# What event attendees say would make networking more useful

> 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....

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Last updated: 2026-11-05

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.

## Sources

- [Freeman, 2025 Networking Trends Report (PDF)](https://www.freeman.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Freeman-Trends-Report-Summer-2025-Networking.pdf)

## Related

- [All research](https://propel.earth/research)
- [Events](https://propel.earth/events)