Making networking events feel less random 🎲
For anyone who’s ever left an event wishing they met the right people
Last week, I started a new series documenting the journey of building Disco, a more effective networking app for in-person events.
We also formed our first pilot partnership with York University, which helped validate the idea early on and gave us real-world feedback to shape our next steps.
What Disco is hoping to solve 🪩
As an introvert, I’ve always found networking events overwhelming. The awkward small talk, the frantic search for someone new to speak to, and the pile of business cards that I collect but never look back at.
As a product studio founder, I love meeting potential collaborators or clients, but there’s no good way to meet the right people at the right time during events. Most of the meaningful connections I’ve made at events happened completely by chance, and that always made me wonder:
What if meeting the right person at an event didn’t depend on luck? What if I knew who was coming to the event and what their goals were?
That’s exactly what Disco aims to solve. An app that connects people at in-person events based on their goals for attending. Users create profiles sharing what they’re looking for, whether that’s finding co-founders, landing clients, or learning from experts, so you can meet the right people at the right time. This will be super helpful for trade shows, conferences, hackathons, and even student events.
Behind the studio ✨
For the past two weeks, I’ve been building Disco with two friends. A small, scrappy team that believes in the idea as much as I do.
As I started sharing Disco more, demoing it at friends’ parties, at the Startup Open House event that recently took place in Toronto, and even to incubators, new ideas kept coming in, and the feedback was amazing.
The more I shared, the clearer the vision became. Every conversation helped me refine what matters most for our MVP and where we should focus next.
I used to be afraid of talking about my ideas in public and sharing work in progress. However, I soon realized that creating an app is just the beginning. There’s so much more than just the coding part.
Finding the right team members, setting a clear vision, getting partnerships, and staying disciplined to do the work day in and day out without going insane all matter in the building process.
Also, I have the best team! ♥
How did we land the pilot partnership?
Whoever said that we kill more dreams in our head than failure ever could was absolutely right. A lot of educational institutions, small businesses, and startups are genuinely open to helping others who are just getting started.
From day one, we were very intentional about getting a partnership before releasing the app. We didn’t want to assume what people wanted — we wanted them to test it out with their own hands.
Is this scary for us? Absolutely. But if we don’t try, we’ll never know.
I’ll be sharing weekly updates on building Disco, lessons learned, and behind-the-scenes progress. If you’re interested in trying Disco at your next event or have feedback to share, drop a comment — I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time 💙