“If you want to be in the right rooms, you have to put yourself there”

The results exceeded their expectations. Among hundreds of conversations, one contact made at the festival led to a recruitment assignment and ultimately a successful hire. Another developed into a partnership with Tartu Science Park.

We spoke with Sandra Raju and Tripod’s Senior Recruitment and Assessment Consultant Madis Bachmann about why sTARTUp Day can be worthwhile even for companies that don’t usually see startups as their target audience, how to get the most out of the event, and why simply having your logo on display at the festival isn’t enough.

How important was being at sTARTUp Day for finding new business opportunities?

Sandra: For us, it was about 90% exploring the potential. Our typical client today is a larger, more established company that has previously used external partners for recruitment or organisational development. So from the outset, we knew we weren’t going to sTARTUp Day to chase a particular client or an immediate sale.

More than anything, we wanted to be there and show people what we do. I’d say nine out of ten people who walked past our booth had never heard of Tripod before. But sTARTUp Day attracts people who want to learn, develop and grow their companies. If you take a four- or five-year view, it’s definitely a place where we want to be.

We went in with essentially no expectations. The fact that the festival brought us a recruitment assignment, as well as an assessment project with Tartu Science Park, was a huge bonus. We came away knowing we definitely wanted to return.

As a marketer, I’m a big believer in networking. If you want to be in the right rooms, you have to put yourself there. You can’t predict everything through KPIs and carefully mapped-out plans. Sometimes you simply have to try something and see what comes of it. For us, sTARTUp Day was exactly that kind of “let’s go for it and see what happens” experiment - and it turned into something genuinely valuable.

At the same time, you didn’t exactly arrive unprepared. What did you decide to focus on before sTARTUp Day?

Sandra: Tripod has three main areas of business: recruitment, rganisational development and research , and psychological testing and assessment. We knew recruitment services might still be too big an investment for many early-stage startups, so we didn’t actively promote them.

We saw an opportunity to help startups build their teams through psychological and cognitive ability testing. A major part of our everyday work is finding the right person–job fit, and for startups in particular, it’s important to understand what kinds of people a company needs at different stages of its development. It isn’t just about what someone can do. It’s also about who they are, what their personality is like and what their cognitive strengths are.

That’s also why we ran a workshop at the festival, led by Eliise Bergmann, on the importance of understanding yourself and your personality so that you don’t end up putting yourself - or other people - in the wrong role.

So we weren’t exactly winging it - we had a clear focus.

What about the sTARTUp Day environment made it so easy to meet new people?

Sandra: You’ve created a community and a mindset where people arrive already open to talking to others. It’s almost contagious, in a good way. You can walk up to someone’s booth, say “hey”, they say “hey” back, and suddenly you’re having a conversation.

There’s none of that awkward hierarchy you sometimes feel at conferences. Everyone somehow feels like they’re on the same level, and the environment itself encourages people to connect.

I barely made it away from our own booth, for example. There were constantly people there and so many interesting conversations going on. Next time, I definitely want to spend more time walking around myself.

Madis: The demo area helped us a great deal as well. We took turns being there, and even when we didn’t have time to walk around actively, people came to us.

We had a large, welcoming booth in a good location. Anyone interested could simply step inside and start talking to us.

Next time, I’d also like to set aside more time to visit other booths and talk to people.

One of the contacts you made at the festival turned into a real recruitment assignment. How did that happen?

Madis: Someone came up to us and more or less immediately said, “I’ve been looking for you. You’re exactly who I need.”

We started talking, and it turned out they were looking to hire someone. We discussed what they needed there at the festival, exchanged contact details, and I got in touch with them after sTARTUp Day.

Sometimes in situations like that, someone says there’s a need, but then other things get in the way and the project never actually gets started. This time, the need was real.

We got to work quickly, found the right person, and they have since started in their new role.

It was a very tangible example of someone coming to us at sTARTUp Day, finding exactly the contact they had been looking for, and that encounter turning into actual work.

And that wasn’t the only project that came out of the festival?

Sandra: No. The other concrete partnership was with Tartu Science Park, which had launched a new accelerator programme. Our psychologists and assessment consultants assess the founders taking part in the programme.

