When Chris Meade launched his last startup, CROSSNET, a backyard-game maker, he grew frustrated with professional networking events. He was spending ever more time on his laptop and phone but, when he occasionally broke away to attend conferences and events, found them stale and lacking in opportunities for genuine connection. 

“I felt only the sponsors were showing up,” he recalls. “The founders, the members, the people you were excited to meet, they weren’t there.” 

He spied opportunity. When he met Aaron Spivak, who built and exited the weighted blanket company Hush Blankets, at a Forbes 30 Under 30 event, they set out to build a better alternative. 

They started The Founders Club, a Miami-based community targeting high achieving young entrepreneurs who own businesses generating revenue in the seven- to nine-figure range. Members, who must apply and pay $9,500 a year to belong, get together regularly for dinners, activities like cold plunging or a recent field trip to a sauna and bathhouse in Toronto, and wellness days and retreats around the U.S. and beyond. Many of the events are wellness-focused, with no alcohol served.

“I knew we had to flip it on its head because these people still wanted to meet, but they had to do it in a fun, cool way,” he says. “Our mantra is: If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing.” 

That was in 2023. Today, they have 1,700 members. Meade has since exited CROSSNET and devoted himself full-time to The Founders Club.

Meade and Spivak are not alone in betting on the return of in-person networking, or in finding that bringing everyone under one roof can be a powerful catalyst for connection. As professionals look to expand career opportunities in a post-pandemic, AI-disrupted landscape and business owners look for new connections to grow their businesses, old-fashioned schmoozing has fresh appeal.

That’s not to mention a widespread desire to escape the loneliness epidemic, which the World Health Organization has called a global concern. Clyx, an app that promises “meet friends IRL—not just online” to those who download it, brings together young professionals in big cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, to get to know each other at group activities like making pottery or taking a yoga class.

Against this backdrop, the approximately $66 billion professional networking market is projected to grow to more than $201 billion by 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence, a market research firm. A rising number of attendees see that there’s tremendous ROI. A recent survey by the events management platform Bizzabo found that the percentage of industry professionals and business leaders who consider networking “somewhat effective” rose to 60% in 2026, up from 36% last year. 

“It’s hard to go against what humans want to do, and that’s to be together in person — to shake hands, to smile, to see each other,” says Ramon Ray, founder of ZoneofGenius.com, which hosts curated discussions in New York City, and a keynote speaker. “That’s never going to go away. So, I think because of that, definitely in-person events are here, and they’re only going to increase.”

People-centric conference schedules

With many people eager to return to traditional networking, meeting organizers are changing up their agendas and meeting design to keep them happy, according to James Taylor, a keynote speaker based in London in the U.K., and author of the recent book Supercreativity: Accelerating Innovation in an Age of Artificial Intelligence. He spends much of the year traveling the world to speak at business conferences.

“I’m seeing more time being given over to networking in the schedules,” he says. “This is not just large public events but also internal events where maybe there are new people in the organization. If I think about what the purpose of a conference or event is, it’s really about building culture and collaboration. I don’t think it’s as much about content anymore. We can get content online. Everything else can be faked today, but you can’t fake the experience of having a conversation one-on-one with someone.”

Curated networking

Some organizers are leaning into the trend by scaling down meeting size and offering more intentional networking at smaller events. The goal is to bring the kind of meaningful conversations the attendees want, according to Taylor, the keynote speaker. “I just spoke at one event in Monaco, and it was 20 billionaires,” Taylor recalls. “Having a conversation together in that way is different from putting them in a room with 1,000 people all networking together.” 

Eager to make the most of these curated groups, meeting venues and restaurants are proactively reaching out to organizers. Meade, at The Founders Club, has found that trendy restaurants are willing to host his groups at a discount or for free to introduce their venues to the affluent business owners who belong. “Our members are more than likely to come back and host business meetings and business dinners,” he says. 

Seeding conversations

Some organizers are actively trying to foster connections ahead of time by introducing attendees ahead of time. Ray, at ZoneofGenius.com, points to Social Media Marketing World, where at the roundtable sessions, attendees can locate each other thanks to signs along the lines of, “If you want to talk about AI, sit at this table.” 

“The bigger events and more intentional events are looking at what they can do to maximize the attendee experience and let them know who is there, so people can connect across disciplines,” he says. 

He gets permission from attendees at his own events to post on LinkedIn that they have signed up, so others following the event’s hashtag can reach out in advance. He knows that many are there for the mingling above all. 

“You cannot force people to stay inside and listen to what’s happening on stage,” he says. “People want to network, so the hallway connections oftentimes are just as important as what’s happening on stage.” In the end, it’s all about human connection.