Work sample · Platform & Marketing · March Capital

The 2027 Montgomery Summit:
an outreach plan for the corporate strategics who anchor the room

Targeting logic with 54 named, sourced organizations · a campaign calendar keyed to the registration clock · segmented outreach materials with a working personalization demo · a measurement system that tracks revenue pacing and room quality week by week.

01

Why strategics: the "right mix" argument

The Summit's three audiences pay in different currencies. The ~120 spotlight founders pay in content: they are the curated product on display. Investors pay cash for early access to that product. Corporate strategics, meaning corporate development leaders, corporate venture investors, chief strategy and innovation officers, and senior technology buyers, pay the most and are the hardest seats to earn. Founders and investors have a direct financial reason to attend. A corporate development SVP has fifty conferences competing for her time and a less obvious return, so her seat has to be sold. Strategics are the anchor tenants of the room. Their presence is a large part of what founders come to meet and what investors come to read. Targeting one segment is also a direct answer to the posting's "right mix" goal, because the mix is limited by its scarcest group. Fill the constraint and the rest of the mix follows.

350
Strategic-seat registration goal (illustrative: ~29% of a 1,200-person room)
$1.03M
Gross registration revenue at goal, at a $2,950 blend of published 2026 rates
1.15x
Modeled pipeline coverage of the net-new goal. Every assumption is editable in the workbook
3×
Ways this segment pays: registrations, the sponsorship/partnership pipeline, and enterprise pipeline for the portfolio
The deeper mechanic: protect the order book

A 1:1 meeting request from a decision-maker is believable because it is expensive for the person requesting it: the ticket costs about $3,000, the two days spend an executive's scarcest resource, and the request itself reveals real buying, partnership, or M&A interest. The Summit's own rules protect that believability by gating seniority: junior professionals in the Rising VC program can attend the programming, but they cannot use the meeting and messaging layer.

The goal of outreach in this segment is therefore to add decision-makers whose meeting activity carries real information. Adding volume without authority would weaken the thing the room sells.

Segment definition used throughout: corporate development and M&A leaders, corporate venture and strategic-investment partners, chief strategy, innovation, and digital officers, and senior technology buyers at the CIO, CISO, and CTO level of large enterprises. This matches the FAQ's "corporate executives" and "C-suite" categories. It excludes service providers, who are priced separately, and junior staff, whom the Summit gates by design.

02

Targeting logic: four pools, one scoring model

Every organization below is anchored to public evidence that can be checked, with no guessed names and no invented programs. The four sourcing pools each answer a different question about why an organization belongs in this specific room. Individual people are deliberately left out in favor of role targets, because people change jobs and the seat at the company is the durable target. The first action in the role would be to reconcile this list against the CRM and add the lapsed-attendee reactivation pool that public data cannot show.

A
Proven acquirers. All 7 publicly recorded acquisitions of March portfolio companies, traced to the companies that own those assets today, including Arista via VeloCloud and PAR Technology via Bridg
6 orgs · first-look logic
B
Portfolio customers. Enterprises publicly named in portfolio-company case studies, such as JPMorgan (Unqork), Salesforce (Together AI), and Maersk (Altana)
15 orgs · proven buyers
C
Active CVCs. Corporate venture programs verified as active in 2024 through 2026. Programs that shut down or spun out, like SAP.iO and Samsung Next, were filtered out
16 orgs · repeat players
D
SoCal anchors. Companies with verified corporate development, ventures, or innovation teams within driving distance of the Fairmont, which removes all travel friction
17 orgs · hometown edge

The scoring model

Each organization is scored 1–5 on three dimensions and tiered by the weighted composite score. The weights and thresholds are editable inputs in the companion workbook, so the whole list re-tiers when the team's judgment differs from mine. In places it should, and that is what the model is for.

Fit · 40%

How closely the organization's buying and investing areas overlap with what the 2027 room is selling: March's enterprise AI, data infrastructure, cybersecurity, fintech, and health and science AI portfolios. An organization that is a named customer of a portfolio company scores a 5 by definition, because the fit is already proven.

Intent · 35%

Evidence that the organization is actively buying, investing, or building in the areas the Summit covers. Only actions that cost the organization real money or time are counted: a closed acquisition, a new fund, a named deployment of a portfolio company's product, or active hiring for the function. Actions like these prove the interest is real in a way that press quotes cannot. Signals are limited to 2024 through 2026 and each one carries a date and a source, because interest fades.

