EventRel: A New Category of EventRel Service Businesses I Think Will Emerge

I'm 29, and I wouldn't say I've made it in life.

But one thing I find interesting is that people around me, including myself, have started setting aside actual budgets to attend professional events.

Flights, hotels, event tickets, sometimes traveling to another city just to meet a handful of people.

A few years ago, this wasn't something I saw happening at this scale within my circle.

I'm seeing people in IT services companies travel to conferences and industry meetups much more frequently. Even people who would otherwise describe themselves as introverts are making a conscious effort to meet more people in person.

And it's happening at different levels.

I've spoken to people at larger organizations with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets who are reconsidering how they allocate those budgets. In some cases, they're moving money away from paid digital channels and putting more into physical events.

That got me thinking.

I think we're looking at the emergence of an interesting new category of GTM service businesses. I'm calling it EventRel.

And I think there's a fairly strong economic and technological argument for why this category could become important over the next few years.

Being involved in GTM engineering gives me an interesting vantage point.

I'm part of a few closed communities where some of the brightest people in this industry share what they're building, what's working, what's breaking, and where they're shifting their attention.

Sometimes you get to see changes happening a month or more before they become visible to the broader market.

One thing that's becoming increasingly clear is how much of the advantage in outbound has been democratized.

Finding companies, scraping data, enriching contacts, researching people, identifying buying signals, generating personalized messages, and running campaigns.

A few years ago, putting together these systems required considerable investment and technical expertise.

Today, the barrier is much lower.

And naturally, when everyone can do something, being able to do it stops being much of a competitive advantage.

This has interesting implications for the economics of outbound.

Cold email is increasingly becoming a volume game. You need more infrastructure, more mailboxes, more campaigns, and more experimentation to maintain performance.

In some situations, even running Google Ads is starting to make more economic sense because you're reaching people who are already looking for something.

Cold email is slowly becoming a branding activity for certain businesses. You repeatedly put your name in front of the market, hoping to be remembered when someone has a need.

LinkedIn outbound has been gaining traction, but it's relatively expensive to scale.

And I doubt its current advantage will last indefinitely.

As automation becomes more accessible and more people enter the channel, either LinkedIn will become stricter about automation or the channel will gradually lose effectiveness through saturation.

Meanwhile, a significant portion of GTM infrastructure is becoming commoditized.

Large databases were once an enormous competitive advantage. Today, agencies running outbound at scale often have substantial data pools of their own.

Once you've mapped much of your TAM, repeatedly paying for access to the same records becomes difficult to justify. Fresh data and buying signals remain valuable, but simply having millions of contacts isn't as differentiated as it once was.

Cold email infrastructure is following a similar trajectory, with more providers competing over comparable capabilities and pricing.

I've also been noticing downward pressure on GTM engineering salaries across some agencies. I don't have enough data to establish an industry-wide trend, but it's something I keep observing that isn't being discussed much.

The economics of this space are changing.

And in many parts of the market, competition is increasingly coming down to price.

There's another issue I think we've created for ourselves.

For years, outbound agencies have been selling around a certain vocabulary.

15 meetings a month. 20 qualified meetings. Predictable pipeline.

And customers have naturally started evaluating outbound through those expectations.

But just because technology allows you to reach your entire addressable market in two months doesn't mean you can sell to your entire addressable market in two months.

There are buying cycles, existing relationships, budget constraints, internal priorities, and dozens of other factors.

Some businesses buying outbound services haven't figured out their ICP or product messaging properly.

Yet they expect an agency to generate a predetermined number of meetings every month.

So agencies face an interesting problem.

Their operational costs are real. Their services are becoming increasingly price-sensitive. And their customers expect outcomes that depend on several variables outside the agency's control.

Even acquiring customers at a loss becomes difficult to justify if those customers leave because their expectations aren't being met.

Cheaper outbound doesn't automatically make it a stickier service.

And I don't think sending even more emails is going to solve this indefinitely.

This is probably the part that interests me most.

Think about what establishing credibility on the internet required a few years ago.

A beautiful website required designers and developers.

Publishing consistent, well-designed content required writers, designers, and social media teams.

Building a functioning software product required considerable technical resources.

Today, much of this is becoming accessible to individuals.

I'm a fairly non-technical person by traditional standards, yet I've been able to build and operate GTM Daily as essentially a one-person organization.

