Jason M. LemkinBuilt SaaStr conference drawing thousands of SaaS executives

“$30k for 400 scans is $75 each, and if they're students and vendors you didn't fail at follow-up, you failed at selection. I would have either not done that show, or treated the booth as a billboard and spent the real energy on 20 pre-booked prospect meetings and a customer dinner.”

Julius SolarisSold Showthemes, 6,000 customers

“I've seen this exact waste at a 10,000-person Silicon Valley show: $75K booths staffed by people staring at laptops while the wrong badge scans pile up.”

Rob RozickiDelivered 30K+ registrants and 1,000+ attendees at tech conferences

“I spent years chasing badge scans and it never moved the needle. Now we qualify hard before the show, run a demo people can actually use, and walk away with prospects who already proved they fit.”

Jeff ReekersLed marketing at Aircall through $120M raise

“I learned this the hard way at Aircall: a packed booth and hundreds of scans feels like success, but it's mostly vanity if you don't control who shows up. We started treating events as account-based plays, pre-booking meetings with named target accounts and using the booth as a destination, not a fishing net.”

Alison RubinoScaled event sponsorship revenue to $10M across major tech conferences

“That $30k bought you a list, not a pipeline: 400 scans means nothing if the show floor isn't pre-qualified and your booth isn't a filter. I see sponsors at Cisco Live and the shows I work treat badge scans as a lagging metric; the real work is who you attracted and what you did to repel the rest.”

Fernando CarielloNew Business at DYBO

“I stopped judging SaaStr by badge scans years ago; the real ROI was the six founder dinners and two term-sheet conversations that happened in the hallways. A $30k booth is a billboard, not a funnel, unless you own the agenda around it.”

Franco CaporaleFounder & CEO of SaaSMQL

“I would have walked out of that show asking why we paid $30K to scan badges instead of pre-booking meetings with a named account list. At Branch we treated big conferences as accelerators for deals we already had in motion, not fishing ponds.”

Duston HarperFractional Head of Growth at TradeCraft Clinical Research

“$30,000 for 400 badge scans is $75 per contact, and most of them can't buy anything. I learned this standing in booths that looked busy but produced nothing: activity isn't a deal, and a scan isn't a lead. Next time, book the meetings before you fly, or don't buy the booth.”

Josh WetzelStrategic CRO & GTM Leader Driving SaaS Growth

“I’ve run a lot of big-booth plays, and the $30K number is less painful than the 400 scans that don’t convert. I’d stop measuring badge scans and start measuring pre-booked ICP meetings and pipeline sourced from the show floor.”