THIS WEEK’S BRIEF • 3 MIN READ
Most great conversations at events disappear within 48 hours
Capturing who you met and what you discussed is the difference between a contact and a relationship
The follow-up is where the acquaintance either becomes something or doesn't
NY Tech Week puts hundreds of the right people in the same room and a lot of founders will walk out with a stack of LinkedIn connections they'll never do anything with.
It happens every year. You go to the events, you have the conversations, you connect on LinkedIn on the way home. And then life moves fast and the follow-up never happens. Two weeks later you're looking at a list of names you barely remember and a handful of conversations that felt important in the moment but didn't go anywhere.
The people you meet this week could be your next hire, your next investor, or your next customer.
The difference between that and another forgettable week of networking comes down to what you do with the conversation after it ends.
The conversation is the easy part
Meeting someone at an event is the lowest friction version of networking there is. You're both there, you're both open to it, and the conversation starts itself.
What's hard is everything after.
You walk out of an event having talked to a dozen people. You remember a few names. You remember even fewer details. And by the time you're back at your desk on Thursday, the specifics of what they were working on, what they mentioned needing, why they felt relevant are already fuzzy.
Within 24 hours, people forget an average of 70% of new information. Within a week, that number climbs to 90%.
Most of the time the relationship fades simply because nothing got written down.
Context is what turns a contact into a connection
Think about the last time someone followed up with you and it actually worked. They referenced something specific: something you said, a problem you mentioned, a detail that told you they were actually paying attention.
Research on memory retrieval shows that the more context attached to a person, the more likely they are to come to mind when it actually matters.
A name and a job title gives you almost nothing to work with. A name, a job title, and "building a compliance tool for mid-market fintechs, mentioned they've been burned by vendors before" gives you a follow-up that feels like it came from a real conversation.
Capture the context in the moment - that's what the relationship is built on.
If you don't follow up fast, the relationship doesn't survive the week
Follow-ups fade because by the time you sit down to send one, you can't remember enough to make it feel worth sending. You have a name, maybe a company, and a vague sense that the conversation was good. That's not enough to write anything real.
The window closes fast and you move on. So does the other person.
The warm window is roughly 24–48 hours. After that, the conversation has faded enough on their end that anything you send starts to feel like it came out of nowhere.
83% of professionals say social capital is their most valuable asset in an AI-dominated future. The relationships you build this week are worth more than most founders treat them. The context just needs to survive past Friday.
Do this at every event this week
After each conversation, before you move to the next one, take 30 seconds. Pull out your phone and log three things:
Their name and what they do
What the conversation was actually about
One reason they're relevant to something you're working on right now
The follow-up writes itself from those three things. And six months from now, when something changes in their world that makes them exactly the right person to reach out to, you'll have something to work with.
Even more helpful, this is exactly what Goodword is built for. Use the app throughout Tech Week to capture every contact and the context behind them.
Put your network to work
You already know the people who can move things forward - the challenge is seeing them at the right time.
Goodword helps you:
Consolidate every contact you meet in one place
Add the context of your conversation so it doesn't get lost
Search and surface the right people when an opportunity comes up
Tech Week is one of the best weeks of the year to build your network. Make sure the relationships survive it.
— Team Goodword