People You Meet at a Networking Event

They Put the “Work” in Networking

The Hard Seller

Did you remember to bring enough business cards? They did — enough for each person at the event to wallpaper their entire home. Instead of warming up with a little small talk chit-chat, they go right for the jugular like a puma preying on a baby deer with a broken leg. You didn’t even catch their name, but you know within the first three minutes of meeting them, that their company offers financial planning, and someone your age should consider a healthy mix of short-term and long-term investment strategies and you shouldn’t have more than six months of cash in your checking account. All you asked was “So, what do you do?”

The Startup CEO

Wearing their startup’s branded t-shirt as a suit of armor, this ruthless “visionary” scurries around the event with a few junior-level employees looking for a technical co-founder. While talking to them, you need a thesaurus to keep up with all the tech jargon because you constantly hear them drone on and on about their “minimum viable product,” “key performance indicators,” and “burn rate.” They make it crystal clear their goal is to disrupt the tech industry with a new platform for geolocating preventative tools for sexual health. Wait a second…aren’t they just an “Uber for…