Authority · 25%

Whether the target seat controls budget, partnership, or M&A decisions, and how realistically we can reach that seat through geography, alumni ties, or portfolio relationships. A seat that can only influence decisions scores low on purpose, because a meeting booked by someone without authority adds noise to the signal the room produces.

The seed list: 54 organizations, 60 target seats

Filter by pool or tier. Tier assignment: composite ≥ 4.2 → Tier 1 (white-glove: Partner-signed note + VP follow-up) · ≥ 3.5 → Tier 2 (high-touch personalized sequence) · below → Tier 3 (scaled segmented campaign + Sales Navigator). Full sourcing detail lives in the workbook.

OrganizationPoolSectorTarget seat(s)Why this room · 2024–26 signalScoreTier

Considered and excluded, with reasons

Showing what was cut, and why, is part of list hygiene:

Broadcom · Divesting, and its deals start in the tens of billions. The live target on the VeloCloud thread is Arista, which bought that business in 2025.
Glean · A Nile customer, but it is an AI-native unicorn and belongs in the founder segment.
Rakuten · Acquired Deep Forest Media in 2015, but has since divested US adtech and now focuses on Japan.
SAP.iO · Wound down, so there is no longer a program to invite.
Cardlytics · Sold the Bridg assets to PAR Technology in March 2026, so PAR replaces it on the list.
Samsung Next · Downsized. Samsung Catalyst Fund is now the right door into Samsung.
03

Campaign calendar: six months on the registration clock

Registration for 2027 opens September 2026 and doors open March 9–10, 2027. The published price tiers give the campaign built-in urgency, because every phase below ends at a real deadline. The structure mirrors the published 2026 rates: $2,795 early, then $2,995 general, then $3,195 late.

The white-glove motion (Tiers 1–2 · 33 orgs)

  • Partner-signed notes, drafted by Platform. I prepare a research brief and a five-sentence, sector-specific draft for each target. The Investment Partner edits and sends it, so the outreach supports the Partner's relationship instead of substituting for it.
  • VP follow-up with the concrete offer: a draft two-day meeting plan built around their buying areas.
  • An escalation list generated automatically each Monday from open threads, starting two weeks before every price deadline.

The scaled motion (Tier 3 + 2,000-contact lookalike list)

  • Mailchimp segmented sequences by vertical (cybersecurity, AI and data, fintech, SoCal). Each vertical shares one skeleton email with swapped proof blocks; the working demo is in section 4.
  • LinkedIn Sales Navigator: saved searches per vertical role-set; connection → value note → invite. Plus the org-page "invite to follow" motion, run weekly against the same lists.
  • Referral engine: every registered strategic gets one ask: "Who on your team, or in your peer set, should be in this room?" The model assumes a 20% yield, and the workbook lets the team adjust that against actuals.
  • Paid support: LinkedIn matched audiences built from this target list, plus retargeting of Summit-site visitors on LinkedIn and Meta. Spend stays modest, is measured in the same funnel, and supports the engagement assumptions in the pipeline model rather than being counted as a separate registration channel.
186
Renewals modeled: 300 prior-year strategics at a 62% rebook rate. Renewal outreach starts in summer, before registration opens
27
White-glove registrations modeled from the 60-seat seed list
43
Referral registrations modeled, at a 20% yield on renewals plus white-glove
64 + 55
Scaled outbound plus organic registrations modeled, bringing modeled net-new to 189 against a net-new goal of 164

Every number above is a labeled, editable assumption in the workbook's Pipeline Math sheet. The value is the machine itself: replace any assumption with a CRM actual and the coverage math updates. The weekly goal curve and actuals template are in the Weekly Pacing sheet.

