Side Events at Startup Conferences: How Organisers Curate the Programme Around the Event

In the week of TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025, the organiser counted 25,000 attendees and more than 1,000 side events across the city (TOKEN2049 press release, October 2025). On paper, that is one side event for every 25 attendees. Faced with that volume, investors and founders need help finding relevant gatherings and fitting them around their conference meetings.

As a startup conference grows, partners and communities may organise breakfasts, dinners, pitch nights and parties around it. This guide explains how to build an official side-event programme: choosing a listing model, setting admission rules, maintaining a shared calendar, avoiding clashes with meetings and evaluating the results.

Treat approved side events as part of the attendee experience and coordinate them with the main programme.

What is a side event?

A side event is a gathering that a third party hosts during the week of a conference, usually outside the main venue and outside the main agenda. Partners, investors, corporates, embassies and community groups host them: investor breakfasts, founder dinners, pitch nights, workshops, parties. The conference sets the date and the audience. The host pays for and runs the evening.

Two categories matter for organisers. Official side events have applied to your programme, met your rules and appear in your app and calendar. Unofficial ones simply happen because your attendees are in town. Slush shows how the official tier can be layered. Next to its own Signature Side Events, it lists hundreds of partner and community events across Helsinki and in a Partner Side Event Wing at the venue, and it calls its separately registered Investor Day “the largest side-event for investors during the Slush week” (Slush FAQ, 2026).

Keep one distinction in mind. A networking reception or a gala dinner you organise yourself belongs to your own agenda. A side event is somebody else’s event that you choose to endorse. That difference shapes every rule below.

Why side events belong in your programme

Consider what a smaller, partner-hosted gathering can add to the conference. A 25-minute 1:1 between a founder and a fund partner is efficient, but it rarely builds trust on its own. The dinner the evening before, or the breakfast with eight founders from one sector, can give people time to get to know each other and identify a reason for a follow-up meeting. In our organiser’s playbook for investor meetings at a two-day conference, side-event coordination sits in the very first layer for that reason.

Side events can also support partner packages and a broader programme. They give partners a reason to buy a package, they give investors a reason to stay all week, and they serve niches your stage programme cannot reach. A climate fund that hosts a breakfast for 30 climate founders does curation work you would otherwise have to do yourself.

The risk is just as real. Every side event competes for the same scarce resource as your meeting programme: investor time. When a popular investor brunch runs from 10 am to 1 pm on day one, the investors at that brunch are not in your meeting area. Scheduling official events outside the meeting blocks helps attendees take part in both.

Three models for the official programme

So the question is not whether side events happen, but which of them you put your name on. Official programmes can grow large, and the published numbers show how much curation work that means.

The conferences we looked at use three models for their official tier, and many combine them.

Behind all three sits the open calendar of unofficial events, which remains outside your scheduling authority. Slush lists its side events on its own platform and on Luma and Eventbrite, which at least puts the official ones where attendees already look (Nordic Startup News, 2025).

Choose the model according to host demand, the value of the listing and the work needed to review applications. If hosts compete for a slot in your week, a paid tier funds the team that reviews them. If you still need hosts to make the week feel full, consider a free listing with clear selection criteria. The conferences in our overview of Europe’s best startup conferences span all three positions, from mega expos to small curated festivals.

The admission rules worth writing down

Whichever model you pick, the rules have to exist in writing before the first application arrives. Otherwise every decision becomes a negotiation with a partner. The published rules of Bits & Pretzels (2026) and TechCrunch Early Stage (2024) together suggest a short list of rules, and it makes a good starting point:

• Audience fit: state who the programme is for. TechCrunch prioritised events “focused on the early-stage startup/investor community”.
• Price for attendees: Bits & Pretzels requires side events to be “100% free” for its attendees. That rule stops hosts from reselling your audience.
• Time window: both conferences only allowed side events after 5 pm on main conference days. For your meeting programme, this is the rule that matters most.
• One event per host: Bits & Pretzels prioritises one event per host, which keeps large partners from flooding the calendar.
• Format and place: in person, in the host city, with a complete address. Virtual side events add little to a city week.
• Host responsibility: organisation, invitations, registration, insurance and costs sit with the host, and the application says so.
• Deadline: leave time for promotion. TechCrunch closed applications on 20 March and promoted approved events from 25 March, almost four weeks before its event week.

Add one rule that most published rules lack: the host commits to share registration and check-in numbers after the event. Agree which aggregate figures hosts will report and when, so the evaluation does not depend on a last-minute request.

One calendar, not five

Make the approved programme easy to find and compare. If listings are spread across your website, app, ticketing platforms and messaging groups, attendees have to piece together their own schedule. A primary calendar gives them a consistent place to check topics, times, locations and access requirements.

Pick one primary calendar and push everything official into it. Luma is common in startup weeks because its calendars support this exact workflow: hosts submit their own events, and “calendar admins review submissions and approve the events that belong in the program” (Luma Help Center, 2026). Tags for topics, audiences and formats let a fintech investor filter for fintech, and events with a complete address appear on a map. Mirror the approved list in your conference app, so attendees see side events next to their meeting schedule.

