Who you’ll meet there & what to expect:
- The roots of MWC are in telco but in recent years it’s expanded to pretty much anyone who relies on mobile technology for pretty much anything. Expect conversations on advertising, marketing, IoT, healthtech, fintech, all manner of commerce and just about any topic in between. This is also a good opportunity for M&A conversations so keep your eye out for corporate BD folks as well as investors scouting for their next unicorn.
- Manage your time: with more than 90,000 people in attendance your dance card is likely to be full. Try to keep all your meetings either in the conference venue or close by: you don’t want to waste time going back and forth if you don’t have to.
- Save at least 10% of your time for last-minute meetings. Lots of folks are flying in for a day or two and not registering for the conference. If there’s a former colleague or prospect you’ve been jonesing to get in front of it’s a good idea to ping them and see if they’ll be in town (if they’re based in EU chances are they’ll be there).
- Perfect your elevator pitch: with so many attendees, don’t expect that everyone knows your part of the industry in detail. Work out a short, generalist description of what your company does (e.g. ‘we help ad buyers target consumers in real-time’ vs. ‘we’re a DSP’) and stick to it; test it out on a friend who’s not in the industry till it makes sense to her.