Who builds this: the execution stack

A plan is only as strong as the team's ability to ship it. Each component of this plan maps to a tool I already use and to work I have already shipped, so executing it requires no agency and no additional hire:

Plan componentHow it shipsProof from work I run today
Segmented email sequencesCustom-coded, mobile-tested HTML templates with merge blocks per vertical, built in Mailchimp or Klaviyo.I build In-service's marketing and transactional emails as custom HTML today.
Behavioral triggersScripts that watch Summit-site behavior and advance a contact's sequence, or flag the account for white-glove follow-up, when a target account shows buying signals.I write the scripts that connect site behavior to email and task automation for In-service's store.
AnalyticsGA4 with registration-funnel events, source attribution, and audience building, with every campaign link UTM-tagged.I run GA4 for In-service, including a monthly order-attribution analysis.
Paid mediaLinkedIn matched audiences uploaded from the target list, plus LinkedIn and Meta retargeting of site visitors, measured against the same funnel.I run Meta and LinkedIn campaigns for In-service under the same measurement discipline.
Landing pages & micrositesPer-vertical landing pages whose proof blocks match the email that drove the click, so the story never breaks between channels.I ship production pages and client microsites today (Next.js on Vercel, plus Shopify theme code). This plan's microsite is itself a sample.
AI search visibilityEntity and structured-data work plus citable coverage, so AI assistants recommend the Summit. Detail in the callout below.I run a 90-day AI-search program for In-service, with a KPI tracker and monthly re-audits. It has already led to orders placed by customers who found us through AI services such as ChatGPT.
Revenue & pipeline modelingThe pipeline math, coverage model, and weekly pacing template in the companion workbook.I built the AI-powered financial-analysis platform a business-advisory nonprofit uses for loan readiness, P&L reconstruction, and projections, and I hold an MBA in finance.
A channel worth testing:
AI search

When a corporate development executive asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity which technology conferences are worth attending in 2027, the Summit should be part of the answer. The inputs are classic SEO discipline aimed at a new target: consistent entity descriptions of the Summit across the web, structured data on the site, and citable third-party coverage that assistants can quote.

Measurement in this channel is still early everywhere, so I would run it as a test: track AI-referred sessions in GA4, watch branded search lift, and spot-check the major assistants monthly using the questions a strategic would actually ask. I run this exact playbook for In-service today, and it has already led to orders placed by customers who found us through AI services such as ChatGPT. The Summit version starts from a working checklist rather than a blank page.

The Getty Villa · welcome reception · March 9, 2027
04

Outreach materials: one skeleton, four verticals

Segmentation only works if it is cheap to run, so everything below shares one skeleton with swappable proof blocks. In production these ship as custom-coded, mobile-tested HTML templates that I build in-house in Mailchimp or Klaviyo, with merge blocks keyed to a CRM vertical field, so design capacity is never the bottleneck. On this page they are live. Pick a buyer and watch the sequence re-render:

The partner note: the white-glove Tier 1 template

Drafted by Platform for each target with a research brief attached, then sent from the Investment Partner who owns the relationship. It is kept to five sentences and written to read like a personal note rather than a campaign.

Newsletter block for Monty Summit Updates

Who's in the room: the strategics edition. Every March, the fastest sourcing week in enterprise technology happens in Santa Monica. The room includes corporate development teams from companies that have acquired March Capital portfolio businesses, corporate venture partners deploying billion-dollar AI funds, and executives whose companies appear by name in our portfolio's customer stories.

They come for the same reason founders and investors do: 1,200 senior people, 120+ hand-picked companies, and a meeting app that turns two days into a quarter's worth of qualified pipeline. Big enough to network, small enough to connect.

Registration for March 9–10, 2027 is open, with early rates through November 1. Request an invitation →

LinkedIn: organic post + Sales Navigator DM

Org-page post: "Corporate development runs on information advantage. For two days each March, the densest version of it sits in one room in Santa Monica: 120+ curated private tech companies, the investors backing them, and the corp dev & CVC leaders deciding what to buy, back, and build next. The Montgomery Summit · March 9–10, 2027. Invitation-only. Link in comments."

Sales Nav DM (after connect): "[Name], I help curate the strategics room at The Montgomery Summit, March Capital's conference of 24 years. Given [Company]'s work in [vertical], you would be a strong fit for the invitation-only corp dev group, and I would be happy to share who is confirmed in your space if that is useful."

Invite-to-follow motion: 250 invites per week from the org page, drawn from the same Sales Navigator role lists. Follower growth compounds into a warm retargeting pool for every future send.

05

Measurement: the weekly machine

The posting asks for weekly reporting on registration, revenue, and campaign performance. Here is the machine behind that: a goal curve set on day one, actuals recorded against it every Monday, and a rule attached to every metric so that a miss triggers a defined action the same week. The charts below show the illustrative model, and the workbook holds the live template.

