🏖️ From Speed Networking to On-Demand Matchmaking

If you’ve followed me from the beginning or attended past events, you know they started as either industry-specific or more general “speed networking” sessions. That was the format, but it was never the mission.

The mission has always been to close the time-to-opportunity gap.

With our last Founder × Investor session, I took it two steps further.

First, I paired two very specific audiences together. Founders and investors.
Second, I let them define their matches before the session by industry, stage, and check size.

The result?
People didn’t just get better matches. They could see everyone in the room and choose who they wanted to meet.

That was the shift.

Curating the room and setting filters is one thing. Giving people control over their experience is a completely different game.

And once you do that, locking in dates and hoping the right mix shows up stops making sense.

So we changed the model.

🏖️ The New Pool Model

Instead of forcing sessions onto a calendar, we organize people by intent.

1. Join the pool based on what you’re working toward.

2. Set filters. Industry, role, stage or whatever is relevant to that pool.

3. Pre-select who you want to meet. No guessing. No random matches.

4. Sessions trigger on demand. When a pool reaches 50 aligned people, a session opens.

If any of these are your goal, the pool will make it happen FASTER!
💸 Fundraising
💼 Hiring
🤝 Partnerships
🤑 Deal Flow
📚 Advisory/board
📈 Fractional/Work

👉 Join the pool (it’s free!)

🏖️ Memberships: Who Gets In (and When)

Being in the pool shows interest. Membership determines access.

As rooms form, members are notified first and invited before anyone else. Each room is capped so access and timing matter.

There are three ways to participate:

1) Access - For ongoing, low-commitment participation as sessions open.

2) Priority - Earlier invites, higher visibility, and more control over who you meet.

3) Sprint - For building pipeline and relationships FAST. Instead of 20 hours of chasing replies and 30-minute calls that go nowhere, you meet up to 20 people in a single hour through short, face-to-face 1:1s.

👉 Get signal quickly
👉 Shortlist opportunities that actually matter
👉 Leave knowing who’s worth following up with.

Same pool. Very different outcomes.

If you want to go into 2026 moving FASTER than everybody else, become a founding member and get 30% off!

💸 Funding it Differently

I’ve been bootstrapping BLKBOOK.

I do need to raise capital. But I’m not interested in becoming another founder who disappears for six months to fundraise the “traditional” way. And honestly, who would I be if I spent my time cold emailing investors on the same ineffective channels I’m actively trying to replace?

That would make zero sense.

The fastest way to fundraise isn’t more outreach. It’s getting the right investors to actually experience this.

They’ve already been to my sessions. They’ve seen how it works. The gap isn’t belief. It’s exposure to the right investors at the right moment.

That’s where memberships come in.

By supporting BLKBOOK through a membership, you’re not just buying access for yourself. You’re helping me put the right investors in the room so founders can raise faster and BLKBOOK can too.

This creates a flywheel:

• Founders get real face-to-face time with aligned investors

• Investors experience a better way to evaluate opportunities

• BLKBOOK builds momentum without chasing or spamming anyone

Just putting the right people in the same room and letting signal do the work.

This is how I fund the vision without compromising it.

😬 Not Ready? Here’s What You’re Choosing Instead

• Cold email: 1–3 response rates

• LinkedIn outreach: 2–5%, and failing fast with automation

• B2B ads: Costs up 50–100% in the last few years, with worse lead quality

• Organic reach: Down 40–60% unless you already have distribution

• Zoom Calls: Ghosted, misaligned, or end with “let’s circle back”

This isn’t bad execution. It’s saturation.

We’re in a scarcity environment. Attention is limited. Trust is harder to earn. And the more automated outreach becomes, the less effective it is.

As volume goes up, signal goes down.

Email doesn’t just perform worse. It makes decisions harder.

When someone reads an email, their brain has to do extra work.
• There’s no tone.
• No facial expression.
• No timing.
• No emotional context

That means higher cognitive load and more uncertainty. Research shows that when cognitive load goes up, decision-making slows and people default to delay.

That’s why inbox conversations drag on for weeks.

Face-to-face conversations flip this immediately.

In face-to-face conversations, the brain can assess confidence, intelligence, credibility, and intent almost instantly. Facial expressions, voice modulation, pacing, and reactions provide the cues humans evolved to use to build trust.

Neuroscience shows we form accurate judgments in minutes when those cues are present.

This isn’t preference. It’s biology.

Text forces the brain to guess.
Face-to-face lets the brain decide.

That’s why sitting on long email threads or 30-minute Zoom calls is such a waste of time. You’re spending weeks or hours just to get information your brain could have processed in five minutes.

This is Why BLKBOOK Exists

We’re building a platform around this reality.

Instead of fighting high friction, high cognitive load channels, you start with short, face-to-face conversations.

You get signal immediately.
You know who’s aligned.
You move.

Mic drop:
If cold outreach worked, you wouldn’t need volume, automation, ads, and 30-minute calls just to get a conversation.

 👀 The Vision for BLKBOOK

The bigger picture.

I’m not building events. And I’m not building a better way to cold message people.

I’m building a system that understands who you know, what you’re trying to do, and when it actually makes sense to talk to someone.

Right now, opportunities are chaotic. You’re either chasing people, guessing timing, or hoping the right intro magically shows up. Most of your network is sitting there untapped, not because it’s useless, but because there’s no structure around when to activate it.

BLKBOOK starts by putting you in rooms with the right people, face-to-face, when intent is clear.

But over time, this becomes something bigger.

A place where your goals drive who you’re surfaced to. Where conversations create signal. Where follow-ups aren’t a guessing game because you already know who’s worth your time.

Instead of blasting messages and waiting, the system learns what works, what doesn’t, and who actually moves things forward for you.

Everything we’re launching right now is the foundation for that.

How I Can Help You Grow 🚀

1. Hire me as your Fractional CMO. Not only can I help develop your growth strategy, align marketing and sales teams, and develop customer journey maps, I can also create and execute high-impact campaigns, audit your tech stack and make sure you’re leveraging the right data to measure success.

2. Generate Leads through BLKBOOK Events. When you sponsor an industry-specific virtual speed networking event, I handle the outreach and set up targeted campaigns to get your ideal customers to show up. Then, you can hand-pick who you want to meet face-to-face with.

3. Hire me as your Virtual Event Consultant. From a small half day summit to a full 5 day conference, I’ve organized, managed and produced a variety of virtual events. I can help with sourcing speakers, running tech checks, marketing and even hiring additional production assistants.

Interested in working together? Let’s connect!👇

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