It has a website, a jobs platform, publishing infrastructure, resources, a community, integrations, and agents handling a substantial part of its operations.

The infrastructure is working for me without requiring a team behind every activity.

And I'm certainly not the only person doing things like this.

That raises an interesting question.

What happens to online credibility when almost anyone can create the signals that previously required substantial investment?

A beautiful website no longer tells you much about how established a business is.

Consistent content doesn't necessarily mean there's a large team behind it.

A polished LinkedIn presence can be maintained with a surprisingly small amount of human involvement.

I'm not saying everyone can do these things well. Taste, expertise, and judgment will continue to matter.

But the cost of producing something that looks credible is falling dramatically.

And I suspect this will make it increasingly difficult for buyers to distinguish between genuinely capable businesses and businesses that are simply very good at presenting themselves.

Which brings me to something I've been thinking about.

A decision-maker might receive hundreds of emails in a day, including internal messages, notifications, newsletters, and sales pitches.

Even a well-researched email is competing against an enormous volume of information.

And we're already seeing technology emerge to filter that attention more aggressively.

Mimecast, for example, offers email security systems that can detect suspicious messages, spam, and unwanted emails. HEY takes a different approach by allowing users to screen first-time senders and decide whose emails can reach their inbox. I personally use AI assistants to filter out most of the emails and cater to priorities only. So much so, I open my inbox once in two weeks.

On the sending front, I've encountered increasingly restrictive email environments myself while running outbound over the last couple of years.

I think we're moving toward a world where simply being able to send a message to someone will mean progressively less.

And here's the funny part.

Claude might have an enormous context window, but human beings don't.

You can send someone 50 emails, publish 100 LinkedIn posts, and appear in their feed repeatedly. There's no guarantee they'll remember you.

But if you spend 20 minutes talking to someone at a conference, exchange ideas, have a laugh, and perhaps meet them again over dinner, there's a much better chance they'll remember that interaction.

Of course, meeting someone doesn't guarantee business.

But physical interactions operate at a scale that is still humanly comprehensible.

You might encounter 30 interesting people at an event. Have proper conversations with ten. Build meaningful relationships with three or four.

Those are numbers a person can actually remember.

And unlike sending an email, you cannot automate your physical presence in a hundred rooms simultaneously.

You still have to travel. Show up. Talk to people. Understand them.

You can use technology to prepare for those interactions and make them more valuable, but the interaction itself remains fundamentally human.

I think that constraint is going to become increasingly valuable.

As the ability to manufacture online presence becomes cheaper, genuine physical presence could become a stronger signal of credibility.

Some of my thinking comes from my own experience.

I've organized Clay Club meetups in Ahmedabad and participated in other professional gatherings.

And I've noticed how differently people engage when they meet in person.

People who might never respond to a LinkedIn message will spend an hour discussing their work with you.

Conversations continue after the event. People make introductions. They meet again. Sometimes, opportunities emerge months later.

I've also started noticing how deliberately people are approaching these events.

They're traveling across cities and countries, setting aside budgets, and putting themselves in environments where they can meet people relevant to their work.

This isn't limited to founders or senior executives.

I'm seeing it among younger professionals, people working in agencies, IT services businesses, independent consultants, and technical practitioners.

And when I speak to people working at larger organizations, I'm hearing a similar direction of travel.

Some companies are consciously reallocating parts of their digital marketing budgets toward in-person interactions.

There is broader evidence supporting the growing importance of events, although budgets aren't increasing everywhere.

Forrester's 2025 research found that 59% of B2B event teams planned to host more smaller events. Its 2026 research shows that companies remain budget-conscious, with many concentrating resources on fewer, better experiences.

Meanwhile, IDC's 2026 sponsor research found that over 90% of surveyed senior marketers saw the greatest value from events in the middle and later stages of the buying journey.

These findings are interesting because they suggest that events are being evaluated more seriously as a commercial activity.

And that's where I think the opportunity gets much bigger.

EventRel is the category of service businesses I envision managing the entire commercial journey around professional events, from deciding where to show up to turning the relationships built there into revenue.

Think of it as having an event-focused GTM team and a personal concierge working together.

The client might be a founder attending an industry conference, a software company sponsoring an event, an IT services business expanding into a new geography, or an organization looking to build its own community.

EventRel would own the entire process.

And I mean the entire process, including details that might sound surprisingly small.

