What event attendees say would make networking more useful
Freeman 2025 Networking Trends Report, 2,326 attendees
In a July 2025 survey by the events company Freeman, attendees most often said they wanted to know which experts would be there (43%), to connect with targeted participants before the event (42%) and to get curated meetup recommendations (40%). Another 34% said networking can feel too salesy. These are stated preferences from professional-event attendees, not evidence that any of these changes works.
Summary of external research. Networking Syndicated Survey, July 2025. Reviewed 2026-11-05.
Propel Earth runs events and makes introductions, so it has a commercial interest in the topics below. We summarise other people's research; we did not run it, and nothing here shows that Propel causes any outcome.
What it found
- 43% of attendees said understanding which experts will be available would improve networking.
- 42% wanted the ability to connect with targeted participants before arriving.
- 40% wanted curated meetup recommendations.
- 34% of attendees said networking feels too salesy.
Method and source
- Publisher: Freeman, Networking Trends Report, Summer 2025 (80 pages). The figures above come from the attendee questions on pages 27 and 38.
- The survey reports 4,114 respondents: 2,326 attendees, 1,581 exhibitors and 207 organizers. Freeman reports margins of error of 2.0% for attendees, 2.5% for exhibitors and 6.7% for organizers.
- We quote attendee figures only. Exhibitor and organizer answers differ and are not used here.
Limitations
- The respondents are conference and trade-show attendees, not founders or startup communities.
- Freeman is an events-industry business with its own commercial interests.
- We could not establish recruitment, weighting or how many people answered each individual question, so we do not call the sample representative.
- The survey records preferences. It did not test whether any suggested change produces useful connections or business results.
Questions
Do networking events fail?
This survey does not measure that. It asks what attendees would like improved.
Are these founders?
No. They are professional-event attendees in general.
Did Propel run this survey?
No. Freeman did. Propel only summarises its published figures.