What’s interesting is that one of the projects came from an area we had deliberately gone to sTARTUp Day to showcase. In contrast, the other came from a part of Tripod’s business where we hadn’t expected the festival to generate anything.

What did the experience teach you about the value of attending events like this?

Sandra: For us, it isn’t really a sales project. It’s more about building the brand.

We want to be visible and show people what we do, so that entrepreneurs and founders know who Tripod is. If they eventually need help with recruitment, organisational development, candidate assessment or testing, we want Tripod to be a name they already know and remember.

We don’t want to be completely unfamiliar to them when that need arises. Our first sTARTUp Day alone did a lot to raise awareness of Tripod.

At the same time, a good location or an impressive booth isn’t enough. A great-looking stand and flashing lights will only get you so far - at sTARTUp Day or in business more generally. You have to give people something worthwhile.

Did sTARTUp Day change the way you think about attending conferences in the future?

Sandra: More than anything, it gave us the confidence to experiment with events aimed at audiences we hadn’t really focused on before. In the past, we’ve tended to attend conferences with a very specific focus, although we had already been thinking that we should branch out a little more.

sTARTUp Day reassured us that this is the right direction.

Madis: If we see potential in an area where we haven’t previously had a presence or presented what we do, I think we now have a little more confidence to give it a try and see whether there are any points of connection.

Sandra: It also made us want to look more closely at the startup ecosystem. For example, we see potential in working with venture capital funds and investors.

In recruitment, we spend every day looking for the right match between a person and a role. We look beyond the CV and try to understand whether a candidate is genuinely a good fit for both the role and the organisation’s culture. That kind of insight could also be valuable to an investor before they decide to invest in a company or a founder.

A founder can be charismatic and full of great ideas, but it gives you more confidence in their capabilities and in how strong the team is as a whole.

sTARTUp Day gave us confidence that this could be an area worth exploring further.

sTARTUp Day may have “startup” in its name, but the festival isn’t only for startups. What can an established company get out of it?

Madis: First of all, new connections. Companies of all sizes and from all kinds of industries use our services, but we simply hadn’t reached many people active in the startup space.

The festival allows you to take your message into an area you haven’t reached before.

Sandra: Sometimes it’s simply useful to get beyond your usual circles and see what other people are doing. You can learn a lot from that and come away with new ideas.

My own attitude is very much: why not? Why not give it a try and go for a day or two? Either you learn something, or it doesn’t work out - and if it doesn’t work out, you still learn something.

Our experience was so positive that we didn’t really see much downside.

A lot depends on the company’s own mindset: whether you focus only on what you’ve always done or allow yourself to think more broadly about what else might be possible.

What is the biggest mistake a company can make when coming to sTARTUp Day?

Sandra: From a company’s perspective, one of the biggest mistakes is sending people to the festival who don’t actually want to be there and are only attending because it’s part of their job.

If you’re sending your team, choose people who genuinely want to be there - people energised by the idea of going out, meeting people, and talking to them.

If someone is doing it reluctantly, the experience likely won’t be particularly good either. Afterwards, it’s very easy to say that sTARTUp Day was pointless and there was nothing to gain from it.

Madis: It’s also worth avoiding overly narrow assumptions about what the event will be like. Go in with an open mind, see who is there, what kinds of connections might emerge and what you can learn from the speakers.

Sandra: At the same time, you should still have some kind of plan. Think through your “why”: why are we going and what do we want to get out of it?

The goal can be very simple. Maybe you’re going there with an open mind to network, and you want to come away with, say, two new contacts.

At first, we even tried tracking how many people we spoke to. At some point, we completely lost count because there were simply so many. In the end, we wrote down “100+” and left it at that.

And I’d definitely recommend using Brella. You can connect with people and arrange meetings before the festival even begins.

At first, it can feel a little strange to put a meeting with a stranger in your calendar and then walk over to their booth to meet them. But once you’re there, you realise it’s completely normal. Plenty of people do it, and it’s an opportunity worth making full use of.

Tripod’s experience shows that not every conversation at sTARTUp Day has to be about finding your next client. Sometimes the value lies in entering a new community, seeing how your message resonates and building relationships with people whose needs may not emerge for years.

Then again, sometimes someone walks up to your booth and says straight away: “You’re exactly who I’ve been looking for.”

And sometimes, being in the right room is all it takes.