Imagine you're a founder based in India planning to attend a conference in London.

You've spent money on flights, accommodation, tickets, and perhaps sponsorship.

But have you actually thought through what you want to achieve from the event?

Who should you meet?

Are those people attending?

Have you scheduled meetings with them?

Should you pursue a speaking opportunity?

Is the sponsorship package worth the money?

Does your presentation make sense for that particular audience?

What happens after the event?

For plenty of people, the answer to most of these questions is that they'll figure things out once they get there.

And this is exactly the problem I think EventRel should solve.

Here is how each stage plays out.

The work starts well before someone boards a flight.

An EventRel business could research relevant events across geographies, evaluate the audience, recommend where the client should participate, and develop a strategy for each event.

Not every event deserves the same level of investment.

Sometimes attending is enough. Sometimes sponsoring a small community meetup makes more sense than buying an expensive booth at a major conference.

Sometimes hosting a private dinner alongside an existing event could create more valuable conversations than the main conference itself.

Once the event is selected, the team starts preparing.

Many conferences have dedicated applications containing attendee lists, exhibitor information, and networking features.

Where access and permissions allow, that information can become part of the research process.

Identify relevant people. Understand their companies. Prioritize potential customers and partners. Send connection requests. Arrange introductions. Book meetings before the event starts.

The team could also research speaking opportunities, negotiate sponsorship packages, prepare event-specific presentations, develop relevant content, and plan activities to attract the right people.

And then there are the practical details.

Which area of the city should the client stay in?

Which hotel makes the most sense considering the venue, meeting locations, transport, and local conditions?

Are airport transfers arranged?

Is the Uber booked for the morning?

Does the client have their meeting schedule, contact information, research notes, and presentation material ready?

These things might sound trivial individually.

But if you're spending thousands of dollars to attend an event, losing a valuable meeting because of poor coordination is an unnecessary expense.

Take the hotel. Staying close to the venue saves time, but the closest option isn't always the best one. Sometimes the better choice is the hotel where half the attendees are staying, where the lobby bar quietly becomes the unofficial second conference. Someone who knows the event can tell you that. Someone reading a booking site can't.

Transport works the same way. If your meetings are spread across a city, ordering one ride at a time all week can be slow and unreliable. In some cities and for some schedules, it makes more sense to hire a driver and a car for the whole trip. An EventRel team can tell you when that's worth it, and arrange it.

And if you're sponsoring, there's the booth itself. Who builds it? Who prints the materials, and who handles the furniture, the screens, and the power? An EventRel business could vet and manage local vendors, so you're not making those calls from another country.

I think a proper EventRel service should take responsibility for these details too.

This is the white-glove part of the service. I think it's what separates a real EventRel partner from someone who just sends you a list of conferences.

There's something I've observed repeatedly.

A lot of people attend professional events as spectators.

They arrive, collect their badges, sit through presentations, walk around the exhibition area, speak to a few people, and leave.

They might come back with a handful of business cards and some photographs for LinkedIn.

But there was no real commercial strategy behind attending.

An EventRel operation should change that.

The client should already know which people they want to meet, which sessions matter, and which conversations they're trying to initiate.

There should be an organized schedule, briefing notes, and someone helping manage meetings and changes throughout the day.

There should also be help on the ground. Someone to set up the table or booth before the doors open and pack it down at the end. Local people who can translate when a conversation matters and language gets in the way. Someone who knows the city well enough to fix small problems quickly, whether it's a missed pickup or a dinner that needs a new venue at the last minute.

If the client is sponsoring, there needs to be a clear strategy for attracting relevant people and capturing leads.

If they're speaking, the presentation should be connected to what the audience cares about and what the business wants to achieve.

And if they're hosting a dinner or a private gathering, the guest list and the experience should be designed with an understanding of the relationships they want to build.

The aim is to make attending an event commercially purposeful.

This is probably where a lot of value gets lost.

People return home with dozens of contacts, a few promising conversations, and good intentions to follow up.

Then regular work takes over.

Two weeks later, half the conversations have been forgotten.

The follow-up shouldn't depend entirely on someone's memory or their ability to find time after traveling.

An EventRel business could capture meeting notes, organize contacts in the CRM, identify relevant next steps, prepare personalized follow-ups, coordinate introductions, and help convert promising conversations into actual opportunities.