Registration pacing vs. goal (cumulative)

Data table

Scaled-outbound funnel (modeled)

The approval gate protects the room's signal quality. A rising request rate paired with a falling approval rate means the list itself is drifting toward the wrong people, and the fix is tighter targeting rather than new messaging.

Net-new registrations by channel (modeled)

The KPI stack: four layers, each with an owner and a rule

Reach & engagement

  • Email open and click rates by vertical and tier
  • Sales Navigator accept and reply rates
  • Follower growth and invite-to-follow conversion
  • GA4 campaign sessions and registration-funnel events, with every link UTM-tagged and attribution reviewed weekly

Funnel & conversion

  • Invitation requests and approval rate
  • Approved-to-registered conversion
  • Time to register, by tier
  • White-glove thread status (open, replied, stalled), reviewed each Monday

Revenue pacing

  • Cumulative registrations and revenue against the goal curve
  • Realized blended price against the $2,950 assumption
  • Sponsorship conversations sourced from strategics outreach, the second revenue line this segment feeds

Room quality

  • Share of strategic seats held by budget or M&A owners
  • 1:1 meetings booked per strategic seat
  • Meetings booked with spotlight companies
  • Post-event rebook intent, NPS, and portfolio introductions generated

Insight → action rules (samples)

If, on a Monday…Then, that week…
A vertical's email CTR < 1.8% after two sendsSwap its proof block for new portfolio and customer evidence, test a subject line framed around the peer set, and do not resend the same creative to non-openers.
Pacing < 95% of goal curve, ≤ 2 weeks to a price deadlineGenerate the Partner escalation list from open Tier 1 and Tier 2 threads, ask the VP to place calls, and send the deadline countdown to the full engaged pool.
Scaled approval rate drops below 70%Tighten the Sales Navigator filters and lookalike criteria, because a falling approval rate is the earliest warning that the list is drifting toward junior or off-sector contacts.
Visitors from a Tier 1 or Tier 2 account view the agenda or speakers page twice in one weekA trigger script flags the account, advances it to the next step of its sequence, and adds it to that Monday's white-glove follow-up list.
A Tier 1 org registers a seatSend the referral ask, and flag the owning Partner to plan pre-Summit introductions, including which spotlight companies this strategic should meet.

What Monday looks like

06

AI process note: how this was built

The brief asked for an AI tool in the process. I used Claude end to end as the operating system for the project: research, verification, modeling, drafting, and the build of this site itself. The same workflow, pointed at internal data, is how I would help build the AI-native operating unit the posting describes.

What the AI did

  • Research sweep with sources. It read every public Summit and March surface (site, FAQ, agenda, newsletter archive, press, and the site's own speaker, company, and partner indexes) to extract positioning, pricing, dates, and audience mechanics.
  • Three parallel verification passes built the target pools: tracing all 7 portfolio acquisitions to their current owners (which caught that Bridg now lives at PAR Technology and VeloCloud at Arista), confirming which corporate venture programs are still active in 2026 (which caught Intel Capital's canceled spin-off and SAP.iO's wind-down), and validating the SoCal innovation functions. Every claim carries the URL that supports it.
  • The models: the scoring rubric, tier math, pipeline coverage, and pacing template were built as an editable workbook, so the team can change any assumption and watch the outputs move.
  • Voice-matched drafting. Copy was drafted against the Summit's own published register ("big enough to network, small enough to connect") and then human-edited. The vertical personalization demo above is the same merge-block system I would ship in Mailchimp.
  • This site, built as a single self-contained file, with chart colors validated programmatically for color-blind readers.

What stayed human

  • The call to target strategics, and the anchor-tenant thesis behind it.
  • The scoring weights, tier thresholds, and every exclusion on the cut list. These are judgment calls, and they are documented so the team can overrule them.
  • The decision to target roles rather than named individuals, and to gate outreach volume behind decision-making authority. AI makes contact cheap, which makes discretion the scarce input.
  • Final voice on everything a human would receive.

Deployed in-role, this becomes

  • Enrichment pipeline: Sales Navigator and CRM exports get scored against the rubric automatically, so the team spends its time reviewing tier assignments instead of building spreadsheets by hand.
  • Partner-note factory: a research brief + five-sentence draft per Tier 1 target, refreshed on real trigger events (an acquisition, a fund launch, a case study).
  • The Monday report, self-drafted: CRM and Mailchimp exports go in, and a variance narrative with an action list comes out, so a person reviews and sends a report that is already written for them.