Ideal Customer Profile — Proof of Match
Customer: Event organizers  ·  Users: GPs, LPs, Founders, Regulators
ICP fit: —
Mode A — VC Events
Closed, thesis-driven events. Deal flow, founder discovery, co-investor sourcing.
Selected
Mode B — Capital Networking Events
Broader capital stack events. LP-GP relations, regulatory dialogue, ecosystem access.
Selected
1
Organizer firmographics
Who runs the event?
Organizer type
Independent event company
VC association / trade body
Media company (Sifted, Wired, FT)
Accelerator / incubator
LP association (ILPA, Invest Europe)
Family office network
Corporate venture arm
Government / development body
Event frequency
1 event/year
2–4 events/year
5–10 events/year
10+ events/year
Event size (attendees)
<50 (micro)
50–200 (boutique)
200–1,000 (mid-size)
1,000+ (large conference)
Geography
Western Europe
North America
Nordics
CEE / Baltics
MENA
APAC
LATAM
Africa
Revenue model of the event
Paid ticket / registration
Sponsorship-driven
Membership / association benefit
Free / government-funded
Mixed model
Team size
Solo / freelance organizer
2–5 person team
5–20 person team
20+ (large ops team)
2
Event profile & attendee mix
What kind of event do they run?
VC events
Capital events
Both
VC events
Founder summit / pitch day
Early-stage founders pitch to curated investor panel. High 1:1 volume, thesis filtering is critical. Organisers manage 50–200 investor-founder pairs per event.
Both
LP-GP summit
Fund managers present to LPs seeking new allocations. Mandate alignment and co-investment interest are the matching axes. Attendee profiles are confidential-sensitive.
VC events
VC industry conference
Investors + founders + service providers. Side meeting scheduling is the main pain — organizers need to coordinate hundreds of bilateral 1:1 requests simultaneously.
Capital events
Family office & alternatives forum
Ultra-HNW investors exploring PE, VC, real assets. Attendees are privacy-conscious — matching must work on opt-in mandate signals only, no portfolio disclosure.
Capital events
Sovereign wealth & institutional forum
Large institutional allocators (SWFs, pension funds) meeting asset managers. Regulatory-aware matching. Long relationship cycles. Formality and confidentiality are paramount.
Both
Accelerator demo day
Cohort of startups presenting to investor audience. Organiser manages investor sign-ups, interest tagging, and post-demo 1:1 scheduling — high velocity, tight time window.
3
Buyer personas inside the organizer
Who inside the org actually buys?
Head of Programming / Content
Champion. Owns the session and meeting agenda. Directly responsible for attendee experience quality. Primary power user of Proof of Match.
CEO / Founder of the event company
Economic buyer at boutique organizers. Cares about attendee NPS, sponsor renewal, and differentiation. Signs contracts.
Event Operations Manager
Evaluates integration complexity and operational burden. Key to unblocking or blocking adoption. Needs Proof of Match to work with their existing event app.
Partnerships / Sponsorship Director
Involved when sponsors fund the matchmaking feature. Sees Proof of Match as a premium add-on to sell to sponsors as branded AI-powered networking.
4
Pain signals — organizer perspective
Rate intensity · click dots
Low attendee NPS despite high production valueBoth modes
Organizers invest heavily in speakers and venue but attendees rate the networking as poor. The #1 complaint is irrelevant 1:1s. NPS drops damage sponsor renewal and ticket resales.
high
Manual matching is unscalableVC
Team spends 40–80 hours per event manually reading attendee profiles and creating 1:1 schedules on spreadsheets. Error-prone, exhausting, and impossible beyond 150 attendees.
high
Generic networking apps surface the wrong connectionsBoth modes
Swapcard and Brella match on keywords and profiles, not investment thesis or mandate fit. Investors spend half their 1:1s with founders outside their stage, sector, or geography.
high
No proof of event ROI for attendees or sponsorsBoth modes
Organizers can't show sponsors or attendees what happened after the event. No match-to-meeting-to-deal funnel data means sponsor renewals are based on vibes, not outcomes.
med
Data sensitivity blocks LP-GP and regulator matchingCapital
At capital networking events, LPs and regulators won't fill in detailed profiles. Organizers need a matching model that works on mandate-level signals without requiring portfolio disclosure.
med
Post-event engagement drops off a cliffBoth modes
All momentum stops the day after the event. Organizers have no mechanism to track whether 1:1s led to follow-up meetings, term sheets, or co-investments — losing the data that would justify next year's ticket prices.
low
5
Buying triggers
Moments when the organizer is most receptive
★
Post-event NPS disaster — Attendees complained about irrelevant meetings at their last event. Organizer is actively looking for a fix before the next edition.
★
Growing event above 150 attendees — Manual spreadsheet matching is breaking down. They need a system before the next event or they can't scale.
★
Sponsor demanding ROI proof — A key sponsor asked "what came from last year's event?" and the organizer couldn't answer. They need match-to-outcome data for renewals.
◈
Competitor event uses AI matchmaking — A rival organizer in their niche is publicly promoting AI-powered 1:1s. Urgency to match the feature.
◈
New event format launch — They're creating a new curated summit or invite-only format and need matchmaking infrastructure from day one.
◈
GP or LP referral — An attendee who had a great match experience tells them directly: "you need to look at Proof of Match."
◈
Event tech stack refresh — They're upgrading their event app or CRM and evaluating the full vendor landscape simultaneously.
6
Disqualifiers
Who to deprioritize even if they look like a fit
✕
Single-event organizers with no plans to repeat — no renewal path, high onboarding cost relative to revenue
✕
Events under 50 attendees — manual matching is still feasible, willingness to pay for software is low
✕
Free or government-funded events with no procurement budget — long approval cycles, no commercial urgency
✕
Organizers deeply locked into an all-in-one platform (Hopin, Cvent) with no API access or add-on flexibility
✕
Organizers with a technical in-house team actively building their own matchmaking feature — will pilot but not pay
✕
Pure consumer or B2C events (hackathons, general tech meetups) — wrong attendee persona for VC/capital matching logic
7
Prospect fit scoring
Score a specific organizer — adjust sliders
Weighted ICP score
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—
8
ICP summary — edit to match your voice
One-line definition + core motivation
One-line ICP
Why they buy
Proof of Match · ICP Template · Event Organizers · AI SaaS