How to follow up after a networking event

Most networking produces nothing, and the reason is not the conversation. It is the twenty-four hours after it, when the context is still in your head and you do nothing with it. A mediocre conversation with a good follow-up beats a great conversation with none, reliably.

Write the note to yourself first

Before the message to them, write down what you learned. Not their job title — that is on their profile. The specific things: that they are deciding whether to move teams, that their daughter is applying to the same university yours is, that they mentioned a book. Two lines is plenty, and it takes thirty seconds while you are waiting for the train.

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that compounds. Six months from now, the note is the entire reason you can send a message that sounds like you remember them, because you will not.

The window

Send something within 48 hours. The specific number matters less than the principle: you are using the fact that they still remember you, which is a wasting asset. After a week, your message needs to re-establish who you are. After a month, it is a cold email with a shared memory attached.

If you miss the window, send it anyway. A late note is awkward for exactly one sentence and fine after that.

What to write when you have no reason to write

• Reference one specific thing from the conversation — not 'great to meet you', but the actual subject you talked about.
• Give something small if you have it: the article you mentioned, an introduction, the name of the tool you were describing. Give before asking, always.
• Keep it short enough that replying is easy. Three sentences invites a reply; six paragraphs invites a later.
• Say what you would like next only if you actually want it. A vague 'we should catch up' with no proposal is how threads die politely.

If you genuinely want nothing, that is a fine reason to send a short friendly note and nothing more. The point of the follow-up is to leave the relationship open, not to extract something from it.

Then decide whether this is a person you keep

Not everyone is. Of the twelve people you met, perhaps three are worth a place on a list you will look at again. Giving the other nine a cadence is how a reminder system becomes noise you ignore within a month.

For the three, pick an interval — six months is a sensible default for someone you met once and liked — and let the system raise them when it is time. The method is in how often should you keep in touch.

The second message is the one that counts

Anyone can send a follow-up. Almost nobody sends the one four months later that refers back to the thing the person was deciding, and asks how it went. That message is memorable precisely because it is rare, and it is only possible if you wrote the note in step one.

This is the entire argument for keeping a system at all. Not the first contact — the second. A.R.O exists to make that second message happen; the features page shows the mechanics, and the job search and founders pages cover what it looks like when the stakes are specific.