One detail matters for measurement. According to Luma, external events submitted from other platforms come without registration, check-in and guest management. If you want attendance data, ask hosts to register guests in a calendar you can read.

Protect the meeting slots

Side events can draw participants away from scheduled meetings if the times overlap. Give hosts clear windows for approved events and show those windows alongside the main programme.

Three rules keep both working:

1. Close the meeting hours. No official side events during your 1:1 blocks. Breakfasts end before the first slot; evening events start after the last one. The after-5-pm rule exists for this reason.
2. Use the edges of the week. Day 0 and the day after the conference are free space. Slush, for instance, runs a separately registered Day 0 for founders on 17 November 2026, the day before its two main days.
3. Turn side events into meeting feeders. A breakfast for 30 health-tech founders and eight investors is a curated pre-match. If both groups sit in your matchmaking pool, the follow-up 1:1 can be booked on the floor the next morning.

All three rules protect the same scarce calendars. Our guide to preventing investor overload shows how request caps protect those investors during the day as well.

Converve’s meeting matrix runs on time slots you define, with rules for who can meet whom and how many requests each investor receives. Keep the matchmaking windows inside the conference day, leave the evenings to the side-event programme, and the two stop competing for the same hour. See how this works for startup and investor events.

What hosts need from you

Protected slots only help if the evenings are worth attending. Give approved hosts practical support alongside the application requirements. Give them a short host guide with your rules, the audience profile, the calendar and the dates. Then add advice they can use, because a weak side event reflects on your conference too.

Two pieces of advice matter most for hosts who want investors in the room. First, timing: the event intelligence vendor Vendelux recommends sending invitations four to six weeks before a conference, because with less than three weeks “senior calendars are locked” (Vendelux, 2026). Second, invitation maths: Vendelux expects 50 to 70 per cent of invitees to attend an executive dinner, so a table for 12 needs around 20 invitations (vendor estimate, not a study). A small dinner with founders from one sector may suit an investor better than a large general party. Help hosts define whom they want to invite and why.

If a partner wants to run that dinner properly, our guide to executive dinners that turn into booked meetings covers the guest list and the follow-up that make the evening worth paying for.

How to measure the programme

Agree the reporting requirements with hosts before approving their events. Use aggregate data to assess reach, participation and coordination with the conference:

• Applications received and approved, by host type.
• Registrations and check-ins per event, from the shared calendar.
• Share of investors who attended at least one official side event.
• 1:1 meetings booked between people who met at the same side event.
• Clashes: official side events that ran during your meeting blocks.
• Host renewal: how many hosts apply again next year.

Follow-up meetings indicate how side events connect to the main programme, though a booking alone does not establish what caused it. Track timing clashes as well, and discuss both measures with hosts when planning the next edition. What investors themselves expect from the week is covered in why investors attend startup conferences.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a side event at a conference?

A side event is a gathering hosted by a third party during the week of a conference, usually outside the main venue and agenda. Typical formats are investor breakfasts, founder dinners, pitch nights, workshops and parties. The host pays for and runs it; the conference provides the audience and, for official side events, the listing.

What is the difference between official and unofficial side events?

Official side events have applied to the conference, follow its rules and appear in its calendar or app. Bits & Pretzels, for example, lists approved events on its website, in its event app and in attendee emails (2026). Unofficial side events use the conference week without approval, and the organiser has no say over their timing or audience.

Should organisers charge hosts for side events?

It depends on demand. Bits & Pretzels and TechCrunch list approved side events for free, and Bits & Pretzels also requires them to be free for attendees. London Tech Week charges business hosts for its fringe listing and lists non-profit events for free (2026). Charge when hosts compete for a place in your week; stay free while you still need hosts to fill it.

When should side events take place?

Outside your meeting blocks. Bits & Pretzels (2026) and TechCrunch Early Stage (2024) both only allowed side events after 5 pm on main conference days. Breakfasts that end before the first meeting slot, Day 0 and the day after the conference are the other safe windows.

How far ahead should a host invite investors to a side event?

Four to six weeks before the conference, according to the event intelligence vendor Vendelux (2026); with less than three weeks, senior calendars are usually full. Expect 50 to 70 per cent of invitees to attend an executive dinner (Vendelux vendor estimate) and size the invitation list accordingly.

How do you measure whether side events worked?

Track registrations and check-ins per event, the share of investors who attended at least one official side event, the 1:1 meetings booked between people who met at the same event, clashes with meeting blocks and how many hosts return next year. Check-in data requires hosts to register guests in a calendar the organiser can read.

Coordinate the side events with the conference programme

Choose a listing model that matches host demand and your team’s capacity. Publish clear selection and timing rules, maintain one primary calendar and agree the reporting requirements. This gives attendees a wider choice of gatherings while helping them keep their scheduled conference meetings.

If you want your matchmaking windows and your evening programme to work as one schedule, get in touch with Converve.