What is an ICP at a networking event?

ICP is short for Ideal Customer Profile. In B2B sales it's the company you sell best to, defined by industry, headcount, revenue, tech stack, and buying signals. Reps build it once, ship it into a tool like Apollo, and let outbound do the rest.

A Luma event flips that on its head. You aren't shipping a list. You're standing in a room with 200 people for three hours. The question stops being "who fits my ICP at a 30,000-foot view" and becomes much narrower: who, of the people who are physically here tonight, is worth the next 20 minutes of my life?

Why the definition shifts at an event

A traditional ICP optimises for repeatable outbound. An event ICP optimises for one evening. Three things change:

1. Scope collapses to the guest list. Your universe is no longer "every SaaS company in the US with 50-500 employees." It's the 200 humans in this room. Half of them won't fit any reasonable filter. The other half includes people you would never have surfaced with cold outbound.
2. Role matters more than firmographics. Walking up to a senior IC is a different conversation than walking up to a VP. Your event ICP needs to encode who you want to talk to, not just what company they work at.
3. Goal compresses to one sentence. "Find a Series A B2B SaaS investor who has led a deal in the last 18 months." That's an event ICP. Anything longer and you'll be searching the room instead of talking to people.

How to write an event ICP in 30 seconds

Use this template the night before the event:

Tonight I'm looking for [role] at [company stage / category] who has [one specific signal], because [why this conversation tonight].

Examples that pass the test:

• Senior product manager at a 50-200 person B2B SaaS that has shipped a usage-based pricing migration, because we're six weeks from doing the same thing.
• Pre-seed or seed B2B founder solving developer tooling, because the angel I want to meet only writes checks once a portfolio company introduces.
• Engineering lead at a YC W24-S25 company hiring senior backend, because I'm 3 weeks out from leaving my current role.

Examples that fail (too vague to use against a list):

• Investors. (Which kind. Writing what check size. At what stage.)
• SaaS founders. (Out of 200 attendees, 80 fit this. You don't have time for 80 conversations.)
• People who could help with growth. (No filter. The room will pick for you.)

Event ICP vs sales ICP, side by side

How FindMyICP turns this into a Top 5

When you tell FindMyICP your event ICP as a single sentence, it reads every enriched attendee profile from the Luma guest list and ranks the room against your goal. Output is a Top 5 with one-line explanations - the person, why they fit, and the angle for opening the conversation. You can still see the full sortable list. The Top 5 is the first 30 minutes of your event, decided before you walk in.

If you've never written an event ICP before, the template above is the only thing you need. Write it the night before. Refine it 4 hours before the event. Use it to pick the five people who matter.