Slush 2022 is packed with incredible opportunities to take you to the next level, but it can be difficult to discover the best ones – luckily our 2022 edition of the Slush Matchmaking Tool is here to help you pre-book your meetings for the event days.

Here are our CPO’s five tips to hit your Slush goals and make the most out of Matchmaking:

1. Make your profile stand out

Profiles that are honed to perfection receive much more attention in Matchmaking. Here are some of the most common mistakes we see:

• No profile picture or company logo. A profile picture will immediately make your profile feel a lot more approachable. Having a company logo on the other hand gives your company profiles a professional touch.
• No bio. A clear headline will explain who you are, and what you are doing at Slush. In addition to your job title, this is the first thing people look at when they glance through your profile.
• Unclear company profile. It should be pretty clear what your company does at a glance – there are almost 2000 startup profiles in Slush Matchmaking so your company profile needs to communicate clearly what you do to stand out from the crowd.

2. Identify the right people to meet with

There are thousands of people joining Slush – use our keyword search and filters to find the most relevant ones to meet with so you don’t waste time on a wild goose chase. Not every investor is going to be interested in your startup. By selecting simple filters like industry, stage, and geographic focus you can assure your requests are going to the right people. You can also use our advanced filters like “and” or “exclude” to make your query more specific by dragging and dropping combined searches.

In addition to choosing the right company, try to find the right person from that company to meet with. If you are raising funding, it will make sense to reach out to a person in charge of investments instead of a comms person for example. Pro tip: partners at funds get a ton of invites so it might make sense to reach out to an investment manager for example as the first point of contact!

3. Send a personalized opening message

Sending the same meeting request message to everyone will lead to suboptimal results as it’s pretty obvious if your message is copy/pasted – quality over quantity! Make sure that you explain well why it makes sense to take a meeting with you during Slush. Remember that the Slush week is packed with programs and every appointment comes with opportunity cost. You can also include up to three-time suggestions.

4. Keep your inbox & sent requests tidy

If you get a meeting request and can’t take the meeting, please take the time to politely decline the request so that the person on the other end will know you can’t make it and will pursue another opportunity instead. When declining a request, you can include a message to let the other person know why you can’t make it this time. It will also help your inbox from getting too bloated.

On the other hand, if you are reaching the limit on sent requests, assess if realistically the person is actually looking to meet and hasn’t had a chance to respond yet, or are they just too polite to decline the meeting? Again, choosing who you request a meeting with carefully will increase your chances a lot. Try to also communicate with other people from your team so you don’t bombard the same person with many requests from the same company.

5. Choose the right meeting location

Meeting Area is a seated area inside the Slush venue specifically reserved for taking meetings. For each meeting in the Meeting Area, there’s a table reserved for the duration of the meeting (25 minutes). Only people with a meeting have access to the Meeting Area, so you can be sure that your table is waiting for you when your meeting is starting.

1-on-1 Point is a spot inside the Slush Venue where you can easily find the person you are meeting with. The difference with Meeting Area is that there is no table reservation – it’s a location to conveniently locate the person you are meeting with. Once you have found each other, the actual meeting can take place anywhere, for example, the dining area or one of our ad hoc workspaces.

Grab a coffee means you can send a meeting request without a specified location – book a time with someone and suggest a spot to meet from the Slush Venue yourself through the chat found in Matchmaking.

In addition, if the person you are meeting with is involved with a company that has a lounge or a booth, you can suggest having the meeting there.

Ready to find your next match?