Ahead of the 2025 US Hedgeweek® Funds of the Future Summit, Manas Pratap Singh, Head of Research, Hedgeweek® asks whether hedge fund conferences are worth the cost in 2025? Here’s what the data tells us.
As I prepare to host the 2025 US Hedgeweek® Funds of the Future Summit in New York on 9 October, I keep coming back to the same question. Between sorting visas, booking flights and coordinating with the event team, I can’t help wondering whether all this effort is still worth it. In our world of Zoom meetings and virtual panels, are in-person conferences really the best use of everyone’s time and money?
A conversation over drinks
The answer came during a conversation at our European event earlier this year. I’d been moderating an allocator panel where they were sharing insights about working with fund managers. They covered practical topics like communication preferences, due diligence processes, and what makes for effective presentations. One point that resonated with other allocators in the audience was their advice about timing: don’t send emails after 3pm on Friday because allocators need downtime too.
Afterwards, I found myself at the bar with two allocators who’d been in the audience. One runs a seeding business, the other allocates external capital for a major European institution. They were discussing how much they’d appreciated the panel’s candid insights when I asked them something I’d been curious about: given how much everyone wants their attention at these events, what do they actually get out of attending?
The seeder was quite direct about it. “I’m not really here for the presentations,” he said. “I’m here for this. Conversations where managers aren’t pitching me but just talking about what they’re working on. You get a much better sense of someone when they’re not in presentation mode.”
The other allocator agreed. “Some of my best allocations started exactly like this. Casual conversations where someone’s talking about their strategy because they’re genuinely excited about it, not because they’re trying to get a meeting. That kind of authenticity doesn’t come through in formal pitches.”
They told me that between them, they’d backed quite a few funds over the years, including several from launch. Some of those relationships began with unstructured conversations at our events rather than formal presentations.
The data behind networking in person
This anecdotal evidence is supported by academic research. Northwestern University researchers analysed over 12,000 potential collaborations across nine conferences, and their findings validate what event organisers have long suspected.
Participants who attended small breakout sessions together were seven times more likely to form lasting partnerships than those who only attended larger presentations.
The study also measured “connecting efficiency,” which tracks how effectively conferences introduce strangers to one another. In-person events connected 40% of previously unacquainted pairs, while virtual conferences managed only 22%. That represents nearly a two-to-one advantage for face-to-face interaction.
The informal networking deficit
The researchers identified a key factor explaining this difference. Virtual conferences, despite organisers’ best efforts to replicate informal networking through virtual coffee breaks and online social mixers, provided significantly fewer opportunities for unstructured interaction compared to in-person events.
In-person conferences naturally create multiple touchpoints for casual conversation: shared meals, coffee queues, evening receptions, and the simple act of walking between session rooms. Virtual events, by their nature, eliminate these incidental encounters. Participants join scheduled sessions and then typically disconnect, missing the spontaneous conversations that often prove most valuable.
This structural difference reveals an uncomfortable truth about our industry’s pandemic response: while we successfully digitised formal content, we inadvertently eliminated much of the informal interaction that drives long-term business relationships.
Why relationships matter in our industry
The implications for capital allocation are profound. In hedge funds and digital assets, relationships often precede investments by years. A casual conversation today might become a seed investment three years hence. If virtual events are severing these early connections, we’re creating a delayed but devastating impact on deal flow.
The researchers developed what they called a “nonlinear memory model,” academic speak for the fact that people remember others better after meaningful interaction. Their mathematical models consistently showed that both structured interaction time and informal proximity contributed to successful partnerships. In other words, those supposedly “unproductive” coffee breaks and evening drinks might be the most valuable part of any conference.
The alpha of being in the room
Hedge funds are inherently secretive and even more inherently clever. Whether it’s their strategy or their time, no one wants to invest in something without extracting maximum value from it. So what’s the alpha of actually being in the room?
The answer lies in information arbitrage. While everyone receives the same keynote presentations and panel discussions, the real edge comes from asymmetric access to informal intelligence. That casual mention of a strategy’s struggles. The offhand comment about regulatory changes brewing in Brussels. The frustrated sigh about prime brokerage costs that signals a fund’s real performance pressures.
This intelligence doesn’t flow through official channels or formal presentations. It emerges in those supposedly unproductive moments between sessions, over conversations over a glass of wine, during coffee queue small talk. The Northwestern research validates what sharp allocators already know: the most valuable information often comes wrapped in casual conversation.
I’ll see you in New York on 9 October. If you still haven’t registered, please find the link to do it here.
