreneur partnership discussions recently, including one in-person coffee chat.

And it got me thinking – what is the tradeoff for doing in-person meetings?

Now a few years ago (read: pre-Covid), we may not even be asking that question, because it was so “normal” to do lots of meetings in-person. During and since Covid, most of us (depending on business, industry, etc.) got into the habit of doing almost everything remote.

It certainly has it’s benefits – no commute, no additional fee (for travel, food/beverage, etc.), big time saver, a stronger connection when you shake someones hand and chat from across the table.

In my case, I went to go meet this gentleman downtown, which required about 25 minutes of travel on the subway. That’s not a huge deal, but the total cost was about 50 minutes in travel (25 to, 25 back), $3 for the subway ticket and $6 for the coffee (those fancy coffee shops are a bit of a rip!).

I know I know, I probably shouldn’t even be looking into it this deeply, but this is how my brain works. I over-analyze and consider, in most cases.

But it begs the question – is meeting in-person so much more valuable, that it’s worth $10 and 50 minutes of time?

Honestly, I’m not sure what the answer is. If it’s for a promising potential partner or client, probably yes. But what if having the meeting remotely were to result in the same outcome anyway?

I guess the only way to answer the question correctly would be to track all of your leads, and whether you met in person or not, and compare conversion rates. Or just go with your gut.

Who knows, or maybe some big research company will do a study on this someday. Or I’m just crazy in the head, and shouldn’t overthink it as long as things are moving forward in a positive way for the business.

What do you think? Have you been meeting more in-person lately? Is it “worth it”?

I also attended a pretty cool networking event a few days ago, and one or two interesting conversations that could lead to partnerships. You never really know, especially with partnerships, but casting a somewhat wide net and seeing what sticks can be a good strategy.

The event was hosted by a pretty repuable venture studio in downtown Toronto.

I didn’t know much about venture studios before, but essentially it’s like if a venture fund and a tech studio gave birth. The venture fund part means they invest in tech companies, and the tech studio means they do some work actually starting and building tech companies in house.

Put them together, and you get a company that works with founders to create and fund tech companies, in house, then leverages their network and connections to help grow.

Pretty cool concept – and dinner/drinks were free 😉

That’s it for me – have a great day, don’t miss out on my best updates from my daily email list, and keep grinding.

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