It could also track which events, sponsorships, and communities are generating meaningful relationships and eventually pipeline.

That information becomes useful when deciding where to invest next.

And I think this is how the service starts compounding.

Over time, you're building an understanding of the client's market, their relationships, the communities they participate in, and the events that actually produce commercial value.

I don't see this category being limited to helping people travel to existing events.

In fact, I think owning or helping build communities could become one of its most interesting capabilities.

A company could run quarterly executive roundtables.

A software vendor could sponsor small practitioner meetups across different cities.

An IT services company could build relationships with regional technology communities.

A founder could organize recurring dinners for people in a particular industry.

And the EventRel business could manage the audience research, invitations, partnerships, promotion, operations, and ongoing engagement.

The same intelligence gathered through events could help companies understand which communities to participate in, which organizers to partner with, and which sponsorships are worth pursuing.

It also opens opportunities beyond the usual major technology hubs.

Someone attending events in San Francisco may already have a well-developed network and plenty of established service providers to choose from.

But consider businesses expanding into less familiar markets across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, or Europe.

They may have budgets to travel and participate, but limited local knowledge, relationships, or operational support.

Helping them navigate the local business environment, identify relevant gatherings, select suitable accommodation and meeting locations, and build connections before arriving can be extremely valuable.

There's a meaningful service business to be built around making these trips productive.

And technology can make the operational side much more efficient.

Outbound agencies exist because companies don't necessarily want to build entire prospecting operations internally.

Performance marketing agencies exist because running paid campaigns effectively requires specialized capabilities.

I think a similar business model could emerge around events and professional relationships.

Today, the relevant services are often scattered.

You have event organizers managing logistics.

Travel agencies handling arrangements.

Marketing teams preparing presentations and promotional materials.

Sales teams trying to book meetings.

Community managers building engagement.

And someone internally attempting to connect everything to pipeline.

But very few service businesses own the complete journey.

That's the gap I see for EventRel.

A company could retain an EventRel partner to manage its event participation and relationship development throughout the year.

The service could cover an annual event calendar, travel and concierge support, conference preparation, sponsorship decisions, audience intelligence, meeting generation, event-specific marketing, community partnerships, and post-event pipeline management.

For some clients, the focus would be on participating in existing events.

For others, it could be about hosting their own events and building communities.

And for larger organizations, it could become a coordinated event-led GTM program across multiple markets.

I also think the business could develop strong retention characteristics if executed well.

Every event helps the service provider understand the client's market better.

Every interaction adds context.

Every successful gathering expands the network.

Over time, the provider becomes familiar with the people, organizations, and communities that matter to the client's business.

That accumulated relationship intelligence could become a meaningful advantage.

Of course, this only works if the service is producing commercial value.

Events are expensive. Travel is expensive. People's time is expensive.

A badly executed event strategy can burn money just as easily as a poorly managed outbound campaign.

But that's precisely why I think there's room for specialists who understand both GTM and event operations.

I don't think cold email, LinkedIn outbound, paid advertising, or phone calls are going anywhere.

They'll continue to be part of B2B sales.

In fact, I think those channels will become important components of EventRel.

You still need outbound to invite people to an event. You might need paid advertising to promote a gathering. You need content to establish context before someone meets you.

The difference is what you're optimizing for.

Instead of trying to convert every interaction into an immediate sales meeting, you're building a system that consistently creates opportunities for people to meet, interact, remember each other, and eventually do business.

As more businesses gain access to similar data, software, automation, and content capabilities, I think the relative value of genuine human relationships will increase.

And physical presence is one of the few areas where technology still cannot simply multiply your reach without limits.

You can automate 10,000 personalized emails.

You cannot have 10,000 meaningful in-person conversations in a day.

There's a natural constraint to human interaction.

And I suspect that constraint will become increasingly important as everything around it continues to scale.

I see EventRel becoming a category of agencies and service businesses that help companies navigate this shift.

Some will specialize in conferences and executive events. Some will build industry communities. Others will manage cross-border event participation, private gatherings, sponsorships, and relationship-led pipeline development.

I'm already experimenting in parts of this space through the events and communities I've been involved with.

And it's a direction I personally want to spend more time building in.

My larger thesis is fairly simple: We spent the last decade making it easier to reach people. I think the next big opportunity is making it easier to meet the right people, build relationships, and turn those relationships into business.

That's the opportunity I see in EventRel.