How to research a Luma attendee list in 30 minutes

Most people glance at a Luma attendee list for 30 seconds and decide they've done their homework. The actual research process - the kind that gives you a defensible Top 5 going in - takes 30 minutes. Below is the exact loop. Run it the night before any event you care about.

Why 30 minutes, not 5 or 90

Five minutes is a glance. You walk away with a vague sense of who's coming and forget half of it by morning. 90 minutes is over-prep - the marginal value of researching attendee 30 is near zero when most evenings are decided by the first 5 conversations. 30 minutes is the sweet spot: enough time to read 200 names, score against a goal, and prep five openers.

Step 1 (5 min): write your event ICP

Before opening the list, decide what you came for. One sentence. If you can't finish "Tonight I'm looking for ____ because ____," you're not ready to scan a list - you'll get pattern-matched into whatever the room's vibe is.

Skip this step and the next 25 minutes generate nothing usable. Don't skip it.

Step 2 (10 min): triage the full list

Open the Luma attendee list. Scroll once, top to bottom, marking names into three buckets:

• Obvious yes. Their title or company is a direct ICP match. Star them.
• Maybe. They could fit, but you need to look at LinkedIn before you know. Tag them.
• Skip. Clearly not your goal tonight. Don't spend more cycles on them.

You're aiming for roughly 8-12 names in the obvious-yes bucket plus 10-15 maybes. If your obvious bucket is over 25, your ICP is too broad - tighten it.

Step 3 (10 min): enrich the maybes

Open LinkedIn. For each maybe, spend 60 seconds finding their current role and one recent signal (a post, a launch, a new job). Promote them to yes or demote them to skip. You should end this step with a clean shortlist of 10-15 confirmed yeses.

If you're doing this manually, expect this step to bleed past 10 minutes for the first few events. By the third, you'll be at 8 minutes. By the fifth, you'll have skipped it entirely - because tools like FindMyICP do the enrichment in 10 seconds, returning current titles, companies, and LinkedIn URLs for the entire list at once. That's when the 30 minutes becomes 8.

Step 4 (5 min): pick your Top 5 and draft openers

From your 10-15 yeses, pick 5. The selection criteria, in priority order:

1. Closest fit to tonight's ICP. Not lifetime fit. Tonight.
2. Likely to actually show up. If they're "Maybe" on the RSVP, drop them.
3. Specific recent signal you can open on. A post they wrote, a deal they led, a hire they made.

For each of your five, write a one-line opener referencing the signal. Save them in your notes. You'll forget the specifics by 7pm otherwise.

What 30 minutes of prep buys you

You walk in with five names, five faces (from LinkedIn photos), five reasons to start a conversation, and an exit hatch when a low-value conversation runs long ("I want to make sure I catch _____ before they leave - mind if I find you again later?"). That's the entire game. The 30 minutes isn't about being thorough. It's about replacing a lottery with a list.